Faz It seems that it is YOU that is using the same arguments (about evolution) as every other atheist out there.

I don't know how many times I've heard the slave thing, but the Bible never advocates slavery. It does talk about it , but that's because it was a common practice in those days. It's like me saying that Jesus talking to a prostitute makes him a pimp. Go find one example of Jesus advocating slavery that isn't taken out of context. You can't
Stoning? see above

I'm not stupid, I read the Bible and I know what it says and what it doesn't say. The Bible isn't just a religious text. It is largely made up of historical documents like biographies, letters, and other records written by several people.I think you are used to speaking with the majority of "christians" that haven't touched a Bible in their lives.

All of this, and it is completely off topic because this is about evolution.

Evolution happens you can't deny that. Wasn't there a point in time that noone had blue eyes, then someones genes were mutated to make them blue and now there are a large ammount of people with that.
I'm pretty sure that scientists have also stated that evolution and creation don't necesarily contradict eachother. Evolution and the creation story follow a relatively similar plot aside from their timeframe.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Mar 21 2011, 8:55 pm by K_A.

First, I'm not an atheist. Second, he's a conservative in regards to this issue, there is no room for discussion there. I don't really care what his political affiliation is, though if he's American I'd stake 100-1 odds on him being a devout Republican. Indoctrination is pretty thorough.


It's not about him advocating slavery or not. You can't pretend that someone has a divinely inspired absolute moral code when he ignores slavery and cruel and unusual punishments. Those are the most blatant examples of how culture inspires differing views on morality. Since our culture has grown over the past two millenniums, our concept of morality will inevitably shift as well. Jesus had many good concepts on morality, and is regarded in ethics as one of the most important practitioners ever- but he's not infallible. That is the crux of my point.


And no, I deal mostly with fundamentalists like the two of you.

I am no fundamentalist. There are obviously things in the Bible that might be incorrect. Most of these would probably be in cases of hyperbole. On top of that, many of the words in the Greek and Hebrew that it was originally written in have slightly different meanings in English. When I say that I believe the Bible. I mean that the Bible is "The Official Christian Guidebook".

I only said that Jesus never advocated slavery. He did address it on several occasions.

What exactly is your belief if you are not an athiest? Are you agnostic?
Atheist basically means "not theist" so not being a not theist would make you a theist...

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Mar 21 2011, 11:29 pm by K_A.

A cross between deism and agnosticism, if I had to say. I tend not to because I consider the conversation worthless, I'd rather talk about something that matters.

Acknowledging evolution doesn't make you a non-fundamentalist, even the Pope wisened up eventually. My categorizing of religious types tends to be pretty bad though, because frankly I don't give a shit.

I can accept the fact that you don't really know what to believe.
The christianity that I believe in is in the purest form of Love.

Please cite examples of him "addressing" the practice. As far as I've seen, he just ignores it or treats it as-is. That doesn't seem quite moral to me.

Matthew 23:8-12 (New International Version, ©2011)

8 “But you are not to be called ‘Rabbi,’ for you have one Teacher, and you are all brothers. 9 And do not call anyone on earth ‘father,’ for you have one Father, and he is in heaven. 10 Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one Instructor, the Messiah. 11 The greatest among you will be your servant. 12 For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.

As far as I know Jesus maintains the same attitude throughout the Bible. He does speak several times of how highly he thinks of slaves/servants. Note that in the Bible the word servant and employee are for the most part interchangeable while the term slavery is almost exclusively used in the new testament in metaphors.

-1-Jesus mostly spoke in public areas to commonfolk who don't appear to be slave owners of any kind. Who knows? It may not have been a relevant topic at all. He also taught in Rome which as far as I know treated it's slaves relatively well. Also, Racism wasn't involved in the slavery of those days.

-2-On the other hand, it would be unwise for him to stir up resentment against slave owners. It could cause instability. MAybe he just avoided the issue?

-3-Another possibility that hadn't previously occured to me is the idea that certain references to slavery could possibly have been removed from the Bible at some point in time.

Honestly the third seems kinda weird to me. I like to think that slavery in those days was a lot more humane than the slavery we commonly think of. It could be a combination of all three.

Or maybe Jesus was a big jerk who viewed slaves as nothing but property that are worth 3/5 of a normal person.

Bingo. Jesus's morality is not based on some divine inspiration, it's based on practicality. Which pretty much ends any case of it being divinely inspired.

