Wednesday, May 1, 2013

On The Ten Commandments as a Reliable Moral Indices

I don't know, folks, the fact that "Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbor's Wife" made it and "Thou Shalt Not Enslave Another Human Being Into Servitude" didn't, is probably a sufficient enough rationale to maybe look elsewhere.

4 comments:

dmarks said...

I'm sure the abolitionist theologists went over this a lot, but I am guessing that the one about stealing might count. Taking control of 100% of someone's life without consent and all.

Barlowe Bayer, A Very Stable Genius said...

Will Hart: ...probably a sufficient enough rationale to maybe look elsewhere.

Sure, you can look elsewhere IN ADDITION to the 10 commandments in deciding what is moral. But I don't think that is what you're suggesting. What is your point? Is it to bash Christians?

In any case, as noted by Wikipeida, "Churches also often played a role [in the underground railroad], especially the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), Congregationalists, Wesleyans, and Reformed Presbyterians as well as certain sects of mainstream denominations such as branches of the Methodist church and American Baptists".

BB-Idaho said...

Historical context again:
Slavery was common, among all the people of those times. The legal code for the Hebrews-
"Moreover of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, and of their families that are with you, which they begat in your land: and they shall be your possession.

And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession; they shall be your bondmen for ever: Lv 25:44-46"
explicitly states the one-sided
labor contract.

Will "take no prisoners" Hart said...

I guess that that was my point, BB, that the Bible was written by a bunch of men and in a time from that wasn't exactly enlightened. I feel significantly more comfortable with laws coming about as the result of the free exchange of ideas and other Democratic institutions than I do with such superstitious gobbledy goo.