Suddenly you hear a voice...

Irrelevant to your criteria. Under utilitarianism, the disagreement of the slaves is overshadowed by the good to the greater number. Morality, according to you.

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Me? I probably would tell you. But, like Jesus, I am sure I would get sick of repeating myself and stop telling people after a while. And after I'm dead, I ain't telling anybody (*)(*)(*)(*).

 

Excuse me, do you have a comprehension problem? I thought I explained that God is incapable of destroying that which He Created. God in the OT is the same as in the NT, and the only reason He is presented harshly in the OT is because it was the only way people in that time and place could understand Him. They were no more capable of understanding that when they rebelled against God, they were destroying themselves than you can...and as we know, all sin is a rebellion. Anyway it is theologically deep and it requires a certain amount of spiritual maturity to understand it.

 

So then don't believe a book of magical fairy tales what those admitted IDIOTS wrote then! Jeeesh.
They thought it was just FINE AND DANDY to kill gays. They were barbarians, just like Jesus of course was a barbarian.

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Which obviously those admitted idiots didn't possess.

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I'm not the one who approves of a book that has a talking donkey in it. (No offense.)

 

Jesus sounds pretty darned selfish, like I assume he is.

 

So then slavery would be a great thing today, right, because heck, I can see us doing great things (building more pyramids!) if only all those darned union people could just be ENSLAVED (then we wouldn't have to pay them) and stop asking for "living wages", etc.

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Only a fool, or a troll, would think that slavery is for the greater good.

 

You are more moral than Jesus, like I've been saying all along. So is Jeannette, I believe. I bet she would too. If she, for instance, had the cure to cancer (like the omniscient zombie in the sky who died on the cross for me - even though I'm not a sinner) she would tell it to us, so she's far more moral than the zombie is.

 

If you say so, it's your criteria we're going on. My position from the beginning has been that the industrial revolution has negated the need for large amounts of slave labor.

Greatest good "for the greatest number" is what you said. The entire world was enriched by the works of early slaves. And anyone who repeatedly calls Jesus a zombie has no business calling anyone a troll. That's flamebait, pure and simple. Raise your game.

 

We could have paid them a decent wage though, eh Jesus?

 

Most people in the world today don't make a decent wage, sans slavery. Many of those slaves had a better quality of life because they were slaves. They had food, clothing, and shelter, which they may not have been able to acquire on their own. It was a different world then, something which you are carefully avoiding taking into account.

 

Only religion (or maybe hard drugs) could get a sane person today to continually DEFEND SLAVERY. You see it here with your own eyes, folks. I couldn't make this stuff up. Religious apologists will throw morality out the window in a pathetic effort to defend ancient fairy tales. Sad...REALLY sad. Obviously this insanity must be stopped. How can we best stop religion in it's tracks, as it's clear from this posters repeated attempts to DEFEND SLAVERY that religion makes people immoral? Your ideas, guys?

 

Ha! You can't defend your arguments, or directly refute mine, so you go right for the Ad Hom. That is the quality of debate which you put forth. Weak. BTW, I am an agnostic, and don't take hard drugs, so you're really doubling up on fail today.

 

People who repeatedly defend the worst moral crime of all time (well, next to the biblical genocide) I can't take very seriously. I think most Nazis don't even defend slavery.

In a debate, the one who is reduced to defending slavery is the loser in that debate.

 

No, you just made that up. Actually, the one who resorts to making a Nazi comparison loses the debate. <Godwin's Law> I accept your surrender.

 

"Secular Humanist" and "National Socialist" mean exactly the same thing.

 

I'm a modern Secular Humanist ala Dawkins/Harris. I despise the "National Socialists".

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No, you were repeatedly defending slavery.

 

Damn, dude, just give it up. Now, you have to pretend not to understand what I said, so you can keep spouting off? When I said you are making that up, OBVIOUSLY I was talking about your BS made-up "In a debate, the one who is reduced to defending slavery is the loser in that debate" comment. What I said was clear, because I brought up the REAL rule for losing a debate, which you just violated, hence you lose. Acting like you're too dumb to understand that you lost does not help your case.

 

Hah! As an atheist I consider myself ethical rather than moral, but I concede that I'm nitpicking there. As for the rest of this, it's interesting speculation that cannot be settled one way or the other. Someone was flogged and then nailed to timber and the Romans were fairly meticulous in both record keeping and in making certain that they tortured to death the fellow that they intended to torture to death. So I figure it's doubtful they nailed up the wrong Jesus. Then too it's doubtful that Thomas would have been charismatic enough in his own right to play the role of a resurrected Jesus had he instead substituted for a Christ that by then was wrapped up in a burial shroud. Besides which while a twin can fool strangers it's much harder to fool an inner circle of friends and impossible to fool a mother. So if I had to speculate I would say that Jesus indeed was nailed to a cross, died, and that there never was a Resurrection. In other words, the cult survivors simply lied.

 

Probably the most likely scenario, to be sure.

 

Well, I guess we'd never know since they were taken as slaves and forced to work in abhorrent and inhuman conditions.

 

Yes, but on the other hand, once upon a time I BELIEVED. I assume that I am correct today; but I cannot know that I am correct. It's sort of analogous to fishing around in a shallow tub with a blindfold on at a Halloween party (which I've never actually done, by the way). Your hand encounters something unpleasant and you know that there are only two options -- because you've been told just that -- and so you ask yourself is it actually a venomous snake I just touched or a rubber snake? A worrisome question in other words.

 

Or some drunk "friend" who pulled his pants down for some laughs at my expense.

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When faced with a dilemma, err on the side of morality.

 

I too at one time believed in Santa, and the Tooth Fairy, and in "Jesus". Science, reason, morality, and common sense put an end to that, however.