patrick.net

Strategist says

The Bible has been responsible for preventing lots of criminals from a life of crime, I give you that.

Great!

Strategist says

If I love my neighbor I would not enslave him, but if I did not love my neighbor I would still not enslave him, because I have common sense and a conscious. I really do not need a Bible to give me moral advise. The Bible could have just banned slavery, instead it preaches how to treat slaves, and how much slaves are worth. The Bible was used to justify slavery, just as it is used to discriminate gays. We can't have that.

Laws must be secular. All humans must be treated equally. No exceptions.

Why would bible ban slavery? That society would not survive without slavery. It's up to the mankind to ban slavery when it becomes appropriate, and bible teaches that. In the future when technology evolves to a point where no one has to work and no one will work, say arbitrarily 300 years from now, wouldn't a man 300 years in the future look at our generation and consider "jobs" slavery? None of us think it's slavery, but I'm sure a man 300 years from now will feel more free and look at this as a yoke and a chain.

It's why I don't find history of slavery as bad. I would find it bad today if it were happening today, but I will not criticize a generation which we were not a part of.

Dan8267 says

Predictions aren't opinions.

Dan maybe you should just consider becoming sane before you post in the future. Trust me it'll do wonders for you. *This is an opinion, just an opinion.

Dan8267 says

er a million men, women, and children in Iraq alone died because of Bush's wars. Even counting like you're doing, we didn't come out ahead.

https://www.iraqbodycount.org/

If you are going to make up numbers anyway, at least say billions instead. Why lowball pretend stuff.

The way to count the dead is NOT to count dead bodies, but to count the living and subtract from the previous known value. The most conservative estimates of people killed are 650,000 and that does not include indirect deaths resulting from sickness, exposure, etc. caused by turning millions into refugees.

FortWayne says

Why would bible ban slavery? That society would not survive without slavery. It's up to the mankind to ban slavery when it becomes appropriate, and bible teaches that.

What kind of a question is that? Slavery is moral? What about all the "moral crap" the Bible claims to preach?
This is why I don't bother with religion. It does not meet my moral standards.
The real truth is...the Bible was written by a bunch of idiots with no knowledge of science, and disgusting primitive morals.

Dan8267 says

The way to count the dead is NOT to count dead bodies, but to count the living and subtract from the previous known value.

LOL. You are so funny. Go to any morgue, and ask them how they count bodies.
Lots of people go into hiding, and migrate to other regions during wars. And you count them as dead, and blame the US for killing someone who is alive.

Strategist says

This is why I don't bother with religion. It does not meet my moral standards.

maybe we just need a new religion. buddhism is pretty good for helping you get through life, imho, though a bit negative.

some buddhist leader said "most westerners think you die and then you're just dead forever. buddhists think that's too optimistic."

Strategist says

The real truth is...the Bible was written by a bunch of idiots with no knowledge of science, and disgusting primitive morals.

they had as much knowledge of science as anyone at the time, and lots of the jewish laws were fairly scientific about hygiene, like not eating pork or shellfish probably because of the diseases they carried, never eating blood, washing hands before eating, circumcision (reduces penis cancer) etc. you can clearly see how they might have come about through observation over generations.

as for the morals, you can call them primitive but they did have functions that benefited their societies in many ways. ancient people were not entirely clueless. maybe you have some example of a disgusting primitive moral?

Strategist says

This is why I don't bother with religion. It does not meet my moral standards.

maybe we just need a new religion. buddhism is pretty good for helping you get through life, imho, though a bit negative.

some buddhist leader said "most westerners think you die and then you're just dead forever. buddhists think that's too optimistic."

I have a lot of respect for Buddhism. We attended several "core teaching" classes at the Hacienda Heights His Lei Temple. I found it an honor to attend and see the Dalai Lama at the Honda Center, celebrating his 80th birthday.
A quote from the Dalai Lama goes something like "If all children from age did some meditation, there would be no more wars"

as for the morals, you can call them primitive but they did have functions that benefited their societies in many ways. ancient people were not entirely clueless. maybe you have some example of a disgusting primitive moral?

Morals are subjective. Smacking a child is fast becoming immoral. Child labor is immoral today. A hundred years from now eating meat could be immoral and primitive.
But today, we clearly live in societies where slavery, stoning of women, persecuting gays is clearly considered immoral in most societies.
The Hindus have the caste system.
Christians have their thing about gays.
Islam....gosh....the list never ends.
Society is constantly evolving, and subjective values are constantly changing. "One man's meat, is another man's poison" is probably the best way of describing disgusting primitive morals.

Strategist says

Society is constantly evolving, and subjective values are constantly changing. "One man's meat, is another man's poison" is probably the best way of describing disgusting primitive morals.

so you say that those morals are disgusting to you, but you also say that morals are subjective.

