"Christians abolished slavery, therefore God is not a douche."

I can't even count how many times I have heard Christians use the argument 'Christians were responsible for the Abolition of slavery in the U.S.'  I have been contemplating this claim, and have several points that I want to touch on.

First, who do you think started slavery in the first place?  In order for a human being to bend another to his will in this way (and for the slave to accept it), one or both must accept the belief that some humans are superior to others, and also have the right to own another human.  Where do we see this belief echoed time and time again?  Religion, of course - the oldest holy books on this planet advocate slavery time and time again.

The Old Testament is ripe for the picking when it comes to this idea, but Christians are always very quick to reject anything from the Old Testament which they don't like, while keeping the bits they DO like - homosexuality is wrong, follow the 10 Commandments, alleged 'prophecies' for Jesus, etc.  In keeping with the spirit of these bigots, I've completely bypassed the Old Testament.

In Ephesians, Paul offers the following 'words of wisdom':
Ephesians 6:5-9: "Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ; Not with eyeservice, as menpleasers; but as the servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart; With good will doing service, as to the Lord, and not to men: Knowing that whatsoever good thing any man doeth, the same shall he receive of the Lord, whether he be bond or free. And, ye masters, do the same things unto them, forbearing threatening: knowing that your Master also is in heaven; neither is there respect of persons with him."

Also, Timothy seems to actually condemn those who reject slavery:

1 Timothy 6: "
1 All who are under the yoke of slavery should consider their masters worthy of full respect, so that God’s name and our teaching may not be slandered. 2 Those who have believing masters should not show them disrespect just because they are fellow believers. Instead, they should serve them even better because their masters are dear to them as fellow believers and are devoted to the welfare[a] of their slaves.    These are the things you are to teach and insist on. 3 If anyone teaches otherwise and does not agree to the sound instruction of our Lord Jesus Christ and to godly teaching, 4 they are conceited and understand nothing."



If Christians helped to abolish slavery, it was in spite of their faith in the Bible, not because of it.  They would have had to embrace a 'secular morality' above and beyond their 'biblical morality'.

Thus, I contend that this argument from Christians actually proves the superiority of secular morality.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Methodological Naturalism Explained - Why Science Can't Consider The Supernatural

I am going to make a bold statement. "For all practical purposes, it is always irrational to assign a supernatural cause to an event observed in the natural world." Now I am going to attempt to back up that statement. The only reason (of which I am aware) to assign a supernatural cause to a given event is the following: "I do not currently understand the details and outcome of this observation given my current state of knowledge and understanding of the natural world." Also, I suspect that many of you would prefer to add the caveat "And the details and outcome of this event are consistent with a particular supernatural belief or belief system", but that is clearly an example of circular reasoning and cannot be a valid part of this discussion.  The supernatural belief or belief system is, in fact, the item in question, or to be more accurate, the observation cannot be assigned a cause which has not been demonstrated, it can only be assigned a hypo
Read more

Atheist / Christian T-Shirt Challenge - Given by The Atheist Advocate

I recently shared a link to a great little article by The Atheist Advocate on patheos.com in which Christians are challenged to wear an Atheist t-shirt for one week, in order to learn about what persecution  means, due to the apparent misunderstanding which is often spread by Christians. http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/04/25/challenge-to-christians-wear-an-atheist-t-shirt-and-gauge-reactions/ Pretty good idea, no? Now, I know that '____ Challenge' is currently extremely cliche, but would a good name for this be 'Persecution Challenge'?  Too emotive maybe? I may have found a taker, and I think it would be a really great experience, probably for both of us.  You see, she's a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.  I would be required to wear a Mormon t-shirt for one week, while she would be required to wear an Atheist t-shirt during the same time.   If we both agree on this, how should we document everyth
Read more

On Evolution: Common Misconceptions and Deceptions

There are some critical misunderstandings of evolution out there, and I’d like to help clear some of them up. Ray Comfort is offering $10,000 to the first person who provides evidence of a ‘living transitional form’, and he defines this as a species giving birth to an entirely different species, such as a squirrel giving birth to a bird, or a chicken giving birth to a snake.  Now, I personally think Ray is being patently dishonest, but this raises a good point about what people seem to think evolution is all about. Let’s say that you are a paleontologist, and you have discovered fossils of a previously undocumented animal.  What you are looking at is a snapshot in time, as it were.  A ‘species’ is just that - it is a group of animals with particular shared characteristics, and when you look at a particular species, you are actually seeing the ‘current version’ of that genetic lineage.  If you take our hypothetical fossil find, you can determine approximately when that creature was
Read more