Why does the god of the Bible consider slavery to be moral??

Fini
I hope.

Snood i agree when all that can be said has, it is time to end the discussion. There are some that just don't seem to know when that is. I suppose it becomes a contest of who will have the last word.

And that's me, "THE END"

I watch O'Reilly sometimes, just for a few minutes, until I start to gag. but he likes to bully people for the entire segment they're being interviewed, then end it with "I'll give you the last word." And sometimes he even interrupts that.

<had to share that - 'sides, how else could I get the last word?>

And O'Reilly - that's a real asshole - no spin

snood, That's the reason why I don't watch O'Reilly any more. c.i.

Usually the way it goes with me is, I watch for about 5-10 minutes, then turn away muttering "What a blithering asshole!", or something like that.

Usually the way it goes with me is, I watch for about 5-10 minutes, then turn away muttering "What a blithering asshole!", or something like that.

I don't know why - maybe subconsciously I'm hoping that a man with the viewership and following he has will suddenly grow up into a thinking, feeling human being. When I think of how popular jerks like him and Limbaugh are, it really makes me a little scared of what is really happening in people's heads.

Please allow "some" to be inserted before people -

Well then -- back to the main topic of the thread.

I guess it comes down to...

...the god of the Bible says that slavery is moral and that people can ethically and morally own and traffic in slaves, because...

...because he does.

So for Christians -- and other people who accept the Bible as the word of their god -- slavery is no problem.

No sin involved there.

If you want real sin -- you gotta find some guy who is turned on by other guys.

Now that is a sin.

In fact, the god of the Bible -- the one who says slavery is completely okay with him...

...says that homosexual conduct is such an abomination and an affront to him...

...that people who engage in it are to be put to death.

Interesting god!

It's all about economics and property rights.

Before the concept of private property, god was female.

Everything was owned in common, no slavery, equality for all, communal marriage and communal raising of children--what children were not killed with infanticide anyway. My guess is that homosexuality was a sanctioned way of life.

With the introduction of agriculture, an investment in a particular piece of real estate, private property became an issue. In some cultures, most actually, the property was passed down through the males. People wanted to pass down their plot to THEIR children with some assurance that their children were indeed theirs.

(I find this passing down through males highly offensive, since it was females, the gatherers who discovered agriculture to begin with; then it was yanked away from them, along with their status as equals. Females and their gatherering provided more food, more consistently, than any hunters ever did!)

Women's opportunity for sexual freedom was squashed. Husbands wanted to know that their heirs were theirs. Women and the female goddesses lost their status when private property and ownership became an issue.

It's not a far stretch to link owning property, to owning women, to owning children, to owning (other) people. I believe that homosexuality did not mirror the economic realities of the time, and was therefore outlawed in some cultures, but certainly not all, probably not even most.

Religion sanctions the economic realities of a particular period, and then once legitimized, lags far behind any changing economic truths.

Interesting that in some American Indian societies, the property stays with the female lineage. And homosexuality has a sanctioned place in the community.

Slavery quelled advancements in industry and technology. Everything that we have today, we could have had many centuries ago, if we had not been using human labor in its place. Necessity is the mother of invention. Slavery kept us in the dark ages. Fed our ignorance and laziness.

Your arguments were unique -- and sounded rational. But then you wound down with a fizzle -- and never really related any of the stuff you wrote to the central question of this thread.

But since I like your thinking -- let me ask you specifically:

Why does the god of the Bible condone slavery?

Why does the god of the Bible consider slavery to be moral?

Why would any god?

test

truth
Snood, I can't tell you how much pleasure it gives me to read your condemnation of those idiots, O'Reilly and Rush. I try to hear them on the radio just to see what the dangerous right rousers are saying. But after a few minutes I gag too. Dupre, good point about how slavery retarded the development of technology. Note, too, the the conflict in 14thcentury Spain between the aristocratic land owners and the emerging industrial bourgeoisie was interrupted in favor of the medival aristocracy by the acquisition of gold and silver from the New World (especially Mexico). This explains why Spain lagged so far behind the rest of Europe in the rise of industrialism. By the way, it should be no surprise that the MAN-MADE bible should describe the MAN-MADE God as pro-slavery, given the time the description. TODAY, Christians, understandably describe Him as democratic. It's SO OBVIOUS!

Why do the religions in some South American countries insist on ancestor worship?

