Idk.
Like usual you only look at one side of the coin. The slave laws in the US were based on biblical slavery. The slave owners were by enlarge Christians who justified their slave owning with the bible.

Besides none of that makes the slavery in the bible moral.
Alright.

Have you seen my link contrasting Hegel and Kant?

If you ask me Christianity is rather Kantian and Buddhism is Hegelian.

http://hebrew4christians.com/Article...gelianism.html

Hegel makes a claim to a knowledge that Kant says can't be known.

I haven't studied the laws in detail. But so what?

Where did I ever say Christians couldn't misinterpret and misapply the bible?

And how do you know those weren't hypocrites impersonating Christians that set up the laws?

You have some seriously big banking groups in this world run and owned by Jews in direct violation of the OT rules against practicing usury. Why did they bend the rules?

How does any of what you have posted in misdirection and deflections make biblical slavery moral?

Missed this part, though not sure what it has to do with anything. Its not against usury for Jews to lend to non Jews afaik. As far as why they did it. It has to do with the Church not allowing Christians to lend. Basically they filled a need.

I think you missed the whole point of the Exodus.

You should go back to Genesis.

Joseph was sold by his own brothers into slavery.

It took God's personal intervention to get the Hebrews out. The Hebrews were slaves yet they kept multiplying. The Egyptians got scared the Hebrews would grow large in number and take over. So the Pharoah decided to systematically kill all the firstborn boys and directed the midwives to do it.
The midwives refused to do it but deceived Pharoah into thinking they were obeying him by saying the Hebrew women weren't having the babies with them they were having them out in the fields.

So God leads the Hebrews out of slavery. He does it with power because the Pharoah isn't going to give in to a bunch of slaves who are beneath him even when he knows God is with the Hebrews. Pharoah's own sorcerers tell him it's God with Moses.

After leading them out they make a covenant to be God's People yet they keep getting led back into slavery through their own actions.

This is a repeating pattern throughout the OT.

The only one that can break the pattern is Jesus Christ.

Read Deuteronomy 28: the 2 paths. One breaks the pattern into slavery. That is the pattern of obedience to God. The other pattern of disobedience leads directly into the slavery of sin. Sin is like a law of physics it always leads to negative consequences sooner or later.

More deflection.

Deflection is what you are going with after Karl Pilkington's guide to the plagues?

Slavery isn't moral but people put themselves into it by their own and other people's actions. God tries to break the cycle but people keep doing it to themselves and others.

He obviously instituted the Day of Jubilee to break the cycle because people are slow learners and a lot of people can only learn the hard way. But if you contrast God's people with other people God has always set limits and boundaries around his people. It provides guidance and a way to find their way back into his safety. People are like sheep. They are stupid and they wander out into dangerous places amidst the wolves all the time and sometimes they are lured out.

The Hebrew slavery of ancient times was nowheres near as brutal as the 18th century Tibetan slavery. God tries to put boundaries around his people til they wake up. If you ask me he tries to lessen the consequences of human nature. He doesn't want us to be puppets but we do learn negative things from each other. For example, a lot of domestic abusers grew up in abusive households. How do you break the cycle on that?

But study the bible. God's ways break away from the wheel of karma and one day he's going to put death under Christ's feet. Death is the last thing to be put under Christ's feet.

Death isn't suppose to be running the show like it is on the Wheel of Life.

Pretty much.

Is that a rabbinic or "traditions of men's" change to God's original law? I'm not sure but the Karaites had a lot of fights in early Judaism because they felt Judaism was drifting away from the Torah.

And that sounds like a rationalization of evil behavior. Of course some people do claim that Judaism traditionally had a lot of insider rules.

I wonder if they got trapped by their own privileges and insider rules into forgetting that God had a larger instructional purpose for them.

Besides they could be making sins of omission in their pursuit of usury. For one it seems to violate the "I'm my brother's keeper rule" and also a lot of people are most likely related to them though they don't know it. Everyone according to Judaism is descended from Adam and a lot of the Lost Tribes (ten of the original tribes that split off from Judaism) intermingled with other peoples throughout the world. Even the Muslims are related to the Jews. They are both Semitic people which means descendents of Shem.

Alright Splendour. Ill let you get back to pointing out the speck in others eyes.

Not sure Karl himself has done anything quite as good as post 84. Amazing stuff. Truly flabbergasting.

