Questions for theists...
Does god allow slavery to happen in the Bible?
Does god give a loophole to enslave your fellow Hebrew for life?
Does god allow you to beat another human because they are your property?
Last question;
Is it ever morally correct to own another human being as property?
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What is your definition of slavery?
Hi, I'm new to the forum, and this is my first post so bear with me. Can I assume we're happy to use the OED definition of slavery? It is a good place to start anyway.
NOUN
A person who is the legal property of another and is forced to obey them.
Now as far as the biblical endorsement of slavery goes lets take a look at some salient texts:
"However, you may purchase male or female slaves from among the foreigners who live among you. You may also purchase the children of such resident foreigners, including those who have been born in your land. You may treat them as your property, passing them on to your children as a permanent inheritance. You may treat your slaves like this, but the people of Israel, your relatives, must never be treated this way." (Leviticus 25:44-46 NLT)
There are other verses of course, but that one alone is pretty damning evidence. Hard to see how any interpretation, no matter how subjective, can honestly claim the bible doesn't endorse slavery. It's also noteworthy that the bible also legitimises enslaving Hebrews as well in Exodus 21, and though the passage limits the time of the enslavement to 6 years, it includes a ' loophole' that allows slave owners to entrap slaves forever by giving them wives and letting them have children whom they obviously would not want to leave behind as the masters property (forever) when they leave (after 6 years). It also give explicit instructions allowing slaves to be beaten by their owners with impunity, unless the slave dies within 48 hours of the 'beating'.
Other passages would be where God instructed the Hebrews to commit genocide on other tribes, and then 'enslave' only the young women and girls who were virgins, and here again it is hard to misinterpret the meaning as anything other the sex trafficking of those women and girls, albeit as 'wives', the text makes no mention of them being offered any choice after the massacre of their people, families, friends etc., in their enslavement and trafficking as concubines.
It's hard to see much ambiguity here, or the necessity of interpretation that ignores what is actually written. Why wouldn't an omniscient deity simply state plainly that all slavery including indentured servitude (not what is being described here btw) is completely immoral. This is after all a deity that allegedly wasted the first 4 of it's ten absolute moral commandments on ways to demand the saccharine worship of it's created 'pets'. Yet made no mention on prohibitions of:
1. Rape
2. Slavery
3 Paedophillia
Just off the top of my head...
Slavery is when you own another human as property, you can pass them down to your kids, you can beat them, and you can own them forever.
Voluntary or involuntary?
aj777
Is owning a slave morally right or wrong?
Thank you xenoview
I want to let his little word play game play out no matter how he turns this.
Both... of you sell your self as a slave in order to pay off debt fine
What about the women?
AJ777
why did you stop? you posted on this site but skipped me...
AWW WHY DOES NOBODY WANT TO PLAY WITH ME!!
Voluntary or involuntary?
I already answered I said both(maybe it was lost in this extremely long thread)
There is no such thing as a "voluntary slave"!
Are you sure about that? The context of slavery in the Bible was that of indentured servitude which was a voluntary state, not the same as what we think of as slavery today based on recent examples of atrocities like the African slave trade. When one joins the military in the U.S. this is voluntary for a set period of time and as a result benefits are given and a different standard of what is expected from the person are in place. For example there is no such thing as overtime, or mandatory days off. One works when told to and is on liberty when told.
@AJ777: "indentured servitude which was a voluntary state"
I'm surprised to hear this from someone who claims to have an absolute standard for morality. Indentured servitude has always been a highly questionable arrangement based on deceit and and exploitation. It's the pretext that human traffickers use to trick their victims into modern slavery. If you have to work for little or no pay and can't get out of the arrangement, that's slavery.
Do you think it's ok for a person who can't meet his mortgage payments to enslave himself to the bank?
"Are you sure about that? The context of slavery in the Bible was that of indentured servitude which was a voluntary state, "
Not really, the text talks about buying and owning, It also talks about passing ownership of slaves on to children. Even where there are special rules for owning Hebrew slaves that can leave after after 6 years (with nothing) Exodus 21, if they marry another slave and have children then the children remain the permanent 'property' of the slave owner, and if the parents don't want to leave without their children then they must remain the permanent property of the slave owner as well. Now whilst the text makes it clear this is a choice, no objective reading could really think this was an entirely voluntary choice. It reads more like a loophole. This of course only applies to Hebrew 'slaves' according to the bible, all other slaves are bought and can passed on as property.
so woman are indentured servants?
Burny, I’m not following you?
Sorry let me ask this way... do you think WOMEN are property?
also answer my posts questions now that i have defined slaves for you.
@aj777 i had more hope that you actually could debate but I guess you just continue to run away from every question!!! please pray and ask for answers... maybe then you will be able to answer my questions.
No I do not think gods purpose in creating women was as a piece of property
Involuntary slavery or servitude is wrong and punishable by death in the Old testament
“If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the wife and her children shall be her master's, and he shall go out alone.”
Exodus 21:4 ESV
http://bible.com/59/exo.21.4.esv
http://biblehub.com/commentaries/exodus/21-4.htm
So I read it don't see where it said oh and the wonderful woman slaves get to go free
What it says is the wife and children are her masters... if the husband wants to keep his wife and children then he will be a slave forever!!! This really sounds like an awesome moral law you guys got there!
So because you disagree with the Bible that means it’s wrong.
Ok so I will ask this question again please don't just run away
IS IT EVER MORAL TO OWN ANOTHER HUMAN BEING AS PROPERTY?
No, but again thats not the context of indentured servitude in the Bible. It seems you think slavery is objectively wrong. Why?
@AJ777: "indentured servitude in the Bible" "you think slavery is objectively wrong. Why?"
Your justification of slavery as "indentured servitude" reminds me of Thomas Carlyle's "Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question" 1849, in which he downplays the horrors of trans-Atlantic slave ships and defends slavery as a kind option for black people, whom he regards as ugly and stupid. When early economists condemned slavery, he called economics the "dismal science".
http://www.efm.bris.ac.uk/het/carlyle/occasion.htm
Slavery in the ancient world was just as much a horror as it is in modern times. The Bible translators sugar coated it by using the word "servant". God condoned it. Jesus never opposed it.
Slavery is objectively wrong for several reasons.
1. Slaves have no property or income so cannot be consumers. By enslaving large numbers of people, you limit the size of your economy and markets.
2. Slaves are unlikely to be motivated toward their work. They'll do the minimum required to avoid flogging. This also limits economic progress.
3. By using human beings as production machinery, slavery prevents the progress of technology. Why develop a combine harvester when you simply use a few dozen self-replicating human machines?
4. A human being is a sentient being with hopes, fears, love, intelligence. A human being is one of us, one of our family. If we devalue some people into slaves, we devalue humanity as a whole.
5. Most importantly, slavery breaks the Golden Rule. Would you want a member of your family or yourself bought and sold like cattle and worked to death while also suffering torture and rape? If not, then it's objectively wrong to do it to others.
Frankly, I'm appalled that you even had to ask this question.
You are not going to be honest and I have already explained why morals do not come from god or the Bible.
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