Comments

1
The hypocrisy knows no bounds.....grrrr.
2
Well said. It appears Robertson is making your point for you. Christian apologists do have a way of using context to their own liking, so I am skeptical this will convince anyone. As far as I can tell, the way you are supposed to read the Bible is: decide what your value system is, then read the Bible in a way that supports your value system. Then use this reading as a kind of "evidence" to convert others to your value system.

I've read enough of the Bible to think this process is better than the alternative of actually ascribing to the moral code in the Bible, which is pretty atrocious. The trick is then to convince the religious folk that being gay is moral, then they will proceed to read the Bible in a way that supports that position. This is why conceding Biblical "truth" to theists is a waste of time-- they are going to read whatever they damn well please in that book. Better to convince them with non-religious arguments and trust their religious subconscious to smooth out the inconsistencies.
3
The bible was written by the ignorant for the ignorant. I ignore the whole fucking thing. And so do billions of others.
4
The amusing part is that not only does the Bible promote slavery, but even so its attitude towards slavery was actually more enlightened than that of the antebellum South - you couldn't be born into slavery, and slaves must be manumitted every seven years, iirc.
5
I'd encourage people to ignore the bible entirely.
6
Is that like saying that Jesus' injunction to turn the other cheek "permits" violence?
7
Religion didn't cause these people to be horrible assholes, it's just the excuse.
8
Heck, the Paul's letter to Philemon is a letter exhorting a man to take a runaway slave back into his service and to forgive the slave for wronging him. Of course the New Testament permitted slavery.
9
Pat Robertson is full-bore evil, about as far from "Christian" as it is possible to get. Check out his slave-operated gold mining interests in Africa and his associations with Liberian butcher Charles Taylor. The man has blood on his hands.
10
I'm not sure if the Bible ever technically condones slavery... but it does permit it and regulate it. That is, the Bible itself didn't establish slavery, it just dealt with the fact of slavery within its context. It didn't forbid it, of course, and if you're someone who thinks slavery is abhorrent no matter what the time period context, I think that should be a mark against the notion that the Bible is the inerrant word of God and/or God is an purely good and moral being (for any useful definition of "good"). I don't know how anyone can suggest that either God or the Bible are sources of altruism (usually invoked as a criticism for altruism arising through natural selection). Sources of practical Bronze Age tribal governance is more like it.

Along similar lines, I consider it unfair to attack the US Constitution as a document condoning slavery. In fact, many of the authors were not particularly happy with slavery, but as a body they knew they would never get a concession from the southern delegates on that point. The much derided 3/5 compromise was a compromise to limit the political power of slave owning states (newsflash: slaves couldn't vote anyway, so counting them for the purposes of apportioning federal representatives only benefited their owners, who could vote; today the same trick goes on with federal inmates). It would have been better if slaves were counted as 0/5 of a person for these purposes! Thus, the sections of the Constitution dealing with slaves and slavery were a practical compromise that put political union above the moral cause. I think a case could be made that without that political union, the moral cause would have had a much more uphill battle. Lincoln fought the Civil War under the auspices of preserving a union... without the concessions to slavery in the Constitution, there may not have been a union for Lincoln to preserve; on the the other hand, we might all be part of the Commonwealth, and slavery might have been abolished in 1833, per the Slavery Abolition Act; although this seems unlikely given that they made exceptions for India and some other territories, and likely would have had to for the US for the same reason the Constitutional Convention had to.

But I digress. It's not really that shocking that an 82-year old man with a history of saying crazy things starts saying sane things in his old age. He probably just ran out of crazy.
11
@4 I think those rules may only have applied to Israelite slaves.
12
@11, you are correct. The rules for Jewish slaves, as opposed to non-Jewish slaves, were very different.

Most Jewish "slaves" were what we would think of as indentured servants, and usually occurred because one Jew couldn't pay the debt s/he owed to another, so became their servant to pay it off. Once the debt is paid, the "slave" is no longer a slave and is free to go.

There were also strict rules about how a Jewish slave could be treated - minimal to no beatings, no "mating" with another Jewish or non-Jewish slave. In fact, Jewish slaves were often married at the time of their enslavement and it was the owner's responsibility to not break up the family and to provide food and shelter for the Jewish slave's Jewish family. Any children born to the Jewish slave was considered the Jewish slave's child and could not be sold.

Finally there was the Sabbatical year - every seven years when the land was supposed to lie fallow, all debts were forgiven, and Israelite slaves were freed.

On the other hand, Non-Jewish slaves taken from another nation, especially one that they just conquered, were slaves in the Southern Antebellum sense - no rights, could be bought or born into slavery, could be mated with other non-Jewish slaves at the owners desire, children could be sold off thereby separating families, etc.

So, slavery as it existed in the South in the US in the 1800s did exist and was condoned in the Bible.

And Dan is right, we finally learned to ignore that part of the Bible, so why can't we ignore the parts about homosexuality and how to treat women?
13
@10
"Along similar lines, I consider it unfair to attack the US Constitution as a document condoning slavery."

Unfair or not, it is correct.
And it was written that way because (as you noted) certain states would not have joined had it been different.

But that is completely unlike The Bible which (again, as you noted) is the "is the inerrant word of God".

