Do "Intelligent Design" still taught in the US schools ?

[PreTTy PeTe]

What you did was dis all believers without qualification.

Judged rightly.

what i did was voice my beliefs.

sorry.

 

[Kulindahr]

Do you actually believe in Adam and Eve and that crap in the bible?

then go ahead.

have fun with that because it seems to have caused a lot of mess in the last 2000 years.

Yeah, like providing the driving force for the anti-slavery movement. Terrible!

 

[PreTTy PeTe]

Yeah, like providing the driving force for the anti-slavery movement. Terrible!

and the slave owners were they not Christians???

and the guys burning crosses where they not Christian???

 

[xbuzzerx]

I thought the bible was more or less ok with slavery..?

Kul is correct that Quakers were big abolitionists and participants in the Underground Railroad, along with other denominations I'm sure. They were also very very far ahead of their time on women's and gay rights if I'm not mistaken.

 

[PreTTy PeTe]

Kul is correct that Quakers were big abolitionists and participants in the Underground Railroad, along with other denominations I'm sure. They were also very very far ahead of their time on women's and gay rights if I'm not mistaken.

I didn't know this and thanks for the info. I am reading about it now.

kudos to them.

 

[borg69unimatrix]

I thought the bible was more or less ok with slavery..?

I'm not positive, but i think back then (BC) "slavery" was more of a class distinction between the rich and poor, citizens and non-citizens. I think they were also required to pay them. I don't think it was the same type of ownership and race issues as was in America. More of forced servants - if that makes sense. They had more rights and could buy their freedom in ancient times.

 

[Kulindahr]

I thought the bible was more or less ok with slavery..?

Only to the literalists who have no ability to red beyond the level of shopping lists. Christians began realizing very early on that slavery is utterly incompatible with everyone being made in the image of God, and even more with Christ dying for everyone.

 

[xbuzzerx]

I'm not positive, but i think back then (BC) "slavery" was more of a class distinction between the rich and poor, citizens and non-citizens. I think they were also required to pay them. I don't think it was the same type of ownership and race issues as was in America. More of forced servants - if that makes sense. They had more rights and could buy their freedom in ancient times.

That's very true as well. The slavery we saw until the 19th century in the Americas was not simply "the same thing that had been all over the world before." It was very usual in older civilizations for slavery to be a class from which people could buy, work or marry their way out of well within their lifetime, to the point of full rights or ordinary citizens in many instances.

 

[PreTTy PeTe]

Only to the literalists who have no ability to red beyond the level of shopping lists. Christians began realizing very early on that slavery is utterly incompatible with everyone being made in the image of God, and even more with Christ dying for everyone.

Christ did not die for me.

and assuming he died for everyone is pretentious.

 

[PreTTy PeTe]

But Jesus lives

 

[PreTTy PeTe]

As did the fascists, the communists, the Klan, the skinheads, the Imperial Japanese, the eugenicists, and all sorts of other bigoted proponents. Believing that someone else is inferior or defective isn't any more acceptable coming from a secular podium than it is from a sectarian or political or racist one. Bigotry is bigotry.

The right to profess a belief, for or against a people or whatever, creates no sanction for that belief whatsoever.

are you for real.

the problem with the facists is that everyone kept quiet about what they were doing.

sadly they killed so many people in the name of their cause.

me I don't keep quiet

 

[PreTTy PeTe]

sunshine I am not a bigot and neither were they

they were monsters

 

[bendted]

I went to a Catholic HS. Incredibly, religion wasn't shoved down our throats and the science books were not polluted with Creationism or was evolution marginalized. They had religion classes which no one was forced to take. This was the 70s though. The good old days when Christians minded thei rown damn business and left what they considered to be heathens alone.

 

[Kulindahr]

Wait a minute. You bitch and complain about other people judging all people of faith yet you have no problem with insulting me for saying that the bible, especially the old testament, appears to have a fairly relaxed attitude (to say the least) towards slavery?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bible_and_slavery

I made an object reply to someone's question -- I didn't address you at all.

The first person in western history that we know of who called for the end to human beings owning other human beings was Gregory of Nyssa, a Christian bishop and theologian in the late fourth century. He was echoing a long tradition of Christian thought that slavery was against the spirit of Christianity -- though it continued to be tolerated because Paul hadn't condemned it. He enunciated the arguments that (1) God authorized, in Genesis, dominion over all Creation, but not over man; (2) when God in Christ bought mankind with His own blood, He bestowed freedom; and (3) that which is made in the image of God cannot be owned. He effectively declares that those who claim to own other humans are trying to take the place of God.

