Raf

Excellent. So the article on Jesus does not mention his pre-existence in John 1? I don't have a copy. I'll take your word for it. Nah. I just bought a copy. First line in the Jesus Christ article: "The human-divine Son of God..." When Trinitarians use the term human-divine, they mean he is both man and God. That's just how they use the term. There is an entire section on "The Person of Christ," one aspect of which is "God." So, um, yeah, it's biased. Your rhetorical question to me, ["So can you see this is also bias to mention something that is not written with complete biblical terminology, while not mentioning something that is written with biblical terminology?"] is therefore moot. The article on Jesus Christ is also biased in favor of the Trinitarian position. WHICH IS FINE. I would expect nothing less. For the record: the issue of bias/lack in Nelson's Bible Dictionary is INDEED on topic in context. You used NBD to support an on-topic argument. You claimed, in using NBD, that it was an unbiased source. It is on-topic to challenge that assertion. But it is certainly a digression that could very easily go off topic. Feel free to respond to what I've posted here. After that, let's agree to drop it and get back to the topic of whether you are more moral than Yahweh (spoiler alert, you are). [This is edited. I take responsibility for any post that quotes from an earlier version of what I've posted here].

You edited after I quoted, which is fine. I've been known to do the same. To the first point in bold, when we look at the Old Testament law as regards slavery, we are not discussing God preventing something that Satan promotes. We are actually talking about God promoting something that you and I agree (I hope) is immoral. Exodus 21 does not record SATAN's laws regulating slavery. It records GOD's laws. I don't see how God "not now preventing every evil Satan promotes" is relevant to that particular issue. Please feel free to expound. To the second point in bold, I can indeed see that Jesus Christ did not promote slavery directly. I hope you can at least see that he never condemned it as an institution. I will grant that his failure to condemn it is not a moral failure in and of itself. It would have been nice. But his failure to condemn slavery as an institution doesn't add to my point. However, his non-promotion of slavery does not subtract from the fact that His Father promoted slavery (by conferring legitimacy on the institution and regulating it instead of abolishing it outright, which any person with today's moral standards would do). Can you find one place in the Bible where Jesus, Paul or anyone else says it is inherently sinful and against God's will for one human being to own another? Can you find a single verse that condemns the practice of keeping a man from his wife and son because his wife and son are your property, and the man can only stay with them by agreeing to be your slave for life? I can find a verse where God SUPPORTS that. I'm just looking for one where he condemns it. To the final sentence, the writer is begging the question. There is nothing in the gospel ethic of "love" that stands in opposition to slavery except by our standards today. Paul had a golden opportunity to declare slavery antithetical to the gospel. He didn't. That was no accident. If it were antithetical to the gospel, Paul would have said so. He didn't. Because it wasn't. Except by today's standards. However, the topic is whether you are more moral than Yahweh, not whether you are more moral than Paul. How can we say the gospel implies a rejection of slavery when slavery persisted, even among Christians, for nearly 2,000 years afterward? Only by retro-interpreting the gospel in light of today's morality can we reach that conclusion. Paul returned a slave to his master, appealing to the master to release the slave not because slavery is inherently immoral (he never even hints at such an argument) but because the slave in question was now a Christian AND valuable to Paul! We cannot criticize me for holding the Old Testament culture to the standard of today's morality while at the same time imposing today's contempt for slavery onto a first century Christian culture that never challenged the wretched institution!

Ellen Ripley Dian Fossey Dana Barrett

I'll put it this way: Since Nelson's Bible Dictionary is unbiased, its entry on the Holy Spirit is unbiased. Please read the Nelson Bible Dictionary entry on the Holy Spirit and tell me again it is unbiased (that is, that the writers are willing to give consideration to the notion that the Holy Spirit is NOT the third person of the Trinity because there is no Trinity). I'll wait.

I have no problem with you offering a biblical perspective. I just laugh that you call it "unbiased." It's not unbiased. It's apologetic. It's a Biblical perspective. A Biblical perspective is not an unbiased perspective. It's a Biblical one. And that's ok. That is not a controversial statement. Nelson wouldn't publish someone who recognized God's failure to condemn slavery as a moral lapse. That alone makes them biased on the subject. It does not invalidate a word of the article. Mark, once again you are repeating the assertion that I'm someone who "does not actually believe the bible has any real truth." That statement is false. I am politely asking you to stop making that assertion, because it is not true. Ok? Do we have a deal on that?

