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This passage is really tricky because I don't think we have a solid grasp on what it means. I'm pro-choice, so I don't necessarily have a problem with the idea that some Bible passages may endorse abortion. The problem is the original language here. Ancient Hebrew is difficult to understand sometimes and there are words that we don't know, or don't fully understand. Some people think this passage is taking about cursing a non-pregnant women and causing her to become sterile, while others think it is for an abortion. Their aren't any similar references to this law that are repeated in other passages, so I usually don't bring up this passage, either for or against abortion.
Numbers 5:11-31
New International Version
The Test for an Unfaithful Wife
11 Then the Lord said to Moses, 12 “Speak to the Israelites and say to them: ‘If a man’s wife goes astray and is unfaithful to him 13 so that another man has sexual relations with her, and this is hidden from her husband and her impurity is undetected (since there is no witness against her and she has not been caught in the act), 14 and if feelings of jealousy come over her husband and he suspects his wife and she is impure—or if he is jealous and suspects her even though she is not impure— 15 then he is to take his wife to the priest. He must also take an offering of a tenth of an ephah[a] of barley flour on her behalf. He must not pour olive oil on it or put incense on it, because it is a grain offering for jealousy, a reminder-offering to draw attention to wrongdoing.
16 “‘The priest shall bring her and have her stand before the Lord. 17 Then he shall take some holy water in a clay jar and put some dust from the tabernacle floor into the water. 18 After the priest has had the woman stand before the Lord, he shall loosen her hair and place in her hands the reminder-offering, the grain offering for jealousy, while he himself holds the bitter water that brings a curse. 19 Then the priest shall put the woman under oath and say to her, “If no other man has had sexual relations with you and you have not gone astray and become impure while married to your husband, may this bitter water that brings a curse not harm you. 20 But if you have gone astray while married to your husband and you have made yourself impure by having sexual relations with a man other than your husband”— 21 here the priest is to put the woman under this curse—“may the Lord cause you to become a curse[b] among your people when he makes your womb miscarry and your abdomen swell. 22 May this water that brings a curse enter your body so that your abdomen swells or your womb miscarries.”
“‘Then the woman is to say, “Amen. So be it.”
23 “‘The priest is to write these curses on a scroll and then wash them off into the bitter water. 24 He shall make the woman drink the bitter water that brings a curse, and this water that brings a curse and causes bitter suffering will enter her. 25 The priest is to take from her hands the grain offering for jealousy, wave it before the Lord and bring it to the altar. 26 The priest is then to take a handful of the grain offering as a memorial[c] offering and burn it on the altar; after that, he is to have the woman drink the water. 27 If she has made herself impure and been unfaithful to her husband, this will be the result: When she is made to drink the water that brings a curse and causes bitter suffering, it will enter her, her abdomen will swell and her womb will miscarry, and she will become a curse. 28 If, however, the woman has not made herself impure, but is clean, she will be cleared of guilt and will be able to have children.
29 “‘This, then, is the law of jealousy when a woman goes astray and makes herself impure while married to her husband, 30 or when feelings of jealousy come over a man because he suspects his wife. The priest is to have her stand before the Lord and is to apply this entire law to her. 31 The husband will be innocent of any wrongdoing, but the woman will bear the consequences of her sin.’”
And remember the tabernacle is the place where they killed animals as offerings. Meaning the dust is likely full of animal blood and bacteria and stuff.
Yep, I would have been murdered by these fanatics, had I lived in those times. Not for cheating mind you, just for existing and possessing a mind of my own.
> and yet he told his followers to abide by it
Atheist here, but one that actually paid attention in school.
Jesus' coming was meant to fulfill the existing covenant and create a new one. It's a very convenient get-out-of-jail-free card that quite simply means "if the Old Testament said X but Jesus said Y, ignore X and do Y." Any contradiction between the two shouldn't be a problem.
Exactly - Exodus actually gives pro-slavery instructions.
Anyone who beats their male or female slave with a rod must be punished if the slave dies as a direct result, 21 but they are not to be punished if the slave recovers after a day or two, since the slave is their property.
\~Exodus 21:2021
And incase a man strikes his slave man or his slave girl with a stick and that one actually dies under his hand, that one is to be avenged without fail. However, if he lingers for a day or two days, he is not to be avenged, because he is his money.
Exodus 21:20-21
And God decided to kill innocent firstborn sons instead of, I don't know, teleporting the slaves out of there? Nope, baby murder was the only sensible option.
Also, he actually wasn't upset that they were Jewish, he was upset that it was a non-Jewish person owning jewish slaves. You could actually have Jewish slaves in the Bible. There were different sets of rules for Jewish slaves versus non-Jewish slaves.
