Maybe it isn't.

But if we can't rationally justify morality without appealing to God then we have no way to judge that God is in fact the good guy. Alternatively, God's morality becomes as arbitrary as anyone else's.

lol

That's a tough question to answer. I guess it comes down to whether or not you trust God, trust that he is loving, trust that he is moral, trust that he is not unfair, trust that characteristics that are good are the characteristics he possesses. Also, God has made himself vulnerable to harm, when he sent his son Jesus. Jesus came into the world as a blameless person walking towards a violent death. He was blameless his entire life and a perfect representation of the Father. In John 14:9 Jesus says, "Don't you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, 'Show us the Father'?

So if you want to understand how God is you just have to look at Jesus. Jesus was good and worthy of all praise, and that is what God is like.

I acknowledge I have sinned. I don't find it unreasonable that one day I will be judged for my sins. Jesus stepped in and took the penalty I would have received if I were judged for my sins. I think it's believable that Jesus is who He says He is. I approach the rest of the Bible through the relationship Jesus has offered me.

You're just repeating THAT you believe and trust the Bible, but not WHY you do. How did you get from point A (total ignorance of Christianity, however far back that is) to point Z (Bible-believing Christian)? I appreciate it's likely not a short response (hence "Is this something you think you could summarise and justify in a post?") but surely you must have thought about it?

Bonus questions:
(i) Would have been better if Jesus had not been killed? Despite God presumably knowing in advance (or perhaps "always" is a better word?!) that this was the plan.
(ii) "Jesus was good and worthy of all praise, and that is what God is like." Jesus also had fits of violence, and encouraged dividing families. And let's not forget the enormous turd in the holy ointment, so to speak: "Slaves, obey your masters" - God never condemned the owning of one human being by another, despite having ample opportunity to do so.

I've had knowledge of Jesus, God, and the Bible since I was a young kid. Eventually I realized that I could die at any moment and if Jesus was real I would be in the worst trouble imaginable if I died without him, since I'm clearly guilty of sin. So I believed in Him. I trust God and I can believe the rest of the Bible through faith.

(i) Jesus sacrificially dying on the cross is the payment for mankind's sin. Jesus is described as the lamb slain from the foundation of the world, it was his plan to do this from the very beginning. If Jesus were not killed we would not have the salvation he provides and the prophecies concerning his death would not have been fulfilled.

(ii) I assume you're talking about when he drove the money changers out. That was righteous anger. As for encouraging the dividing of families, he made it clear that salvation comes through him and that that is what our priority should be. There are people today who still have to make that choice, due to their families persecuting Christianity. I'm not an expert on slavery.
Here's something that might help you better understand what the Bible says about it though.

By the way I get that you probably wanted a longer and more detailed answer, but there are a lot of things I don't want to get into and it did basically come down to realizing that I could die at any moment and that I needed Jesus. From that decision to believe in Jesus I could approach the rest of the Bible. Also, my attitudes about sin quickly changed once I made the decision to believe, which gives me confidence that something more is afoot than just my own grappling with fear of death.

Did you run this reasoning by Fermat?

You'll have to fill me in on this one. I read the introduction to "Pierre de Fermat" and "Fermat's Last Theorem" on wikipedia, but I'm not sure how either of those relate to what I wrote.

Yeah, forum posting isn't a very good way to delve into questions like this.

You said you made the decision to believe, but is that really how you get to your beliefs, that you consciously choose them? At least in most other areas of life, the experiences you have make your beliefs inevitable and beyond conscious adjustments. Could you consciously choose to believe you can breath underwater, while you are sitting at the bottom of a swimming pool?

As for slavery, your link is the kind of awful apologetic I've heard before, and if its authors are Biblically literate, then they are lying. There's nothing good about indentured servitude, but the Bible is also full of forced enslavement, taking people from other nations, taking young girls as sex slaves, passing human slaves from one generation to the next as property, a benchmark for how badly slaves can be beaten, and so on.

(rant over, however this is all in the 'good book', no expertise in slavery required).

“Anyone who beats their male or female slave with a rod must be punished if the slave dies as a direct result, 21 but they are not to be punished if the slave recovers after a day or two, since the slave is their property." Exodus 21:20-21

This whole "slavery was different back then" is horrendous. Even if it were a little different, it's still clearly immoral.

God managed to find space in his commandments for "No graven images" but couldn't find space for "Don't own people".

Choice was a factor in whether or not I believed in Jesus. Ultimately I had to choose whether or not I was going to believe in him.

Yes, I could choose to believe that I can breathe underwater, that would be a really foolish thing to choose to believe though.

No you couldnt.

Well, you're probably right about that, actually.

From a sufficiently far distance, slavery can be seen as a moral good. It all depends on one's objectives. If you want to create a rich tapestry of human experience and emotion, slavery probably belongs in the mix.

It just seems bizarre to me to condemn slavery but be ok with say, malaria. The latter involves far more suffering and death, God probably has the power to stop malaria, and doesn't, yet we condemn him for laws requiring kindness to slaves. Doesn't make a lot of sense. If you accept the premise that life must involve suffering and struggle to be meaningful, slavery is among the least of suffering and struggle in the scheme of things a God could change. I realize this won't seem satisfying to a mind indoctrinated into the religion/cult beliefs/unbalanced focus of of US liberal arts indoctrination, which involves mostly historical fantasies and cherry picking. But Aristotle gets it.

I'm not necessarily okay with God inflicting malaria upon the world. That's not for me to justify. Malaria's not a moral agent though. And nowhere does God explain for us how to inflict malaria properly. He does, however, find time to tell us how to properly beat people that we own.

It's amazing how religion can still make people in the modern world debase themselves so much as to get into apologetics for slavery.

