Re: The Overall Point

14 Years Ago Today

Re: 14 Years Ago Today

Whenever you research the Bible, you discover that the Bible is the blueprint for moral fundamentals. We as human beings are the only living species with a moral conscience. No other species on Earth feels the emotion of guilt. Some would argue that their dog or cat feels guilty whenever they have an accident in the house or whenever they chew up a pair of slippers. Dogs or cats are merely reacting to your emotional response to their perceived behavior at that moment.

Human beings on the other hand will feel guilt or contrite sorrow whenever they commit acts against the moral conscience. Even if nobody is there to witness their deeds. It's how many murderers, rapist, bank robbers, and other serious offenders of the law are caught. Not because they were actually caught in the act, but because they're conscience got the best of them, and they turned themselves in. Even people that do not believe in God or a higher power have a moral conscience which proves the fact that the Bible aligns perfectly with the fundamental truth that we were created by intelligent design in the likeness of that creator, and not an accidental evolutionary process.

The Bible expresses the heart of God and oddly enough, we share the same moral consciences with God. The sense of knowing moral right from wrong is not a learned trait, but rather an inherited natural process in all human beings. Whenever a congress of baboons kills the alpha baboon over minor disputes involving bananas or mating rights, there's no heart felt grief or any moral conscience behind it. It's all about survival of the fittest in that instance.

If evolution stands correct, then species only evolve for the purpose of survival. Meaning, all inherited traits of the evolutionary process are merely for the purpose of species survival. What would the emotion of guilt play in the role of species survival for human beings? If our consciences do not matter, then the very laws by which we live by are meaningless and should be done away with. However, without laws human civilization would implode, yet we do not require civilized society to survive as a species.

On a final note, I will say this. If we merely exist due to the happenstance of a cosmic accident, then our lives are worthless, and it shouldn't matter that we exist at all. Yet, our very instincts that God instills everyone with creates a sense of purpose. We are actively trying to save the planet from destruction by our own hands. If we are merely a cosmic coincidence, then it wouldn't matter much if the Earth burst into flames and extinguished all life. Yet not only are we concerned about saving the environment, but we are the only species that is concerned with the survival of a civilized order. If we were not created with a purpose, then what is the point of going to work every morning? Why even get out of bed? Why even own a bed the first place. Just sleep on the ground and forage for sustenance every day in the dumpster. Sadly, many people do just that because they have lost all hope for a future. We are also possibly the only species that recognizes a concept of hope and doom. The list could go on and the more it goes on, the more the factual statements align themselves with the concepts of truth written in the Bible.

To me, that's more than evidence. It's literally all of the proof that I need to believe in God. Of course, I am fully aware that I won't change even one person's mind on Earth because every man, woman, and child must have the ability to decide for themselves. However, for many years I walked this Earth as an Atheist until I began questioning my own existence. It was only then that I discovered faith in God which led me to research for myself. I've studied just about every religious doctrine that exists though I'm sure that I haven't studied all of them. What I believe is that the Bible is the more accurate, logical, and provable piece of literature known to man in regard to religious faith. Therefore, I made the determination in my own heart to accept Christ as my Lord and Savior.

Don't mean to burden you with the boring details of my personal life, but just thought I would share the point of why I disagree with your statement that there is a lack of evidence in God.

BLESSINGS AND GO TIGERS!

Re: I Disagree

ChestyPuller0311®

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Joined: 7/27/13

Re: I Disagree

Apr 3, 2024, 9:37 AM

echoes said:

I'm happy to talk about evolution, but first answer the question. Why does the bible condone slavery if it's a moral blueprint?

The Bible doesn't condone slavery. As explained in a previous comment, the word slave in the Bible literally means employee. If you go to work each and every day then you are by Biblical definition, a slave. There were several types of slavery and 90% of the slavery was voluntarily entered into by way of an agreement.

Type 1: Is the type that we are more familiar with in modern history. God actually condemns forced slavery or employment and destroyed Egypt over their behavior for such deeds.

Type 2: In order to receive a father's blessing to marry his daughter it was customary to pay the father a dowry. If a man did not have a dowry to pay, then he submitted himself to slavery i.e. Doulos/ Sklavos for a period of 7 years and earned land and livestock so that he could support his wife upon the receipt of her father's blessing for marriage. In other words, he earned his livelihood through becoming a bondsman or servant to her father for a finite period. Nevertheless, in Kione Greek the literal translation means, slave.

Type 3: In historical times of the Bible, they did not have civil court to receive a measure of judical relief for unpaid debts. If someone owed a debt that could not be repaid, they entered into a Doulos/Skalvos type scenario until the debt was repaid and according to Biblical instructions, if the servant/slave worked with an earnest heart towards his master, then the master was not only to forgive the debt but to add unto him a measure of payment at the end of the debt repayment period. Under Mosaic law the year of jubilee automatically forgave the debts of others. So, they would submit themselves to a 6-year period of labor to repay the debt and in the year of jubilee their debt would be forgiven.

Type 4: As a measure of judicial punishment. In those times there were kings and rulers. Their court was used to resolve civil and criminal matters. If someone committed an infraction of the law that didn't merit death, that person was imprisoned and forced to do hard labor as a measure of punishment for their crime.

Type 5: Prisoners of war were often taken to do labor. It was a way of life in that time period, not a commanded effort by God. In fact, God instructs the master to take responsibility for the welfare of the slaves that were captured after war. It also instructs them to allow them to keep their family intact and not to disturb the family structure.