The elders hold the political power and receive some priviledges (unlike in our society, where youth is revered and refected in our over-the-top celebration of the birth of Christ).

Why do some religions of the American Indian and African tribes insist of pantheism (all things god)?

Theirs is a more equalitarian political and economic structure of society.

Why is the cow worshipped in India?

The cow provides for most of the people's nutritional and energy needs. When a family is near starvation, if they give in to slaughtering their cow, the family will die the next season. Cows can roam freely, in order to forage wherever they can, thereby providing some sharing of resources. It's an economic leveling strategy. (At least this was true at one time, now, I really don't know.)

Could the Judeo-Christian God have picked a different economic strategy? You bet.

But consider who was writing the "rules." God gave Adam dominion over all he saw. When God selected Abraham, Isaac, and their descendents as his chosen people, this promise was passed on to the Hebrews, specifically the Hebrew males, who were determining their own economic and political structures.

Slavery has been with us since the very first established civilization in Sumer (and/or Egypt depending on who you want to believe), well before these books in the Bible were penned.

Slavery was not new to the Hebrews.

The Hebrew God did not invent slavery.

Religious laws and sanctions are created by the people in power, and in the case of the Hebrews, it was the men, men who didn't want to do all the work themselves, and so they had their God sanction slavery.

For economic reasons.

If this line of thought interests you, I recommend almost anything by Marvin Harris.

I enjoyed Marvin Harris's "Our Kind."

He also did a wonderful shorter essay: India's Sacred Cow.

He edited an anthology of other anthropologists' works, admittedly with a slant toward religion being intepretted economically. I can't recall the name of that right now, but I think I actually have that anthology around here. I remember I paid $40 for it (or one on liguistics) at a used book store. A lot of money for me!

It's ironic that in India, the cow is held in sacred worship, while in east Africa, they use the cow for survival. They drink the cow's blood and milk, and eat the meat. Such contradictions in this world. c.i.

I love the contradictions, actually.

So many different ways to make a society, to try to get along.

We are often not right, not kind, not considerate.

Political theories have been tried and tested and debated and are still evolving.

Still, we're here. We survived it all, and somehow managed to feed some of our young who are able to reproduce to go at it another round . . . in almost every type of geographic climate and location.

It's an amazing wonderment.

Just looking for more people to post the obvious.

The most reasonable guess about why the god of the Bible condones slavery is...

...because the god of the Bible is an invention of humans who considered slavery to be moral.

That is the most reasonable guess about why the god of the Bible decrees that homosexual conduct is an abomination -- and is deserving of death.

That is the most reasonable guess about why the god of the Bible suggests getting your fellow townsmen to stone your kid to death if he disobeys and is rowdy.

That is the most reasonable guess about why the god of the Bible thinks that people with physical defects or physical handicaps "profane" holy places with their mere presence.

Thanks for saying it Dupre.

That is what I was looking for.

That is the most reasonable guess about why the god of the Bible thinks that people with physical defects or physical handicaps "profane" holy places with their mere presence.


You mind fleshin this one out for me a little, boss?

truth
Dupre, Marvin Harris' explanation for why Indians worshipped cows was that by worshipping them they would not kill them (in addition to the ideology of ahimsa) and therefore benefit from them on a larger/longer scale, i.e., years of milk and dung for fuel--they therefore, like most east africans, only ate old and infirm cattle. When they were no longer productive. His was a very materialistic and simplistic functionism, explaining everything in terms of "rational" or instrumental goals, as if other societies were at bottom cultually no different from us. Deep cultural forces resulting from historical accident had little or no place in his analyses. For that reason he is no longer esteemed among anthropologists.

Sure, Snood.

Leviticus 21:16 (the god of the Bible speaking to Moses)

"None of your descendants of whatever generation, who has any defect shall come forward to offer up the food of his God. Therefore, he who has any of the following defects may not come forward: he who is blind, or lame, or who has any disfigurement or malformation, or a crippled foot or hand, or who is hump-backed or weakly or walleyed, or who is afflicted with eczema, ringworm or hernia.

No decendant of Aaron the priest who has any such defect may draw near to offer up the oblations of the Lord; on account of his defect he may not draw near to offer up the food of his God. He may, however, partake of the food of his God; of what is most sacred as well as of what is sacred.

Only, he may not approach the veil nor go up to the altar on account of his defect; he shall not profane these things that are sacred to me, for it is I, the Lord, who make them sacred."