Lex Luthor

Fine. I choose the highlighted portion as the reason for my alleged failure to accurately portray your position, although I do not see a hint of inaccuracy in how I portrayed what you actually wrote. If my characterization of what you wrote is lacking, I submit the relevance of what you posted is equally lacking. You also gave no indication that you weren't done. I can be as patient as you need me to be. But you're trying that patience. You seem to have oodles of time to promise to get to the point, in comparison to the time you're spending actually getting there.

Last thing: calling the Nelson Bible Dictionary unbiased has to be a joke, right? I'm not suggesting it's dishonest, but unbiased? It's apologetic. It's biased by definition. Please read the Nelson entry on the holy Spirit and tell me again it's unbiased.

No

Mark, there's nothing to incite or in your post. There's also nothing to refute my observation that slavery is immoral and that God failed to abolish it when he had the chance. The prevalence of slavery in the cultures of the time coupled with God's failure to abolish it is inconsistent with the existence of a perfectly moral God giving his perfectly moral law to the people. (Consistent would be for other nations to have slaves but for the nation with a truly moral lawgiver to say no. We're going to be different. Remember, our question is not whether ancient Israel was more moral than surrounding nations of the time. It's whether your morality exceeds Yahweh's. On the issue of slavery, it does. Easily). No one is asking anyone else to blame God for allowing slavery in American law. I am asking you all to hold Him accountable for allowing slavery under HIS OWN law. And stop acting as if He had no choice but to allow it because the Israelites demanded it. That position is both unsupported by scripture and morally insufficient. If slavery is morally wrong and the Israelites demanded it anyway, all he had to do was say No! Thou Shalt Not Own People! Isn't the whole POINT of the law to let people know right from wrong? God's endorsement of slavery and his impotence in abolishing it is consistent with a non-existent God invented by people to justify their culture and practices. But again, by all means, demonstrate where I am wrong. So far, neither of you has even come close (and Mark, I think the article you posted actually supports my position overall, that Biblical slavery -- God's version of it, not man's -- is immoral by our standards).

I'll leave it to the readers to determine whether my understanding of your post constitutes a strawman fallacy, TnO. Saying it doesn't make it so. I think I have accurately critiqued what you actually said. So if I haven't accurately represented your position, it is because you have not accurately or completely articulated it. The accusations of impatience are starting to get stale, though. You've been commenting more than a week, sometimes at length, and have yet to support the notion that biblical slavery is morally acceptable. I'll be as patient as you need me to be, but I suspect the emperor is naked here. Please. Prove me wrong. But stop saying you're going to. Any minute now. After these messages.

Using your logic, you'll never be able to find fault with anything God orders, because he's always right and moral and just. THAT'S NOT THINKING. And it's not morality.

Ok, so as long as they're owning, buying, selling, holding wives and children hostage in LOVE, it's okay. Never mind that these folks were a thousand and a half years away from Jesus and Paul. They're supposed to... dude, I can't even fake it. There's nothing loving about owning a man, giving him a wife, then letting that man go and keeping his wife and kids as your property. The reason it's so easy to call that unloving and immoral is simple: it's unloving and immoral. You cannot lovingly keep a man from his wife and kids unless that man promises to be your slave for life. And you cannot morally do it either. What you've done is known as begging the question. It reaches a conclusion by assuming it to be true in the first place. God is love. Therefore, everything he does will be loving and moral. If he has rules for keeping, buying, trading, beating banging and selling slaves, they must be loving and moral rules for keeping buying trading beating banging and selling slaves. Because he's love! That's not thinking. That's making horrific excuses for horrific verses that are indefensible. You say God is love. I show you he is not. And you are so jedi-mind-committed to the "God is love" paradigm that you would rather endorse a patently immoral practice than admit that maybe, just maybe, the skeptics have a point on this one.

Seize the Day Carrying the Banner

Correct!

Nicely told.

Yip

Son of a gun, you're right!

Because it is

Lane Smith Anthony Hopkins Frank Langella

Anyone ever notice how SIT is perfectly represented in the Emperor's New Clothes story?

Based on the fact that Mel hasn't played a lot of characters played by others, I'm gonna take an educated guess and say Hamlet

Didn't we say go for it after enough time has passed, so long as you admit it? I don't remember

Cheated

Anyone?