Understanding slavery as we are more familiar with did not begin with Christianity, but rather Islam. The Islamic Caliphates ravaged North Africa and whenever their campaigns moved South in Africa they killed and captured Sub-Saharan Christian tribes which were often sold to the European slave traders. The European slave traders didn't raid and capture them, but rather purchased them in Libya through Barbary slave traders who took prisoners of war during the Caliphates. Which I may add, Christianity existed in Africa centuries before Europe. So, the false statement that Africans were forced to convert to Christianity is a regurgitated falsehood that is often repeated by liberal white students who attend liberal arts universities across the United States.

So, to say that God condones the kind of slavery that you allude to is false.

Exodus 21:20–21 says, “Anyone who beats their male or female slave with a rod must be punished if the slave dies as a direct result, but they are not to be punished if the slave recovers after a day or two, since the slave is their property.” Why did the Mosaic Law allow for slave owners to beat their slaves? The obvious answer is that, in the social structure of ancient Israel, physical punishment was considered the appropriate response for acts of disobedience and rebellion. The text does not specifically say that the corporal punishment has to be for some form of disobedience; however, based on the larger Old Testament context, it is safe to assume that slave masters were not allowed carte blanche authority to do whatever they wanted to their slaves. In Exodus 21, slave owners are limited in what they can do: if the master goes too far and the slave dies, the master will be punished. If the Old Testament Law is followed consistently, then the punishment for the slave owner might even include the death penalty for murder. Of course, if a master beats his slave and the slave is unable to work for some time, the master has punished himself by losing the work he might have received from the slave. The implication here is that it is in the master’s best interest not to be too severe.

Exodus 21:20–21 is certainly troubling to people with modern sensitivities. Modern people in the free world have come to view autonomous personal freedom as the highest form of good and anything that curtails personal freedom as the ultimate evil. People may be tempted to read a passage like Exodus 21:20–21 and charge God with moral evil. Such charges need to be challenged, for slavery is not the only area where modern sensitivities and biblical guidelines clash—abortion and homosexuality are two other flashpoints. The danger on this issue is that most Christians would agree that slavery is morally reprehensible.

There are two distinct approaches in formulating an answer to why the Bible allows for slavery, and the outcome will be determined by what a person accepts as the authority. The first approach goes something like this:

Slavery is morally reprehensible in all situations.
The Bible allows slavery.
Therefore the Bible is an unreliable moral guide.

In this case, current moral sensitivities are the authority, and the Bible is measured against those sensibilities.

The second goes something like this:

The Bible is a reliable moral guide.
The Bible allows slavery.
Therefore slavery cannot be morally reprehensible in all situations.

In this case, the Bible is the final authority, and modern thinking about right and wrong has to be adjusted to accommodate what we find in the Bible.

Slavery has been a fact of human existence for almost as long as the human race has been in existence. Physical punishment to enforce compliance has been part of slavery for just as long. Corporal punishment has also been used in situations other than slavery. For example, physical chastisements were commonly employed as punishment for crimes committed and for the enforcing of discipline in the military. We are not so far removed from the time when brutal physical punishment was administered and accepted by almost everyone as legitimate. In the British Navy, flogging for disobedience or insubordination was common until the mid-19th century, and caning was used until the mid-20th century. In some places, such as Singapore, caning is still an official form of punishment for certain crimes.

The Bible does not forbid slavery, nor does it demand that every slave owner who wants to please God must immediately emancipate his slaves. Instead, the Bible at every turn calls for a treatment of slaves that would have been more humane than any found in the culture at large. The very idea that a master could be punished in any way for killing a slave would have been scandalous at the time Moses gave the Law. The culture at large made no attempt to grant slaves any rights. Slaves in Egypt or Moab, for example, were afforded no such protection.

Earlier in the same chapter, kidnapping for the purpose of slavery is condemned and the death penalty enjoined: “Anyone who kidnaps someone is to be put to death, whether the victim has been sold or is still in the kidnapper’s possession” (Exodus 21:16). (Ironically, the death penalty is another area where modern people assume their moral sensitivity is superior to God’s!) Furthermore, we must not make the mistake of equating slavery in ancient Israel with antebellum slavery in the United States. If the biblical dictates regarding slavery, including the regulations found in Exodus 21:16, 20–21, had been enforced in Western nations in the 1800s, then slavery in the United States would have been very different.

The regulations regarding slaves in Exodus 21, far from being inhumane, would have been far more humane and protective of the slave in Israel than in any of the surrounding nations.

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Our country won't go on forever, if we stay soft as we are now. There won't be any America because some foreign soldiery will invade us and take our women and breed a hardier race.

~Chesty Puller
Lt.General United States Marine Corps

Re: Take everything you just wrote

We get it, you believe black politicians are inferior

14 Years Ago Today

Because pols are elected on charisma and not intelligence

Re: Because pols are elected on charisma and not intelligence

Yeah but do you have to show ID ?***

Re: 14 Years Ago Today

Re: 14 Years Ago Today

So you say just check Truth Social everyday?***

lol want to play that game? Poll this board on who believe in talking snakes.***

I believe in genetically-enhanced Darwinism... Was it ETs or God...?***

Re: I believe in genetically-enhanced Darwinism... Was it ETs or God...?***

I agree, no evidence***

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The Overall Point