You’re saying nothing can be known. That’s solipsism.
@Lausten I most certainly never said that nothing can be known. Such a remark would have been ridiculous. How could I possibly know nothing can be known, if nothing can be known. I know many things myself.
Logic, according to logic. Reason, according to reason.My question intended to establish by whom slavery was determined as "bad" or "good" not by what means might have been employed to conclude the matter. I can't think of any group of people who haven't thought it at one time logical or reasonable to incorporate slavery, including my own relatively young nation of residence. Logically it makes sense to force someone else to do the work but that isn't reasonable, to me. Who decides?
If you can’t answer a simple question like that, I doubt we can have a worthwhile dialog.
"I know many things myself."How do you know you know? You can only think you know, but it is only when people agree on what they know that we can call that reality.
Even then that knowledge can be no more than a mass hallucination. Can you prove what you think you know? Therein lies the truth.
Remember Descartes" “brain in a vat”?
The more you keep telling me that we can’t have a worthwhile dialog the more I’m inclined to believe it, though I don’t think I’m the one at fault. The question of who decides what is right or wrong I have answered and you have not. My answer was God, the Bible, or society. What is your answer and what is, specifically, your problem with mine?
If those are you choices and you won’t answer my questions, then I doubt think you are serious about this. How did people make the case for abolition? If it was “society” how did people in that society figure out it was wrong? It’s not a hard question.
If those are you choices and you won’t answer my questions, then I doubt think you are serious about this. How did people make the case for abolition? If it was “society” how did people in that society figure out it was wrong? It’s not a hard question.No, it isn't a hard question. The answer is that the people made the case for abolition using the same means they had used for the case of slavery. So, the answer to the question of whom decides, is, like I said earlier, the people i.e. society. Using, as you said, logic and reason for both positions, which demonstrates, as I said, it is subjective.
Are you saying that some people in the past couldn’t figure out if slavery was wrong, or you can’t come up with reasons for it being wrong? You said it’s abhorrent, but you haven’t said why.
@Dave Leon
Easter, however, is a pagan holiday adopted much later by the apostate church. The same as Christmas. Jesus wasn’t born on or near the winter solstice. I think it important to make the distinction between the Bible and pagan influenced doctrine. The immortal soul, trinity, cross, hell, Christmas and Easter, for example.
And so is Christmas. A lot of things in Xianity isn’t original to Xianity.
That said, if Jesus ever existed, he was nothing like how he’s portrayed in the Bible, starting with the mythical dying and rising god story. Many of the stories attributed to him were done before with other deities.
I can come up with lots of reasons it’s “wrong” in my own opinion. It’s a product of laziness and greed for starters. What I’m saying is what I’ve said. Morality is subjective and God left the issue of slavery up to mankind. The latter because it had already been established by the time Jehovah approached Abraham. If you are interested in my Biblical understanding of slavery in more detail you can check out my website, The Pathway Machine - a response to the Skeptic’s Annotated Bible’s What The Bible Says About Slavery.
People at one time thought, and as you mentioned, still to this day think, that slavery was acceptable. I don’t seriously think that they would have considered our pronouncement of slavery as unacceptable as being any great significance to them.
You seem to be suggesting that we live in an age of logic and reason and what we, self determined arbiters of all that’s good and bad, are “right” and therefore they are wrong. That’s a matter of opinion. If you or I were a product of that sort of culture we may logically have been of a different opinion. It’s subjective. The question is who decides. If I had been alive during the time of Paul and Onesimus I may object to slavery and personally not have slaves but slavery at that time was legal. The Bible says that a Christian should obey the laws of their government unless it interferes with God’s will. So, like Paul I would have instructed Onesimus to return to his master and legal owner.
That makes me really not trust your judgment. People have opposed slavery, even when it was legal. So the ability to reason it to be wrong is not limited by time or culture.
I’ll check out your website.
Yes, I mentioned Christmas, and I completely agree that much of modern day Christianity isn’t original. That’s the nature of religion. No religion has ever remained true even to itself. Paul foretold that people would prefer myth and fables to the truth (Greek mythos; Latin fabulas), but, like I said, one has to make the distinction between the original teachings and the mythological inspired tradition.
