My Dear Aslan,

I engage this Forum for recreation from having to look things up in dictionaries. Regarding the Polyani/Polanyi thing, it is a typo, in so much as it has become a habit, like a typist always typing "teh" instead of "the". With Mein Kampf, I have only browsed a copy once several years ago. True, I did not know how to spell Kampf, so I typed an approximate selling and Goggle replied, "Do you mean Mein Kief?". So, too hurriedly chose that spelling. Better smite me for that one.

"And don't blame it on typos." (Aslan) I do blame it on typing and perhaps a little laziness on my behalf. Similarly, what is worse, I do sometimes start sentences conjections... But, even great scholars have been known to start sentences with conjunctions.

Moreover, I have never claimed to be a brilliant scholar. So, it is true, Aslan, I am ignorant, very ignorant. The more I learn, the more I realise just how ignorant, I am. However, from that ignorance, I have developed the ability to marvel at the Universe and question, why? Herein; in my grand ignorance, poor spelling and laziness and all; I do not live in a bubble inside a bubble, inside bubble, inside a bubble, inside a bubble: I am free. Being so overwhelmed by ignorance, I find very little time to be stupid. Its really nice... "I feel good!"

Albeit, massively weighed-down by ignorance and lack of scholarship, I do know about; "The Fallacy of Argrumentum ad Hominiem" : "argument that is 'directed against a person, rather than what a person says, in order to show what he/she says cannot be true'". Otherwise put, try personal attack, when one can't win an argument.

In my Philosophy book, Argrumentum ad Hominiem (Please notice, how I articulated "Argumentum ad Hominiem", rather than say "it".) appears just before "The Fallace of Arguing from Authority". Hmmm, relatedly, is the Bible, authoritative, Aslan? It's Sophie's choice time, Aslan... What is it? The Bible or Logic? Also, please stop avoiding the infallibility issues.

In all my glorious ignorance,

Oliver

PT 2
3. African Slave: with no way of regaining freedom
Biblical Slave:

LE 25.44-46: Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property. You can will them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life, but you must not rule over your fellow Israelites ruthlessly.

Same, only fellow Israelites had any hope of freedom, notice the use of the word property Aslan Philo?

4. So it appears the only major difference was that an African slave could be killed outright and a Biblical slave couldn’t. Which isn’t conclusive as it is dealing with the severity of beating leading to death, not the fact you couldn’t kill your slave. Like today you can kill your livestock but have to do it humanly.

Even if let you off on that one 3 out of 4 for all practical purposes they ARE THE SAME.

Ok for you to Philo lets not say justify, let say instead how do you account for your God the father telling the Israelites to commit war crimes?

JG 21:10-12 "... Go and smite the inhabitants of Jabesh-gilead with the edge of the sword and; also the women and little ones.... every male and every woman that has lain with a male you shall utterly destroy."

So “Christ teachings clashed with the teachings of Judaism “ or put another way the teachings and words of God the father.

To a Christian this new deal makes sense, saying the teaching of Jesus trumps that of the OT God, but it just makes just as much sense to say Muhammad trumps Jesus and his is the final word & BTW he was only a prophet not the son of God anyway.

Aslan,

GENOCIDE

Given you hold R.L. Rummel, as an authority on genocide, I quote your source, verbatum:

“In ancient times captured cities or towns would be pillaged and their inhabitants massacred; whole lands would be turned into regions of ruins and skeletons. Even the Hebrews, according the Bible, put to the sword those they conquered.”

There’s more…

“And the Crusades of the Middle Ages should not be ignored. In the aforementioned 1099 sack of Jerusalem, besides the 40,000 to over 70,000 Moslems that may have been butchered, the Crusaders herded surviving Jews into a synagogue and burned them alive.”

And more…

“… scapegoats for major human disasters. The presence of Jews in Christian Europe has always provided an easy explanation for catastrophes like the plague. "Why are people getting sick and dying on mass? Because the Jews are poisoning the water." Jews everywhere were thus attacked during the Black Death of 1347-1352 … Jews were massacred wholesale. For example, in Mainz, Germany, 6,000 were recorded killed; in Erfurt 3,000 died. "By the end of the plague, few Jews were left in Germany or the Low Countries.”

Would you believe, still more…

“Even among those Christian states [United States] that prided themselves on their humanity, prisoners of war were treated with less than humanity. During the American Civil War, for example, Northern soldiers held in the Southern prison of Andersonville over a six-month period in 1864 died at an annual rate of 79 percent. In total 10,000 perished. Northern prisons were only a little better. For the whole war their death rate for southern prisoners of war was about 23 percent, about the same death rate as the Soviet gulag.130 Overall, 19,060 Southerners died. For both North and South, many of these deaths of prisoners were avoidable had proper food, clothing, and medical care been provided.”