From what I'm reading, the exact opposite is true. Servant is just used as a euphemism for slave to make the immorality less obvious to not so astute readers. Prior to the civil war people used the Bible as justification for slavery, since it doesn't condone and even establishes rules for the system.

Racial slavery, that's cool.

Not only racism, but racial purity too and sex slaves too. Weren't we talking about sexual promisucuity earlier...? As I said, you selectively observe the Bible.

The KJV of this last passage absolutely censors it beyond recognition, by the way. If the others are similarly eschewed, it's no wonder people are able to lie to themselves that this stuff isn't true.


And a new testament example:

Be a good slave, so you don't make our religion look bad. This is "truth." Bullshit.

At -2, that is K_As point of view, not what Jesus necessarily thought. Not useful in a debate.

In general, servant and slave are interchangeable. Servant being an employee, slave being a slave.

As for racial slavery, the slavery the Jews took part in was significantly different from what the USA, for example, took part in. You notice they can only buy slaves from foreigners living within their borders? The reason the foreigners are selling their children is because they are too poor to keep them alive and fed. Selling their children into slavery means that those children will be fed, clothed, have steady work, and a roof over their heads. The Jews were governed by strict rules on how they treated their slaves, and the purpose of slavery was to keep people alive and healthy and useful. Like the welfare system but with the keeping people useful bit

I don't see where the verse talks about racial purity. Nor sex slaves. I see it talk about having a woman slave, a wife, a daughter in law, and a wife who he us forced to take care of even if he wants to divorce her and marry someone else (which was highly disapproved of in the Bible). all in all, the woman seems to have a pretty good deal out of it all.

If one Muslim goes on a suicide bombing attack, he makes his whole religion look bad. If a catholic priest, or many catholic priests, commit pedophilia, they make their religion look bad. If a Christian slave is disrespectful to his master, or a Christian employee is disrespectful of his boss, or if a Christian is disrespectful of the police, he makes his whole religion look bad, even though what he does may go against his religion. Yeah, it's a bad thing to do something bad and make your religion look bad because of it.

Thank you Jack for explaining my point.
First of all I have to say slavery in the Bible was not at all related to slavery in the United States and should never have been used as an excuse for the poor treatment of African Americans. Notice how the slave owners of pre Civil War completely failed to follow the guidelines written in the Bible, and only read the part they wanted to read. You could get anything out of a text by interpretting it the wrong way. That's why the accuracy of Bible is such a controvertial issue.

K_A was doing something that I encourage called thinking in order to determine possible motive. It's pretty useful in debate, actually: give a try sometime. In doing so, he reached a point that I agree with, and so I took the opportunity to expand upon it. Since Jesus took it upon himself not to actually say what he thought (likely due to the reason K_A pointed out), I consider that very strong evidence that his guidelines do not constitute the entirety of an absolute moral code.

That is... not what interchangeable means. Every reference I've found says that servant is often, though not always, translated as slave. The KJV refers to humans owning humans as "slaves" only once, for example. That is not a true translation and you're lying to yourself if you pretend that it is.

I'm really not sure what your argument is here. Do you feel that people should be able to sell extra children as slaves, as long as they are immigrants? I'm pretty sure that's what you're trying to defend, and if so I think we're about done.

Your reading comprehension seems to have failed you. I'll highlight those parts:

Orange is racial purity: Israelite women are not to be sold to foreigners. Red is sex slaves: sleep with a woman that you own as you sleep with your wife. That's about as straightforward as it gets- sorry.

I agree it's a bad thing to do something bad. I don't think being an disobedient slave is a bad thing, so it would appear that's where we disagree. How fitting.


That's exactly what I'm pointing out to you. As I said earlier, when is the last time you stoned someone? How many passages in the Bible demand stoning as punishment? There are many good ideas in the Bible. However, every idea in the Bible is not a good one. Those are two very different concepts. There were many Biblical defenses of slavery in the South, see this explanation on the Curse of the Canaan people, probably the most prominent argument of that time. If you believe that slaves in ancient Isreal were treated much better than American slaves, you're mistaken:

Many good and moral individuals in early America were fully convinced that slavery was God's will. There were various compelling Biblical arguments from religious leaders of the time who were pressed to justify slavery, and people were intellectually lazy enough to accept these sermons as fact. Today, we see those arguments as being "obviously" mistaken and thus a different interpretation of the Bible has become the "correct" one. The exact same situation played itself out for Galileo in the 1600's when he disagreed with the Church on geocentrism. Within a few decades, I have no doubt whatsoever that history will repeat itself on the matter of evolution. People will say that the Biblical interpretation of our time was obviously flawed and give alternative scriptural interpretations that fit with what we, as humanity, know to be true: slavery is wrong, the earth is not the center of the universe, and humans descended from apes. In time, one final point will be conceded: the Bible was not divinely inspired.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Mar 22 2011, 11:44 pm by FaZ-.