Strategist says

slavery, stoning of women, persecuting gays

slavery has clear benefits for the owners, and self-interest warps perception. people can rationalize all kinds of things that are in their own self-interest.

it was not "women" who were stoned, but prostitutes specifically. cruel as that is, you could see it as a public health measure. but then, of course, why not stone the men who visited them? perhaps because the men were the ones writing the laws...

homosexuality also has public health issues. AIDS is no doubt only the latest manifestation of that.

not to say those biblical laws are "good", only that they were not random. they had purposes.

Strategist says

Islam....gosh....the list never ends.

the interesting thing about islam is that it's very fashionable among liberals to rush to the defense of muslims (like the muslim boy in texas who made some clock) to show how tolerant and "diverse" they are and yet islamic law would have many of those very people who defend it beheaded or severely beaten the moment muslims got power. especially gays and feminists would be in tons of trouble, instantly.

sure, that boy did nothing wrong, but the paranoia about his project did not come out of nowhere. it came out of pretty much continuous islamic terrorist attacks every day, around the world, on unarmed civilians:

http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/index.html#Attacks

Strategist says

What kind of a question is that? Slavery is moral? What about all the "moral crap" the Bible claims to preach?

Bible teaches us to be the best we can. At the time slavery was moral was when society needed it to survive, there was nothing wrong with slavery when bible was written. Context brother, you got to get context. Bible isn't teaching to have slavery today, because that wouldn't be us at our best today.

FortWayne says

At the time slavery was moral was when society needed it to survive

Ridiculous. Slavery was never needed for society to survive. You are whitewashing history.

The slavery was legal because it was necessary is like the Child Labor was legal because it was necessary bullshit argument.

Most Romans worked small family farms and surplus male sons made the backbone of the Legions. Over time, the 1%ers hijacked the laws and used debt slavery to take over farms across Italy, replacing hundreds of small farm families with a few slave-shepards and bringing in sheep instead of olive groves and wheat fields. The displaced families then crowded into Rome, while the Empire was forced to use Barbarians instead of Italians to populate the Legions, as the massively increased numbers of Urban Poor were too sickly to make good fighters. The displacement of olive groves and wheat made Italy increasingly dependent on Spain, North Africa, and Egyptian imports, and thus the heart of the Empire more efficient but less robust. Once the Vandals took Spain and North Africa, then turned to piracy off Sicily intercepting Grain from Egypt, the Western Empire was over.

Instead of a massive cotton or indigo plantation in the South, there could have been much smaller farms worked by small farmers. The reason slaves were necessary was because too few people had too much land that needing working and needed massive numbers of obedient, cowed labor. They could have gotten disobedient, uncowed free labor in the form of immigrants, but that would mean either selling off the land or taking a smaller cut of the profits. They could have divided and sold off land after Empancipation, but the landowners decided to use sharecroppers who were utterly destitute newly freed slaves instead.

Same thing with Mexican "Guest Workers". Maybe the problem is the wineries and lettuce plantations are too large. It's nonsense they aren't profitable for several reasons, starting with the smaller the farm, the more productive it is and two, many of the 'efficiencies' of lettuce plantations are because costs are secretly externalized via Guest Worker Programs, Subsidies, Food Stamps, higher Social Spending, and of course below minimum wage labor, so the increased consumer prices would do is really express these hidden prices in your face in the supermarket, instead of hidden amongst the taxes you pay in a 2+T Fed Budget and a multi-multi-billion dollar State Budget.

Banning the 2+ Million Child Laborers in the USA caused labor prices to increase due to reduced labor supply. It's called supply and demand. Eliminate a supply of labor and the remaining laborers will get more in wages, all other things being equal.

The worst thing that anyone can be called: Democratic or Republican voter.
And it doesn't get any worse.

FortWayne says

At the time slavery was moral was when society needed it to survive

I wonder how that society would react if the slave master roles were reversed.

Ironman says

Boy Dan, when you fuck up, you fuck up big time!!

Which is all the time.

Ironman says

Maybe you need Marcus to help you with your math skills!!

He fucks up just as much.

Strategist says

The real truth is...the Bible was written by a bunch of idiots with no knowledge of science, and disgusting primitive morals.

I disagree with this. FW is right that you have to see this in context of the times, the bible actually was a very good document to ensure peace among tribes and neighborhoods - regardless whether you are religious and believe in it or not. OK there is the old testament and new testament and re-writing that would go too deep into the matter, but if you simply took the 10 commandments, any society following them would likely do pretty well. Despite the dark ages, the inquisition and such I would assert that Christianity has done quite well on an overall score-card. And to think that people should not have followed a religion in times where science could not explain so many natural phenomenons is a bit naive.