I hope it is a level. Anything else is too horrible to imagine.

Sorry I'm not familiar with Pilkington.

I think we've seen Splendour defend Biblical slavery enough times. Just for the sake of interest I think it would be better to perhaps shift to having her defend rape or god sending angels to kill children. Just to shake things up a bit.

He is very funny to some, but I am not sure you would enjoy it. There are lots of vids on youtube if you would like to give it a try though.

not a level. Too consistent over a period of at least 6 years or so.

The moment I read that I was filled with the kind of dread and lamentation that I felt after reading Dostoyevsky's comment about Don Quixote being the saddest book he had ever read, and that moment my favorite book went from being a comedy to me to a tragedy in a moment. I can still read it and laugh, but it isn't quite the same.


Karl is still funny though. I think I will go watch some of those 'till I feel better.

I don't have to defend the slavery question in the bible.

It's just an allegory to a bigger question. That question being whether you will choose good over evil or not.

Everyone knows there are bad examples of Christians and good ones.

The question is why you focus exclusively on the bad examples. Because that is what most atheists do. Focus on the bad examples to the exclusion of the better ones.

Most people know the ultimate example is Jesus Christ and that is the only example that really counts with Christian people.

That is the ideal. The bad examples you are fixating on won't get you anywhere. You need to focus on the road to success in this world to be successful at anything and Jesus is the Way (the road to success). Focusing on anyone else is a cop out.

: facepalm :

Of course you don't have to. Yet you've done so in countless threads each time defending Biblical slavery. Its a pleasure to watch.

No. Its a simple matter of slavery being an immoral practice that was largely practiced throughout the world. As the Bible is a reflection of values of the people who wrote it at the time it was written it would be expected that it would endorse slavery. Nowadays we recognize this. But there are some people who will choose evil by defending slavery.

Right... like ones who recognize that slavery is wrong and those that still defend the practice.

No I want you to take a stand since you're so big on pointing out the historical faults of people. I want you to be fair.

You should be able to get a few posters like Melchy Beau (he likes to run lots of "Let's condemn Christians" group threads) and possibly several other posters and go ask Buddhists on one of their forums why the Dalai Lamas were allowed to perpetrate slavery so long and see what they say.

Because if you ask me taking political stands can be both a blessing and a curse. I mean a Christian, John Wesley (make that at least two and include Wilberforce) took a better stand against slavery than any Buddhist I can think of. Christians also took the best stand in the world on worldwide infanticide.

Splendour,

What is wrong with you? Seriously. I haven't made an OP in a long time. My posting frequency in this forum has gone down considerably. You probably knew this and felt you could take cheap shots at me. Accusing me in a thread i haven't posted in of doing something. You are why RGT can't have nice things. Am I going to have to dig through a bunch of other threads to make sure you weren't attacking me while I wasn't looking.

I don't start threads about islam because there aren't any muslims in here to discuss it with. I'm not sure why you want to drag me into this, but by saying buddhism is worse than Christianity, which I disagree with, doesn't excuse the evils perpetrated in the name of Jesus Christ, son of your sky fairy.

You seem to ignore the fact that the Dalai Lama represents only one branch of buddhism. I don't even like that guy, so why would I defend him? Since you show one leader of buddhism as the leader of all buddhism, we must be able to do the same with you guys? No? Ok then.

You know what the problem is. RELIGION. Is it that hard to figure out?

I'm not why RGT can't have nice things. I don't give other people their opinions about religion. 99 percent of them are atheists before they show up here.

I just don't soft soap my posts.

As for cheap shots because you're not here. Of course not. Your name shows at the bottom of the forum and you've been here yesterday and today so I'm sure you are following things.

I used to run a lot of threads to explore stereotypes and this is one along the same line.

Atheists love to level myth charges at theists but I'd say some atheists have a few myths about Buddhism of their own. One is that they are harmless. But isn't inaction just as damning as a bad stance?

Atheists have been guilty of the very charge they like to lay at Christians door: blind belief.

They have fallen for the impression conveyed by Buddhists like the Dalai Lama and they don't know a thing about the culture or the history.

Just don't mention me in a thread that I haven't posted in. It was just a coincidence that I was bored waiting for my seat at the poker table and was browsing 2+2 on my phone that I saw the post.