Many Christian leaders through the following centuries struggled much as Thomas Jefferson did later, rejecting the notion of slavery as immoral, but struggling with what the results would be if it were just abolished outright. IIRC, more than one pope rejected abolishing slavery because it would have tumbled the economy into turmoil. Especially in the West, an old tradition of Christian slave owners freeing at least one save on Easter died out even before the fall of Rome; after that fall, it was generally forgotten.

It was not until the invention of racial slavery, in fact, that the Bible was made to approve of slavery rather than merely accept and tolerate the institution. Interestingly, the argument for racial slavery rested to a great extent on the notion that Christendom in Europe was the successor to Israel; the idea that Israelites weren't to subject each other to slavery was extended to all whites. The excuse that blacks were the descendants of Ham, who was cursed to slavery, was whipped up to say that not merely was it okay to enslave blacks, but that blacks were supposed to be slaves!

But the understanding that to claim to own other humans was a deep sin, in fact a theft of a privilege only God could claim (yet didn't), continued on. And eventually it bubbled up irrepressibly, notably (as already pointed out) among the Quakers.

And it's that theme that's the Bible's real message about slavery. Neither the Old nor New Testament endorse it, they merely tolerated it.

 

[star-warrior]

I made an object reply to someone's question -- I didn't address you at all.

The first person in western history that we know of who called for the end to human beings owning other human beings was Gregory of Nyssa, a Christian bishop and theologian in the late fourth century. He was echoing a long tradition of Christian thought that slavery was against the spirit of Christianity -- though it continued to be tolerated because Paul hadn't condemned it. He enunciated the arguments that (1) God authorized, in Genesis, dominion over all Creation, but not over man; (2) when God in Christ bought mankind with His own blood, He bestowed freedom; and (3) that which is made in the image of God cannot be owned. He effectively declares that those who claim to own other humans are trying to take the place of God.

Many Christian leaders through the following centuries struggled much as Thomas Jefferson did later, rejecting the notion of slavery as immoral, but struggling with what the results would be if it were just abolished outright. IIRC, more than one pope rejected abolishing slavery because it would have tumbled the economy into turmoil. Especially in the West, an old tradition of Christian slave owners freeing at least one save on Easter died out even before the fall of Rome; after that fall, it was generally forgotten.

It was not until the invention of racial slavery, in fact, that the Bible was made to approve of slavery rather than merely accept and tolerate the institution. Interestingly, the argument for racial slavery rested to a great extent on the notion that Christendom in Europe was the successor to Israel; the idea that Israelites weren't to subject each other to slavery was extended to all whites. The excuse that blacks were the descendants of Ham, who was cursed to slavery, was whipped up to say that not merely was it okay to enslave blacks, but that blacks were supposed to be slaves!

But the understanding that to claim to own other humans was a deep sin, in fact a theft of a privilege only God could claim (yet didn't), continued on. And eventually it bubbled up irrepressibly, notably (as already pointed out) among the Quakers.

And it's that theme that's the Bible's real message about slavery. Neither the Old nor New Testament endorse it, they merely tolerated it.

You mention Paul and how he see it. You didn't mention how Jesus had no opinions regarding slavery. Not speaking out suggest Jesus was ofay with it as a fact of life in his day, and he accepted the laws and traditions with regard to it.

However, you may purchase male or female slaves from among the foreigners who live among you. You may also purchase the children of such resident foreigners, including those who have been born in your land. You may treat them as your property, passing them on to your children as a permanent inheritance. You may treat your slaves like this, but the people of Israel, your relatives, must never be treated this way. (Leviticus 25:44-46 NLT)

This, from one of the books that make up the Torah too

מד. וְעַבְדְּךָ וַאֲמָתְךָ אֲשֶׁר יִהְיוּ לָךְ מֵאֵת הַגּוֹיִם אֲשֶׁר סְבִיבֹתֵיכֶם מֵהֶם תִּקְנוּ עֶבֶד וְאָמָה:

44. Your male slave or female slave whom you may have from the nations that are around you, from them you may acquire a male slave or a female slave

http://www.chabad.org/library/bible_cdo/aid/9926/jewish/Chapter-25.htm

It only shows that attitudes to slavery changed over the centuries. This is a departure from how Jesus would have thought in his lifetime.

 

[Kulindahr]

You mention Paul and how he see it. You didn't mention how Jesus had no opinions regarding slavery. Not speaking out suggest Jesus was ofay with it as a fact of life in his day, and he accepted the laws and traditions with regard to it.

Fallacy. He wasn't a politician, to talk about every issue in existence. Apart from teaching about the Kingdom of God, He only spoke on matters people brought to Him.


This is, BTW, related to the topic here, because it's the linear, shallow sort of thinking that gives us young-earth creationists in the first place. So long as major portions of society keep thinking in such a fashion and thus addressing the Bible the same way the literalists do, we're going to still have this conflict. By thinking like them, one just encourages them.