Aslan, how can you agree with the actions of the Soviets, NAZIs [also Rummel], or Christians?

BIOLOGICAL EVOLUTION

There is a time machine, its called DNA. Pericles can travel back to the past. You see the Enlightenment was that bad afterall, it gave us Science.

Neohuman,

You said: “you obviously read your Bible with rose colored glasses and live in denial”

No. I actually READ the Bible - unlike yourself…

Nowhere in Judges 21 does it say that God told the Israelites to slay inhabitants of Jabesh-gilead (their fellow Israelites). These people were killed by order of the assembly because they broke an oath made by ALL ISRAEL INCLUDING THOSE IN JABESH GILEAD: “anyone who failed to assemble before the LORD at Mizpah should certainly be put to death.” (verse 5).
And the virgins were taken as WIVES not sex slaves! (verse 13).

Last verse of Judges 21 is interesting though. It summarises your own ethical relativism quite nicely: “In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as he saw fit.”
You see, Neohuman, when there is no law and no law enforcer, everyone does whatever they like and atrocities occur.

Exodus 21:21 literally says slave “is his money” which is a Hebrew idiom for “is his investment”. If the master kills him immediately, he is guilty of murder or manslaughter by criminal negligence. If the slave dies after a few days, the facts suggest the beating was for disciplinary reasons but was too harsh. However, he is not to be punished because he has already suffered loss of slave's cost and manpower (ie. economic loss).

1 Peter acknowledges the injustice of a brutal master. That was not the way it was meant to be. However, as Philo already pointed out, the apostles could not single-handedly rearrange first century social and economic practice. All they could do was encourage Christian masters to treat their slaves properly and Christian slaves to submit as a witness and testimony. If this happened there was never any problem. Both master and slave get along fine. There would be no need for beatings, and slaves had everything they needed.

You said: “only fellow Israelites had any hope of freedom.”

Not true. Non-Israelites could be redeemed by a relative, or would be set free, by law, if badly mistreated (Exodus 21:26).

In summary, your objections are baseless.

Oliver,

Yes, I admit my comments about your misspellings were technically ad hominem, but you act as if that was ALL I said and conveniently ignored my other points. Stop avoiding the inconsistency issues, Oliver.

Yes, Hebrews killed off whole cities and tribes, but it was never indiscriminate, arbitrary or part of some expansive, greedy quest for more land/plunder. It was for self-preservation and/or as punishment for past atrocities committed against them. Eg. Emalekites (! Sam 15).

Re Crusades, Jewish victimisation and the prisoner mistreatment during American Civil War – even if we accept at face value that simplistic portrayal of those events – what does it tell you about the morality of Christianity? Absolutely nothing! However, it does tell us something about mankind’s tendency to disobey God and do evil – which BTW is what the Bible teaches.

But the mass murderers documented by Rummel were all motivated by IDEOLOGIES like humanism, socialism and Marxism ie. It was the very ideas in these ideologies that led these mass murderers to murder all those people. Put another way, they did not find their inspiration in either the Bible or in the person of Jesus Christ.

You said: “There is a time machine, its called DNA”

Not sure what you mean by this but it did remind of the mtDNA evidence which even evolutionary biologists acknowledge is a problem for their view. Mitochondrial Eve ‘”ived about 6500 years ago—a figure clearly incompatible with current theories on human origins… it remains enigmatic how the known distribution of human populations and genes could have arisen in the past few thousand years.” Gibbons ‘Calibrating the Mitochondrial Clock’ Science 279:28f

A similar argument can be made for Y-Chromosone. See Dorit, Akashi, and Gilbert ‘Absence of polymorphism at the ZFY locus on the human Y chromosome’ Science 268:1183ff

You said: “You see the Enlightenment was that bad afterall, it gave us Science”

No. Christianity gave us science.

The “enlightenment “ (misnomer – should be “endarkenment”) gave us the ideas which inspired the rulers of the 20th century to murder almost 200million people.

Posted by Neohuman,
Quote: "1PE 2.18-19: Slaves, accept the authority of your masters with all deference, not only those who are kind and gentle but also those who are harsh. For it is a credit to you if, being aware of God, you endure pain while suffering unjustly. Same:(or isn’t being beaten to an inch of your life abuse?)"

The apostle Paul gave us most of his writings while in chains, he as a prisoner often beaten to an inch of his life by wild mobs and guards administering punishment. That is a reason why he made appeal to Caesar for a hearing of his case. Paul encouraged those who were persecuted for following the teachings of Christ to keep a positive attitude and demonstrate love and care for their persecutors. Wether a person was a employer or or employee both must give honour and respect for each other.

It was not till the 4th century AD that Christianity had real influence in State law, and then it was a syncretised with many pagan religions. What happened under Roman Catholic authority during post Constantine history may have some appreciation of Christ but generally it was as just as pagan as the Ancient Roman Empire