For example, the winter solstice. Jesus’ birth. Other mythologies. You seem to suggest Jesus was only one in a long succession of similar myths when those myths weren’t supported by scripture but were later interpolations. So to conclude that Jesus died on Dec. 25 as did such and such a pagan god is pretty well refuted, not only by Christian scholars but pagan scholars as well. Neither were born on that day. Many of the comparisons made by the likes of Acharya S are, even according to most atheists I’ve talked with, just really nonsense.
I really do not believe anyone can know what the original teachings of Christianity were. The KJV is the worst translation of all the translations. King James had his own agenda and no one really corrected any of the mistranslations in that version. That and even back in the very beginning, there were different sects too and they weren’t the ones you see today. They weren’t even Catholic. A lot of the original teachings may have been destroyed in library fire. However, that does not mean that Xianity isn’t based on other dying and rising deities, it obviously was.
As for Jesus, I never said he died on Dec 25. Nobody did. What I said was, and I paraphrase Robert Price, if there ever was a historical Jesus, he’s too buried in mythology to find. You’re not going to find a historical Jesus in the Bible. Those are stories written by humans, many of which don’t have the real authors’ names- ie the Gospels and only few attributed to Paul were actually by a man named Paul. To say that the Bible is true and represents real people, is utter nonsense. What it does show is mythology- everything from animism (ie worship of a volcano and putting humanoid properties to it) to Solar mythology. It has it all.
I looked through your Pathway site. I want to focus on Exodus 21:20. I’m not looking to win an argument here, but I’m limiting the time I’m willing to discuss this to what I consider critical. You gloss over that the Bible says its okay to beat a person to within an inch of their life, justifying it by saying if they don’t die, it shows the master didn’t intend to kill. Result does not prove intention, but besides that, can’t you look at this from the point of view of the beaten? Or those who might also be beaten? Can’t you see that it’s universally considered bad to be beaten? For me, this is one of the clearest passages that shows the Bible was written by men in power to keep their power.
A society doesn’t flourish by putting some people in the position of being legally beaten. If God had to use slavery to help the Israelites rise to power, then he’s a weak god. I want nothing to do with him. The first time someone showed me this passage, I tried to justify it too. I had been told by people I trust that slavery was different then. But after a while, I realized it could not be justified, in any time or culture. Morality begins by looking at what you think is good and right if you were in the position of any person in that situation. To the slave, that isn’t right. If you are not willing to be a slave who is beaten nearly to death, then you should not support a society that allows that.
You have obviously spent some time with this and looked at it from other perspectives. I can’t see how you can justify this as simply “discipline”.
David leon said,Jesus existed in heaven as a spirit, Michael, prior to coming to earth as a man. He gave his body as a ransom sacrifice, once and for all time. That body was taken away by the angels who were near the tomb afterwards. So, when he appeared again to his disciples some of them mistook him for a gardener, like would be taking care of the area.
And you expect me to swallow this fairy tale? What happened to Joseph and Mary? Care to explain the yearly ritual of Chrismas to celebrate the birth of Jesus in the manger. One of the all time favorite money making idolatrous practises in history.
Also I would clarify that, medically speaking, a zombie is someone who has been drugged to appear dead, their vital signs undetectable by primitive standards, in order for them to be buried alive. Upon escaping the rudimentary burial they “are raised from the dead” and appear lethargic et cetera.Ah, so Jesus was NOT dead, well that explains a lot! A most unusual take on the physical condition of Jesus when he was entombed.
IMO, if you want to proselytize, you better quit while you’re ahead… 
And you expect me to swallow this fairy tale?Let's say we were discussing JRR Tolkien's fictional work, The Lord Of The Rings and I made the statement that Lord Voldemort was a wizard of the grey order who rode a white steed who's name was Hermione. You, being the intelligent critical thinker that I think you are, pointed out that I was confusing Lord Of The Rings with names from Harry Potter.
