Philo keep the rationalizations coming.
Have a go at rationalising the wholesale slaughter of a tribe and the taking of the virgins as slaves.
(Again BTW I think in ethics we all do this it is just with some they have to do moral metal gymnastics to make certain ethical concepts mesh.)

Now we have the surrounding tribes as scavengers who had to be slaughtered and taken as slaves for their own good.

Does that include the scavengers that lived in cites and villages?? Or are scavengers just your way of describing the poor and destitute? Nice one Philo kill and enslave the poor just the sort of solution we need today.

Now why don’t we do that today, because in an absolute moral system moral requirements are have no historical context. What is wrong now was wrong 2000+ years ago, and your all knowing God would know that and could have told that to the Jews but rather he said not to eat pork.

Keep digging that hole Philo, you are doing my work for me.

Aslan yes I’ve seen the controlling interest argument like some Christians say they own their children, they should try selling their children ands see what happens. There is a world of difference between a controlling interest and ownership. Read that link. See Philo and Aslan you don’t have to own a person to be concerned and act on someone’s welfare, has that sunk in yet?

Aslan I’m totally consistent in telling you that you moral system is inconsistent that is a cognitive judgment. So I’m not telling you are morally wrong, you are just making a cognitive error in the belief that one morals are absolute and two that your moral system is consistent. I do hope to get around to fixing meta-ethical relativism thinking of calling it neo-meta-ethical relativism has a nice ring don’t you think?

>Come on Oliver, this relativistic view is just complete nonsense

Now you get it, relativism and all ethics/morality is nonsense better described as reasoned non-rational judgments.

Aslan, you are clutching at straws here. Your "new" syllogism doesn't hold water either. You propose that premise 2 is self-evident, "[a] tentative belief may later be accepted or rejected". It is not, it is a self-contradiction. One "holds" a belief, one doesn't accept it or reject it.

If I said to you "I believe it was 1970 that Collingwood won the Grand Final", we can go to the record books and check it, since it is a recorded fact. So I used the word "believe" in the same way as you did in "[d]o you tentatively believe in the name your parents gave you? Do you tentatively believe your phone number? Your address?". This is to mischaracterize facts as beliefs. Naughty.

If I said to you that "I believe there are 90 billion stars in the Milky Way", it is still a verifiable (or disprovable) statement, but has to remain in the category of a belief, since the means to check my sums do not exist at the moment. Nevertheless, I am still playing a little fast and loose with the word "believe" in this context, since it refers to a disputable fact. In the end, I may be proved either "right" or "wrong".

If I said to you "I believe that the world is being carried through space on the back of four elephants called Berilia, Tubul, Great T'Phon and Jerakeen" you might suggest a number of ways to "disprove" my belief, but you are unlikely to convince me. This is because I use the word "believe" in its most literal form - my belief is not bound by rational thought or susceptible to logic, it is, and remains, just a belief.

I and many others on this forum respect your right to hold your beliefs, and in doing so to characterize them as being "right". Just don't try to bend the rules of logic in order to so.

Aslan and Philo,

SLAVERY

I think over and beyond the economic system there are social and religious issues. That is,

(a) The subordination of the slave and the need for obedience. This appears to be a relationship issue not in keeping with a reasonable social welfare system.

(b) Rejection of obedience by a slave is said to be a blasphemy. Why should a slave owner be essentially deified in this manner? How does Timothy sit with the First Commandment, here?

Both traditional Jews and Christians seemed to have practised the ownership of slaves, themselves. Moreover, nomadic peoples survived (perhaps subsistence) for hundreds of thousands of years, before the City-State (Sumer to Rome and after). Survival would be related to ecological factors, migration and population (Malthaus).

Aslan mentions that parent parents in effect own their children. Perhaps, I would have chosen terms like guardianship, care and love for, responsibility for and stewardship. Nonetheless, I believe, I take the general point. Now lets look at Rome in the time now under our review:

“The traditional Roman ‘patria potestas’ defined a field within which a head of a family could exercise personal discretion and control (Hamilton, in Redding). From this developed systems of jurisdiction which attempt to place boundaries around individuals without prescribing individual behaviour … the stability of Western society rests on such variations, on the acceptance of boundary restraints … by more or less independent individuals.” (Redding)

Thus, for free people there were laws but nonetheless a significant amount of “independence”. Alternatively, in establishing relationships between owners and slaves, Christians, we as guilty as all others in not recognising an individual’s “inalienable rights” and that “all men [sic. Humanity] are created equal”. Thus, a model of equality did exist, but consciously was not adopted by slave owners, Jews, Christians or the Bible.

•SLAVE mentioned in Jeremiah 2:14 is not found in the original Hebrew text. The word “slaves” in Revelation 18:13 is the Greek word meaning “bodies.” The Hebrew and Greek words for slave are usually rendered simply “servant,” “bondman,” or “bondservant.”

Slavery as it existed under the Mosaic Law has no parallel today. The laws concerning slaves did not originate with Moses but Moses regulated an already existing custom (Exodus 21:20, 21, 26, 27; Leviticus 25:44-46; Joshua 9:6-27). The gospel of Christ in its spirit and genius is hostile to slavery in every form, and cultures that came under its full influence have caused it to disappear totally. Compared to Islamic shari’ah law who still place those outside their religion as lower class citizens upon whom taxes are levied and equality of privileges are removed.

Jesus attitude toward the Roman Centurion’s slave is found in
Matthew 8:5 – 9: And when Jesus was entered into Capernaum, there came to him a centurion, saying, “Lord, my servant lies at home sick of the palsy, grievously tormented”. And Jesus said unto him, “I will come and heal him”. The centurion answered and said, “Lord, I am not worthy that thou should come under my roof: but speak the word only, and my servant shall be healed. For I am a man under authority, having soldiers under me: and I say to this man, Go, and he goes; and to another, Come, and he comes; and to my servant, do this, and he does it”.

Philo,

EXODUS:

21:20

And if a man smite his servant, or his maid, with a rod, and he die under his hand; he shall be surely punished.

21:21

Notwithstanding, if he continue a day or two, he shall not be punished: for he is his money.

It would seem a slave/servant could be bashed to within an inch of death, provided actual death did not occur. 1 Timothy 6.1 is also problematic. These teachings seem way out of line with the teachings attrbuted to a humanist Jesus.

Just what is Moses view of persons having slaves? Slavery was used by persons repayning debt, but to assit the person in recovery they were to be generously assisted on their release. This must happen in the seventh year, unless the slave preferred to continue his/her labour.

DEUTERONOMY 15: 9 – 16 (paraphrase), Beware no wicked thought arise in your heart on the seventh year when he must be released, and you covet your prosperity against your poor brother, and you give him nothing; … You shall give him generously, and your heart shall not be grieved: because for this act the LORD thy God shall bless thee in all thy works, and in all that your hand performs. For the poor shall never cease out of the land: therefore I command you to open your hand wide unto thy brother, to the poor, and to thy needy, in thy land. And if thy brother be a Hebrew man, or woman, sold to you, and they serve you the six years; then in the seventh year you shall let them go free. And when you free him, you shall not let him go away empty: You shall furnish him liberally out of your flock, and out of grain grain, and out of your vineyard: of all the things the LORD your God has blessed you. And you shall remember that you were a bondman in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God redeemed you: therefore I command you this thing to day. And if he says to you, I will not go away from you because I love you and your house, because we get on well together. (He may stay forever as your labourer)