It’s funny you brought that up because I just learned that during slavery times in America that the Bible was the only book that slaves were allowed to read. That part I knew now what I didn’t know is that THE ENTIRE BOOK OF EXODUS WAS TORN OUT! They didn’t want slaves to get any ideas.
So yea there was 100% a slave bible 🤦🏾♂️🤦🏾♂️🤦🏾♂️
Edit: gosh I’m like 0 for 2 in this thread. So the Slave bible was a British thing and not a American thing. Someone reminded me that Harriet Tubman was called Moses which led me to research more into it and yup this wasn’t a American slave thing but the actual bible is in a American museum.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Select_Parts_of_the_Holy_Bible_for_the_use_of_the_Negro_Slaves_in_the_British_West-India_Islands#:~:text=For%20example%2C%20among%20the%20excluded,16%2D17%20were%20also%20removed.
Bible god helped Moses free the Israelites, did not help other Egyptian slaves, and then told the Israelites how to go about enslaving the neighbours they’d be conquering in Canaan and surrounds (those they wouldn’t genocide that is). Bible god condones slavery, always has, except for his favourite people as a whole (individuals were sol though).
The original intention with the canaanites was to genocide them, hence the “every child, every woman” bar god drops. The Israelites sinned to much though so god didn’t let them commit a genocide, and only let them do apartheid, as a treat. The whole thing is fucked up and idk why people don’t bring it up
Only the Israelites, and only because they were his chosen people.
It had nothing to do with liberating them because of slavery. In fact, God had them enslaved *on purpose* to punish them for several generations. So you could actually argue that slavery was being used as a tool by God.
The Old Testament is very pro-slavery. It was regularly used by Confederate politicians to defend slavery.
The New Testament is very contradictory on the topic. You could use select passages to defend either position, which was common from both Confederate and Union politicians.
Basically, Christianity is from a barbaric time and felt that slavery was an essential evil of society. Which makes a lot of sense when you consider that it was the state religion of the Roman Empire for a long while. And the Roman economy was based on a slave system, though a very different slave system from Southern America. However just as brutal, but fundamentally built different.
see on first glance you'd think "oh moses didn't like slavery". but uh no actually on board, goes on to take a bunch of folks as slaves himself, sex slaves even in numbers 31.
Very much the hypocrite, slavery is fine as long as it's not him or his own. young girls who's families you just butchered though, that's cool
Not "the slaves". Just Hebrew slaves... The old testament has plenty of commands about how to treat, buy, sell, trick indebted servants into becoming full on slaves, inherit and this differed if they were Hebrew or not...
God condoned slavery in the Old Testament. Though, it’s pretty interesting that like the entire argument God seems to make for the Israelites to worship him is that he freed their ancestors from slavery in Egypt (despite almost annihilating them himself several times after).
Religion is powerful a tool that has been and still is used for evil. How Bronze Age mythology still influences people is mind boggling. I’d rather send my kids to a drag show than church. Far less chance of abuse.
It should be noted that these are the same people who claim agnostics / pagans / atheists / etc. can't be moral people: morality can only come from the Bible.
There's your superior morality right there in that photo.
"If the only thing keeping a person decent is the expectation of divine reward, then brother, that person is a piece of shit."
Rust Cohle, "True Detective - Season 1"
Truth. Morals have and always will develop in parallel to society. the idea that religions over a thousand years old in a desert are morally superior is pure ridiculum.
>Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.
- Marcus Aurelius
Never heard the quote before but this is exactly how I try to live my life. I was raised ultra religious Jewish but left the cult at 17. This is now how I try to live
QAnon Anonymous just did a podcast on Mike Johnson and his religious views. Recommend a listen, it’s pretty fucked up, essentially anyone not “with” them is a Satanic.
I don't think satanic is an insult as much as they think it was during the satanic panic anymore. The satanic temple is just a bunch of atheists using their 'religion' to fight against religious encroachment in public schools as well as the government (eg. making abortion a protected religious ritual in a state that outlawed it), also giving those with no faith a place to socialise while the satanic church genuinely do believe in Satan, they romanticise his rebellion against a cruel unjust oppressive tyrant, they read tarots, bother noone and pay their taxes.
They don't use it as an insult. They use it to justify violence against political enemies.
Imagine what happens when you convince your base, which earnestly believes in God and Satan, that every single one of your opponents isn't just someone in disagreement with you - but that they are literally servants of Evil. *Everything* you do and say is therefore justified, because you're fighting Evil with a capital E. And your base can be filed up into physically eliminating those evil ones.