Off topic, but more serious than anything that's been said in pages.
I would like to just bring everyone's attention to a harsh reality here in Serious Discussion: If the last 7 posts in a SD topic are at least halfway intelligent, the topic dies. Even if it is necro'd, the topic will stay dead.

What is required to keep a topic here alive is someone to come along and make a post like the one quoted above. Both sides of any issue seem to lose steam and interest, because they are being asked to be more specific, and provide/refute sources.

I was sick of this topic ages ago, but when I read K_A's post it awakened something primal in me, and I started typing away.


Do you agree, and if yes, does it make you a little sick?

His post makes me a little sick in some regards.

@faz He stated an idea without evidence. Anyone can think, (e.g. I THINK THE SKY IS GREEN) but there needs to be evidence to back it up. You're also using ad hominem.

I mean the Greek word has been translated as two different English words even though there's only one meaning in the Greek. See http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080328090250AA8WtVZ
As you can see, there is a separate word for a domestic slave. By distinguishing from that word and using servant instead, the KJV is more accurate. The one tine the KJV uses the word slave that you referred to is probably the Philemon passage, where the Greek word specifically means a domestic slave.

I'm saying that if you can't provide for your childrrn, it's better for them to be sold into the Biblical style of slavery where they are fed and alive than to starve to death.

That's pretty clearly not referring to racial purity. The Israelites were commanded to try get proselytes, which meant foreign blood coming into the nation. No, the problem with selling a woman to a foreigner was that other nations didn't have any standards of slavery. She would, in most cases, be extremely badly treated in another nation.

@the red bits He marries her. This means he is to treat him as his wife, which in a normal relationship means he provides for her needs and sleeps with her. If he takes a second wife, he has to continue to treat the first wife as he did before marrying twice. I'd say that's very straightforward, and can't see how you managed to misinterpret that.

@stoning don't know why you consider stoning such a terrible thing. Is hanging or crucifixion a better way to execute someone? They certainly take longer and are rather more painful. Tjey didn't have gas chambers and electric chairs back then

I don't get it. Americans weren't punished at all if their slaves died at their hand. Americans weren't required to feed clothe and house their slaves. Americans weren't required to let their slaves go free if they damaged an eye or knocked out a tooth. Read http://www.biblestudy.net/2004/03/07/bible-view-of-slavery/ John Thomas' post to see how Israelite slaves were to be treated.

He gave premises and a series of connected arguments that reached a conclusion. This is the definition of a deductive argument. Saying "I THINK THE SKY IS GREEN" is a conclusion with no premises and no connecting links, which means it's not an argument. For someone who is citing fallacies (incorrectly), you don't seem to know very much about the structure of logical reasoning. As for the ad hominem, my argument doesn't even remotely begin to hinge around your narrow mindedness, so no.

If you can buy someone and they are not allowed to leave your service, they are not a servant- they are a slave. Even sharecroppers were paid a wage and weren't bought, and no one would envy their lives. Most of the references I provided are not originally Greek, they are Hebrew, which has no such linguistic ambiguity. The KJV's censorship and euphemisms are unjustifiable and intended purely to deceive.

There's no guarantee or evidence of starving to death, I'd doubt that's anywhere near the norm. I'd equate it kind of like abortion today: you don't really want the kid, and you could probably make do if you had him, but it's easier to just get rid of him. Somehow, in both cases I doubt the child would think so.

So it's okay for male slaves to be sold to other countries and treated poorly, but women can't be? That makes sense. (That's without me even challenging the blind assumption that slaves in Israel were treated well, which is laughable.) I haven't even gone into sexism, that's an even more absolutely blatant lack of morality in the Bible.

Let me put it bluntly, since this is apparently difficult: if you're having sex with two different women, you are not being a monogamous husband. That is what the passage says men must do and completely contradicts essentially everything you've said so far about promiscuity.