God did not need to negotiate with anyone over slavery.
God did not need to compromise with anyone over slavery.
God could have ended slavery with a Word.
14
@9 actually I'd say he is a pretty good Christian, if by Christian you mean "one who believes and follows the Bible". That book has quite a lot of moral atrocities. If the Christian god is real, that guy is an asshole.

http://www.thethinkingatheist.com/page/b…
15
I've got to disagree with all y'alls who are pushing for total ignorance of the Bible. I think it is a wonderful document, one of the seminal works of western literature, and an archelogical treasure. Anyone who wishes to be culturally aware should be familiar with the text.

That being said, it is no good as an "instruction manual to life" in the present age. I mean, duh.
16
Also the Bible is a _Iron Age_ document.

To go back to the Bronze Age you'd get to the Minoans for whom the Goddess, the Serpent and the Tree were the central story of the generative powers of the universe.

The Bible--especially Genesis--is a direct inversion of Bronze Age symbols. E.g. if you read The Book of Jonah upsidedown it makes much more sense. God, the Noboddady, is a total prick, the creature of the Deep helps the protagonist. I know who I'm cheering for.

For a good laugh look up Nehushtan.
17
This should come as no surprise if you remember that Christianity was originally a slave's religion. A Roman Empire that thrived on slavery was threatened by the redemptive aspects of that religion, so the co-opting began and resulted in the Roman Catholic church. That form of slavery never went away.
18
The US Constitution allowed slavery.

OMG!! The US Constitution is TERRIBLY WRONG!!!
19
@15 You are correct. It is a important work of literature and part of western culture. Just that. Fiction.
20
Conservative christians are quite liberal about much of the bullshit in the bible. They are liberal about divorce, even though Jesus condemned it and said if you re-marry you are an adulterer. They are liberal about child-rearing, even though the bible says to murder disobedient kids. They are only conservative about us, and abortion.
22
The bible is also quite anti-slavery.

Porn, from the Latin, Porn, referred to females who performed sexual favors for money (you can find that definition in any dictionary). However, these females were also slaves who were forced into this line of work.

The bible is incredible anti-pornea, though the word has been misinterpreted to mean any kind of sex now (or purposefully changed, since every other word with PORN as the root means one thing, and one thing only).

Also, I'm pretty sure a lot of the slave stuff is metaphor for God, since Jews were slaves of various nations for so long, and I can't believe they enjoyed this arrangement.
23
It's okay! Pat Robertson still fucking hates women (though he's probably fine with still fucking them [over] <- couldn't resist). So the windbag always has some stupid shit going on.
24
18: first sentence, past tense and correct.
2nd sentence: current tense and no longer true as regards slavery.

This should not be a difficult concept.

Constitution can be amended because it was known it wasn't anywhere near perfect...and if it were, times change and it wouldn't remain so. Likewise science theories.

Religious books tend to be considered the final word forever.
At best, you can change interpretation and emphasis....or just go discover lost books which tend to be written in surprisingly recent materials.
25
Oh the irony and sheer hypocrisy! Christians take too many liberties with the bible for them to use it as a conclusive evidence of their homophobia...and yet they do.
26
Hey, Dan, the Religious Right doesn't ignore Bible passages about slavery altogether. In fact it uses them to justify anti-union and anti-worker politics. In 1990, Ralph Reed co-authored a Christian Coalition leadership manual that used slaves-obey-your-masters verses to argue on behalf of a slave-master approach to employee-employer relationships. See the quote in this article on the Religious Right and right-wing economics: http://www.religiondispatches.org/archiv…
27
nope!
28
It's strange that a religion (Christianity) would not only survive, but become one of the largest world religions after:

1) their founder was murdered
2) their entire movement was persecuted ruthlessly by both the Jewish religious leadership AND the Romans
3) they believe that a man was THE God (not just a God)
4) they believe that man rose from the dead -- and appeared to over 500 people alive in the following 40 days after his resurrection
5) their holy book, the Bible, which has stories of horrible events (murders, adultery, wars, and genocide) would be the most widely sold book in the world by a huge margin.

I mean, maybe you think it's a crock of $***, but for being so utterly foolish and persecuted and attacked, the religion hasn't actually ever disappeared in 2000 years, and it's showing no signs of disappearing today.

Either a huge section of humanity is insane or maybe there's something to this Jesus guy after all.
29
@28 Ah, the old "it's been around for so long, so it must be true" argument. Sigh. You could say the same about slavery itself. It's been around for far, far longer than Christianity...and still exists in many forms today...so going by your logic, "Either a huge section of humanity is insane or maybe there's something to this slavery business after all." I'll go with the former reason. Or more accurately, replace the legal term "insane" with the more precise term "sociopathic."
Let's go ahead and dismantle your arguments one by one.
1. Big deal. Lots of people who led various institutions get murdered, from kings and queens to leaders of secret societies. The United Kingdom still exists, despite a good number of their monarchs getting run in through swords or beheaded. What's your point?
2. And as soon as they seized power via Constantine, the Christians literally got medieval on their former Jewish and pagan Roman persecutors' asses. Payback's a bitch.
3. Monotheism. How original. Been there, done that. (Amenhotep, anyone?)
4. Appeared to 500 people...all documented in that historically unassailable document, the Bible.
5. What are you, the Bible's publishing agent? You looking for a blurb? What does that prove? You could point at the Koran's runaway publishing success too. Let's go ahead and ignore the fact that these and other holy books provide the underpinnings of political power (e.g. the divine right of kings, justification of slavery, etc etc etc), so of course they'll be widely disseminated and become required reading for everyone, regardless of what anyone thinks of it.
All we ask is that you Christians stop shoving your Bronze Age ideals on us. We've graduated up to steel, for heaven's sake.

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