Nope, I said. I’m pretty sure about this. What would be a good reference for you to give in order to demonstrate my error? No . . . not necessarily Wikipedia. The best reference! How about JRR Tolkien’s LOTR? and JK Rowling’s Harry Potter? So what I tell atheists who shun knowledge of the Bible when criticizing the Bible is think of it as you will. Fiction. So, okay . . . I said “Jesus existed in heaven as a spirit, Michael, prior to coming to earth as a man. (John 1:3; 3:13; 6:38, 62; 8:23, 42, 58; Colossians 1:16, 17; 1 Thessalonians 4:16; Jude 1:9; Revelation 12:7) He gave his body as a ransom sacrifice, once and for all time. (Matthew 20:28; 1 Timothy 2:6; Hebrews 10:10) That body was taken away by the angels who were near the tomb afterwards. (Matthew 28:2-6) So, when he appeared again to his disciples some of them mistook him for a gardener, like would be taking care of the area. (John 20:14-16)”
That is what I do. I educate critics of the Bible about the Bible so that they can make an informed decision to reject it and therefore God. God gave us all the choice of accepting him or rejecting him. Both are fine with him. And you can do either out of complete ignorance, but, if you are going to criticize why not be informed?
What happened to Joseph and Mary?Well, by then Joseph was long dead. It was the practice then for a man to marry at about the age of 32 to a maiden or young girl at about 14 or 15, so he was much older and had died. Mary was taken care of by John and probably family.
Care to explain the yearly ritual of Chrismas to celebrate the birth of Jesus in the manger. One of the all time favorite money making idolatrous practises in history.It was a pagan holiday celebrating the winter solstice long before Christ. It wasn't generally accepted by Christians until 1843 when Charles Dickens Christmas Carol became popular. It was pretty much a drunken heathen period of mischievousness not unlike Halloween.
“The date of Christ’s birth is not known. The Gospels indicate neither the day nor the month . . . According to the hypothesis suggested by H. Usener . . . and accepted by most scholars today, the birth of Christ was assigned the date of the winter solstice (December 25 in the Julian calendar, January 6 in the Egyptian), because on this day, as the sun began its return to northern skies, the pagan devotees of Mithra celebrated the dies natalis Solis Invicti (birthday of the invincible sun). On Dec. 25, 274, Aurelian had proclaimed the sun-god principal patron of the empire and dedicated a temple to him in the Campus Martius. Christmas originated at a time when the cult of the sun was particularly strong at Rome.” - The New Catholic Encyclopedia (1967), Vol. III, p. 656.
“The reason for establishing December 25 as Christmas is somewhat obscure, but it is usually held that the day was chosen to correspond to pagan festivals that took place around the time of the winter solstice, when the days begin to lengthen, to celebrate the ‘rebirth of the sun.’ . . . The Roman Saturnalia (a festival dedicated to Saturn, the god of agriculture, and to the renewed power of the sun), also took place at this time, and some Christmas customs are thought to be rooted in this ancient pagan celebration.” - The Encyclopedia Americana - (1977), Vol. 6, p. 666.
Ah, so Jesus was NOT dead, well that explains a lot! A most unusual take on the physical condition of Jesus when he was entombed.No, I didn't say that. I was referring to zombies. Jesus was most certainly dead when he was entombed.
I am glad you brought up the holy text of LOTR. (much more entertaining than the Bible) And speaking of resurrection, do you think that Gandalf the Grey died in his battle with the Balrog, and returned to life as Gandalf the White? I think he was on the verge of death, but did not actually die. But I am not sure.
@TimB I would have to conclude that he was on the verge but not dead. But, I have to admit, that’s from the films I’ve seen about a hundred times. I was just a kid when I last read the books, so, for all I know they are totally different. Sometime later, in the films, he’s having a conversation with Peregrin Took and he comforts him by explaining that death is not the end and what happens afterwards.
I don’t know how Gandalf could have known any of this, do you?
You know . . . it’s interesting . . . I’ve never been an emotional person, but after my heart attack, though still not really emotional normally, I found that at particularly well done art I will start to weep. Not uncontrollably or anything, and not at particularly emotional scenes, music, paintings, but really well done works. The LOTR films do it, but not the Hobbit films. Bob Dylan. James Taylor. Other things.