The laws didn't provide kindness for slaves. Talk about mental contortions.

I should have mentioned this earlier but I believe Jesus, the Father, and the Holy Spirit are all God. What I've written in this thread could have been taken much differently than how I intended without that understanding, mainly what I wrote about Jesus' death being the payment for mankind's sin. As God, Jesus did that willingly and out of love. I believe that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are all God and uncreated, each having always been present and each having always been in relationship with each other. I understand this can be hard to grasp, but it's what I believe.

Anyways, I think that's it for me. A lot of good questions were asked, I apologize if I offended anyone.

No, but the God with the power to inflict is a moral agent. You condemn him for inflicting a law against lethal slave beatings, while leaving out malaria? Doesn't seem consistent.
I see humans as something like unruly teenagers. We're not good at taking laws and orders. If God tried to stop slavery so long ago, his message probably wouldn't have spread. Instead, he tried to moderate the worst of it. It's kind of like telling teenagers that if they're going to have sex, at least use protection. That's all that works with teenagers and perhaps God's commandments are all that work in the nasty, slave owning world of antiquity.
"Were people happier/did they live richer lives during slavery" is an important, if distasteful, question. The modern view of slavery isn't a historical one imo, it's purely an invention of this age. Especially slavery in antiquity, which has less in common with modern slavery than you think. I contend that slaves usually had better lives in antiquity than if they weren't slaves. Life was nasty 3000 years ago, particularly in the areas from which many slaves came. It was also preferable to death, which was the other alternative for the conquered.
Saying people will be punished if they beat their slaves to death is a type of kindness. It's certainly not a harshness; God is reducing the suffering of slaves. You're just not happy he doesn't go far enough.

The salvation of the soul is through suffering and humility; perhaps God was doing slaves a favor by keeping them slaves. We truly don't know enough to judge God on this point imo; we're ignorant and working with awful mental models which are mostly fictional, and no personal experience.

The slaves were better off which is why there were no slave revolts.


Also the slave owners in the US used the bible to set up guidelines and laws on treatment and used it as justification. There are probably still people somewhere using it.

People always want to improve their station. Why did the French revolt? They had some of the best lives in the world. Being better off than before has little to do with revolting.
The bible overall is pretty anti-slavery. The Muslim world had 1400 years of unbroken and shameless slavery in comparison (including ubiquitous child rape slaves as a large scale social norm); the Christian world had brief periods of economic slavery in comparison, mostly in the lawless frontiers, and ended the practice internally. As well ending it by force in the Muslim world.

Christianity is one of the few reasons there is little slavery in the world. It's disgusting for you to malign such a benevolent force; you should be ashamed of yourself.

Almost all of the slaves in the current world are in non-Christian countries. Anti-Christian, atheist China has an estimate of over 3 million slaves. Of course, anti-Christian atheist North Korea is a human rights hellhole where millions are enslaved or butchered. No so in Christian countries. When you decide to believe in "nothing", human rights disappear, and human barbarism takes reign.

You brought up malaria not me. This is a bizarre take on whataboutery.

The difference is that malaria is a material fact about the world and not a proclamation of moral code to man. I'm happy to add it to the list of reasons to think the Biblical God isn't a good guy but it's in a separate category.

Yeah, I mean this is just more of the silly apologetics. God was very quick to outright ban many actions rather than merely regulate them.

"Were people happier/did they live richer lives during slavery" is an important, if distasteful, question. The modern view of slavery isn't a historical one imo, it's purely an invention of this age. Especially slavery in antiquity, which has less in common with modern slavery than you think. I contend that slaves usually had better lives in antiquity than if they weren't slaves. Life was nasty 3000 years ago, particularly in the areas from which many slaves came. It was also preferable to death, which was the other alternative for the conquered.

Frankly, I don't take this seriously as a defence. Owning people as property is not something I can get on board with. And if man was too primitive to accept that then it speaks to the silliness of God laying down his moral prescriptions and then not updating the word for two thousand years. I mean, he did readdress it in the NT but...

The Koran got its rules on slavery from the bible.


Your other part about it being a choice between death or slavery is dumb (you post a lot of dumb stuff so its hard to correct it all) too. Its like you know nothing of the past or do and are lying for manipulation purposes. The Romans did not kill or enslave all. Neither did a lot of others.

Sorry the fact the US used the bible to justified and enact slave laws gets your boxers bunched. Id say you should be ashamed but you appear to have none.

Kill em all.

Also lol that this is said by

this guy.

The guy who says Christian women are good breeders albeit brainwashed and deluded so lie to them to get with them. Yeah.. noting but respect for them you have there bud.

As usual, your characterization of that passage is a lie. This was in the context of them already being in a relationship, knowing he's atheist, and the relatives making her life hell:
Marriage is about compromise. I see no reason you can't compromise on religion. It had nothing to do with lying to the partner.

Your irrational dislike of me and your attempts to smear me are comical.
The Koran has a great deal of its own to say on slavery. It specifically allows sex with female slaves, which as a result became the dominant form of slavery in Islamic cultures.

Again, I'm talking about the time when these laws were handed down - 3000 BC or so. It's like you have no understanding of context.
It doesn't get my boxers bunched; it is simply a false view to imply that the bible was the reason for slavery. Again, contrast Christian and Muslim societies and their attitude toward slavery. Why the huge difference?

Christians for 1000 years took a dim view of slavery
Christians ended slavery in their own cultures except on the lawless frontiers, which they ended over time.
Christians forced the end of slavery in other cultures.

The greatest force in this world against slavery has been Europeans, and Christian nations. Yet your irrational hatred of Christianity is so great, you make out like it's responsible for slavery. It's a sickness that you have, this irrational hatred of Christianity.