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Well he certainly should have. Instead he chose moral weakness and then institutionalized a great harm to humanity.
I don't understand what sort of excuse you think it is for god ... creator and ruler of heaven and earth ... to say, "what else could I do? they wanted it so I had to let them do it".
And then to actually rationalize it by saying slavery isn't so bad anyway ... it just beggars belief.
Or to put it in terms you might better understand: "woe to them who call good, evil, and evil, good".
As you can see, the people broke God's commands in any case. The only thing left for Him to have done, was destroy them. Which He did to many when they didn't return to Him. However, lets say God did forbid slavery, and immediately wiped out those who practiced it. That would leave the slaves free to do what they want. What if then, they also decide to practice slavery, desiring the status of a slave owner? Does God wipe them out to? Who would be left in this repeating pattern? The problem is with man, not God.
As you can see, the people broke God's commands in any case. The only thing left for Him to have done, was destroy them. Which He did to many when they didn't return to Him. However, lets say God did forbid slavery, and immediately wiped out those who practiced it. That would leave the slaves free to do what they want. What if then, they also decide to practice slavery, desiring the status of a slave owner? Does God wipe them out to? Who would be left in this repeating pattern? The problem is with man, not God.
By your incoherent argument, society should just let people should be allowed to commit murder, because after all, if they don't the people who would have been murdered may just hypothetically live to commit murder themselves anyway.
We have laws against murder and we sanction people who break that law. We have laws against slavery and sanction people who break those laws. That is because we have wisely decided people should not be free to do either of those things. Or in other words we are more morally enlightened on those two topics at least than the Bible.
If the Bible were inspired by an all loving and all wise deity, it would lead humanity to greater levels of civility and peace, not follow from behind and go along to get along.
You cannot even begin to argue out of this one. I'd advise you to quit while you're behind.
By your incoherent argument, society should just let people should be allowed to commit murder, because after all, if they don't the people who would have been murdered may just hypothetically live to commit murder themselves anyway.
We have laws against murder and we sanction people who break that law. We have laws against slavery and sanction people who break those laws. That is because we have wisely decided people should not be free to do either of those things. Or in other words we are more morally enlightened on those two topics at least than the Bible.
If the Bible were inspired by an all loving and all wise deity, it would lead humanity to greater levels of civility and peace, not follow from behind and go along to get along.
You cannot even begin to argue out of this one. I'd advise you to quit while you're behind.
We are not more morally enlightened. If that were the case, using the US as an example, we wouldn't have the problems we have today. People would be willing to redress the harm of American slavery and racism, instead of sweeping it all under the rug. No, we're not willing to do those things because we love our immorality. We love lording over folks. We all know this to be true, and it will continue until we destroy each other. (Less God intervenes)
If we want to see God's morality, all we have to do is look at how things were set up in the beginning. If I see no slavery in the beginning, then I know that is how God wanted life to be. If I see everyone is family in the beginning, then I know that is how God wanted things to be. These are God's desires for mankind. There was no murder in the beginning. The first murder to take place wasn't God killing someone. Again, it was man who wanted to murder. So who is the morally superior one?
I actually have more to say concerning this topic of slavery and the OT. Later on I will speak to reparations, because remember I said God made it where Israel wasn't supposed to enslave their own brethren. Again in terms of slavery found in the OT, America was in gross violation. What I really want to bring out is the misconceptions about what the Bible says on slavery. No matter how one feels about it, at least lets get the truth out there on what Scripture says concerning the thing.
Both were cases of people owning other humans as property. In my view, that's never OK, but you somehow manage to make it OK in some circumstances. That tells me a lot.
When a human being actually willfully decides to serve a master, then yes, there is something that is less evil about it.
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Whatever differences that may have existed between slavery in the AME and in the US in the 18th and 19th centuries, they were both situations where some people owned other people has personal property. You say that's OK. I disagree.
There's a reason that many translations use "bondservant" instead of slave. It really wasn't all about owning others.
They are two separate issues that influence each other but vary independently. In a technical sense, ownership is very easy to define. If I can buy or sell a person, then they are a slave.
On the other hand, some abusive employment arrangements can be reasonably characterized as de facto ownership. For example in a "company town" where virtually all employment is directly or indirectly a result of one employer's presence there, where perhaps housing is company owned with the company acting as landlord, people are going to have a very pronounced reluctance to push back against unjust policies or overreach or mistreatment.
In fact there are many human relationships that are toxic for one or both parties and where they feel unable to break away from them for various reasons. But I think it cheapens the concept of slavery to extend that word to people who are basically self-confined to situations that don't work for them. Ownership, IMO, is key.
You are correct that what one thinks privately in between their ears cannot be directly controlled even if a person is owned and so in a philosophical / technical sense everyone is is free to think whatever they think. But a person enslaved or imprisoned (or in our penal system, not infrequently both) is not free to "pursue happiness", whatever that means to them. They are only free to imagine it, and to rationalize their limitations.
A very well thought-out response. I appreciate your thoughts here.
Because of the bolded part on which we agree, I don't believe it's possible for one person to own another person. Slavery entails the ownership of a person's labor, not of the person himself. To caricature slavery as "people owning people" is to reduce the entirety of the human person to his labor and nothing else.
Of course we know from many examples of history that many slavers have attempted and succeeded in going far beyond mere ownership of the slave's labor in imagining themselves to own the slave's body as well. But no slaver has ever succeeded in owning his slave's soul or entire person.
Well let's make you a slave, and then you'll know. Or your wife. Or your daughter. Or your grandson.
The christians here dance around slavery is sickening.
I am already a slave, as are my wife and children. I have no grandchildren; but if I am one day blessed to have them, I fully anticipate them being born into slavery as well and then transferred into another form of slavery.
So you make an accusation and then can't back it up. Thanks for admitting that, in your own roundabout way...
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