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Originally Posted by Splendour
Well I've read Timothy Keller's book and in it explains that ancient slavery was much different from the more modern African slave trade.
I'm not sure which book you're referring to, because his books seem to be apologetics, and not an academic, historical account. He may have claimed it, but the only differences between the modern African slave trade and ancient slavery was geographic distance.
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My point is I don't have to defend previous generations at all.
And I think Christians should refuse to be held accountable for cherrypicked incidents in history. Wars start in people's heads but the Christian message is one of peace.
I agree.
But this cuts both ways. Christianity as a moral practice can't take any special high-ground for stopping the slave trade because it was also used to justify it. It can't take any credit as a "message of peace" because it has been used to justify and condone many wars. So I think you can notice the absurdity when you say:
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Many Christians know that the world is a much gentler place for the advent of its values.
Its "values" have been used to do good works, but also to justify great monstrosities. Many modern day Christians continue to support political persecution against people they don't agree with [e.g. the Texas Republicans recent statement supporting the re-criminalization of sodomy]; wars [ remember Bush's use of bible quotations across his daily war briefings?], greed [Jimmy Swaggart, Jim Bakker, Jerry Fallwell, ETC.], hubris [
Touchdown Jesus], etc. There are also certainly many who devote their lives to charity and spreading peace.
Its almost as if Christianity's perceived values have less to do with any sort of solid principles, and more to do with liquid interpretations of selected biblical passages in the context of contemporary socio-political attitude, and individual goals.
Now, atheists are no moral paragons either. I'm sure you've brought up the old "Stalin and Mao were atheists!" angle before. As has been noted in this thread many times, atheists have no binding Book of Morality, and atheism as a stance makes no claim to morality - it is simply the absence of belief in deities. There are many atheists who live by strong moral codes, and there are many who don't.
But if we accept that morality is a social construct and individual responsibility rather than the result of divine prescriptions as outlined in a certain set of bronze age texts, then there's no need for Christians to defend themselves from the actions of the past, for the reasons you outline here:
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I'm tired of people trying to call me to account for the failure of previous generations' and because the truth is sometimes people that fail at peace fail for many reasons
Exactly!
But this also means that the 'success' of the past cannot be so easily ascribed to Christian morality. The bible is simply too ambiguous on many moral issues (such as slavery) to serve as an effective moral compass. This ambiguity is a strike against religion, because religion posits that morality is the result of divine guidance, but struggles to provide a single moral principle its followers adhere to and live by.
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but nobody on this board knows that because they are only concerned to indict Christians now for something that went wrong in the past that they haven't even investigated.
I think it's unfair to make assumptions of other people's knowledge. I'm actually a history student, and have specialized in the history of democracy and human rights, so I have investigated religious history a fair bit. I take a strong moral position on the existence of fundamental human rights: the right to free speech, free expression, free opinion (religious or otherwise), control over your own body, etc., are non-debatable, as far as I'm concerned.
As an atheist, I don't see Christians as inherently amoral, and I know for a fact that there are many Christians who would agree with the principles outlined above. But unfortunately it seems many more who disagree with these principles, and will use the bible to justify this disagreement.
Last edited by municipalis; 07-06-2010 at 01:59 PM.
Reason: spelling, grammar, etc.