Do you understand what stoning is? Do you understand painful it is to die from blunt trauma? Please Google some videos of people being stoned in the Middle East and then try to make that point again. Gas chambers and electric chairs are only slightly less hideous- poison can be relatively painless and has existed for thousands of years. Again though, Jesus doesn't set new standards for morality. He goes along with the existing ones, because his code is not an absolute moral one, it is one of appeasement.

Being more kind than American slaveowners is like being smarter than a two year old- it still doesn't make you smart. Who is John Thomas and why are his assumptions any more valid than mine on the issue of the condition of slaves 2000 years ago? (Hint: he's nobody, and they're not. He doesn't even say what "punishment" means, how more vague could he get? Find somebody not indoctrinated that makes such a claim and then you might have a point.) In any case, he's merely citing the rules stated in the Bible and making assumptions from them. I can make the opposite assumptions and we're no where closer to the truth: I haven't even seen any evidence that those rules were followed at all and frankly given the condition of slaves throughout the history of the world I think it's vastly more unlikely that Israel was some city upon a hill: kind masters would avoid punishment except when necessary to force work, cruel masters would punish as much as they could.

Sigh. Look, I'm not going to bother arguing with you anymore for two reasons. 1) this is the evolution topic, not the DISCUSS AND FLAME CHRISTIANS topic. 2) you aren't listening to anything I say, and you certainly aren't going to change any of your viewpoints no matter what I say. This makes further debate useless.

This seems to be how every LD and SD topic is on SEN. We constantly have topics like this that erupt into heated arguments, and in the end no one changes and everyone ends up pissed.*

EDIT:
*Note: I'm not saying this is necessarily a bad thing, as I think debate is good to an extent (that extent mostly being the issue of inflated egos getting in the way). Despite the fact that a majority of these topics tend to hit close to home with some members and the tendency to get extremely defensive is pretty large, more often than not no one ever changes someone else's mind or in essence "wins."

I never had any hope of changing your mind, Jack. I am quite sure that there is nothing I could possibly say that would convince you that you're wrong. I've pointed out more than a dozen factual inaccuracies that your biblical arguments hinge on, countless inconsistencies in both your reasoning and the scriptures, and that virtually everything you thought about evolutionary evidence was wrong. You never even slowed. That is what it means to be indoctrinated, and you've no doubt had those attitudes from a very young age. 200 years ago, I am sure that we could have been having this discussion on slavery and you would've cited the biblical arguments of the time in support of that. That it doesn't seem strange to you that the recent arguments from Christians against slavery are so numerous, and yet 200 years ago they were no where to be found, is even more evidence that the Bible will be contorted to fit whatever social desires we have. As K_A said, "You could get anything out of a text by interpretting it the wrong way." What he fails to realize is there is no way for us to determine the correct interpretation. The authors of the Bible no doubt had intentions, and those intentions may very well have been to be deliberately ambiguous. Regardless, we will never know their designs, so it's an individual challenge to determine the most accurate meanings of the text and incorporate them into your life. If you need a religious figure or a Bible study group to help you do that, you're just being manipulated.

People in lengthy defenses will absolutely never publicly admit to being wrong; I learned that a long time ago. My only goal in this was to make you question your own beliefs, and likewise for any readers sympathetic to your cause, no doubt few as they are. Relentless factual assaults are the best way to convince any remotely open-minded reader of the relative strength of our positions. The majority of your knowledge of evolution was simply strawman and blatantly wrong, making that trivial to throw aside. The rest of your arguments were, as I've said, not yours- if you actually expected to make a convincing scientific argument by quoting Bible study websites by people who would miserably fail 10th grade biology, you're out of your mind.The fact that all of your arguments hinge on attacking evolution rather than providing support for an alternative makes it clear that you don't understand how the scientific process works, and at that point the evolutionary portion of the argument was over, whether you realized it or not. The morality side is a more interesting one, since I do concede readily that Jesus was a very important figure in developing ethics. However, neither he nor the Bible is infallible- that is the crux of my argument and I believe I've made that point quite clear.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Mar 23 2011, 10:25 am by FaZ-.

While I said I won't argue anymore, I'd like to have some clarification; you say that because I only attack evolution in this topic and don't propose an alternative, I am somehow being unscientific. Why is this? Isn't science about finding facts, and disproving unfactual ideas and theories? Why should I have to provide an alternative?

Science fits the best idea to the available evidence. Evolution has no modern competitors, so even if you did manage to find some hole in it, it'd still be the best theory until another explanation was put forth that could explain such a gap while still fitting all other evidence without making ridiculous assumptions.