[RayBornert]

[ QUOTE ]
Exodus 21:
[ QUOTE ]
2 "If you buy a Hebrew servant, he is to serve you for six years. But in the seventh year, he shall go free, without paying anything. 3 If he comes alone, he is to go free alone; but if he has a wife when he comes, she is to go with him. 4 If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the woman and her children shall belong to her master, and only the man shall go free.
5 "But if the servant declares, 'I love my master and my wife and children and do not want to go free,' 6 then his master must take him before the judges. [a] He shall take him to the door or the doorpost and pierce his ear with an awl. Then he will be his servant for life.


[/ QUOTE ]

Do you support slavery?

If not;
Was your omniscient God wrong? Mistaken? Did he have a change of heart he hadn't realised he was going to have?

This paragraph is basically the 11th commandment (Exodus 20 is the 10). Was it wrongly recorded by the human scribe, was the author mistaken? If so isn't it likely the previous 10 contained mistakes too? Thats pretty damn important when placing the success of your entire life project of getting to heaven on correctly following Gods rules isn't it?

Personally, I think it is possible, just, possible, that it was written by humans in a time when slavery was accepted. It is certainly evidence that we either should condone slavery or that the original author/source of the quote was not omniscient.

So would you accept that Christians have cherry picked the passages from the Bible that they liked (not forgetting the fact that these were the best bits cherry picked from a much bigger pool of text), essentially ignoring their only reference to the word of a God that they claim to hold in such high regard?

[/ QUOTE ]

not the correct question to ask. it's unfair; it does not take into consideration highly devolved cultures.

at some point, one group of people will be willing to enslave another group if their cultural levels are too radically different.

if a group of cannibals moved into my neighborhood, i'd shoot first and ask questions later.

i'd be very willing to enslave the south pacific island culture described in the recent film "king kong" given a scenario where my culture was forced to co-exist with their culture. however, if they stay on their island and dont threaten my culture then i'd be quite happy with that arrangement.

you cannot reasonably transport modern ethics to a world of 4 or 5 millenia ago.

you can rightfully measure the advancement of any culture based on their science and their best definitions of god.

so i want you to do some research and get a complete picture of some of the ancient cultures that you're bemoaning and then describe a scenario where instead of transporting our modern ethics back in time 4k or 5k years ago, you instead transport that culture to the south side of your city or town ... then we can talk.

ray