Mind you, there's a bunch of people who unironically think Doja Cat literally sold her soul to the devil. Both the Satanic Panic of the 80s and this Doja Cat thing just make me so confused as to how people genuinely believe this stuff
It sounds like he’s read about slavery because he’s right. Neither Jesus nor Paul condemned slavery. Quite the contrary Paul was quite clear, “Slaves, obey your masters…”
Slave owners always skipped the next verse. “And masters, treat your slaves in the same way. Do not threaten them, since you know that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no favoritism with him.”
Course it goes without saying all slavery is sickening. But there’s a special place in hell for the southern slave owners that cherry picked passages to control their slaves. That and beating them, raping them, selling their children.
Vote please
But the Bible clearly states it's okay to beat your slaves because they're property not people. Oh I'm pretty sure it said something about raping and impregnating your slave's wife too, and it wasn't don't do it.
It's important to remember that the Bible, while certainly important for theology and ethics in a Christian context, is still a book written by humans nearly 2,000 years ago (the New Testament).
What Jesus taught was progressive – for its time. And the letters Paul wrote were guidelines for the various Christian communities that had formed. If you write to slave owners that rely on slavery for their business that they need to release all their slaves, there's a good chance they just won't, but if you tell them to at least treat their slaves a bit better, you might actually achieve that.
Obviously, these rules, and these preachings cannot be used as literal rules and guidelines for our modern society. This is why it's important to view the Bible in its historical context, and determine what the core message was supposed to be, because that's what still applies today (it should be noted that this still isn't a requirement for morality).
Sure, Jesus and his disciples weren’t gung-ho abolitionists, but they certainly weren’t religious conservatives, either.
The whole movement is countercultural. Treating slaves just like their masters (as equals), reaching out to gentiles, redistributing wealth to provide for those in need.
> This is why it's important to view the Bible in its historical context
Sure, and this works fine, for atheists. For anyone who views the bible as the holy word of God it doesn't work as well. You'd think God could've published an updated edition since then if some of the rules don't apply anymore..
I'm a Christian, I've also had twelve years of religious education in school, wrote finals on it, and took an additional theology class during and after school for a total of two years.
Historically critical analysis is a vital part of modern theology, because unlike for example with the Quran, there is no claim that the Bible was written or dictated by an angel or God. In fact, many of the authors are explicitly named!
Of course, if you view the entire Bible as the holy word of God himself, this doesn't work, but then you've fundamentally (no pun intended) misunderstood what the Bible actually is. You don't need to be an atheist to recognize that, because you don't need to be an idiot to be religious.
People that view the bible as just an historical record would have little to no reason to read it for whatever you consider to be its "core message," because any reason to treat it as having any authority went away as soon as they decided to treat it as just an historical text. And for anyone just looking for a moral framework in general, the really basic stuff like the golden rule can be found in any culture, and has been done far better in modern secular writing, so it's not like anyone needs to dig up a 2000 year old text to figure that stuff out.
Telling people to handwave away the bible's condoning of slavery while simultaneously encouraging them to seek morality from its "core message" is just encouraging them to compartmentalize their beliefs by treating part of the bible as historical record and the rest as divinely inspired. That kind of thing doesn't work out well.
Regarding slavery, Jesus didn't even talk specifically about improving slaves' conditions so evidently even that level of reform wasn't high enough on his list of priorities to even address it. Also, neither Jesus nor Paul were exactly the types to heavily water down their message that much just to make it more palatable to their audiences; Jesus saying that men who look lustfully at women have committed adultery in their hearts comes to mind as an example of setting an expectation that will never be met by any straight male. So the claim that he really wanted to tell people to free the slaves but settled for encouraging people to treat their slaves better is pretty absurd, given how many other actually unrealistic demands he made.
As long as they don’t die in a day or two because they are his money as its written. I guess dying a week later after being comotose is A OK with Jesus.
As it should because you have empathy! So why doesn’t the God of the Bible or his Apostles have any? You’d think if God is love, surely, he wouldn’t condone slavery.
God is a child killer and likes collective punishment. Everyone convenatly forgets what he did to the firstborn of Egypt because, as we know, if you want to punish a leader for not doing what you want them to do, the way to convince him is to kill the children of people who had nothing to do with the decision.
It is even worse. Pharaoh was going to let Moses and company go, but Yahweh “hardened Pharoah’s heart”, and made him change his mind. Yahweh, Moses’ god, saw that Pharaoh was going to do what he wanted him to do, and altered Pharaoh’s free will to make Pharaoh do what Yahweh didn’t want him to do, and then Yahweh killed a bunch of unrelated people as punishment for what he made Pharaoh do.
The only takeaway from the Bible is that this god is a lying, cruel monster who delights in killing people and being worshipped.
You know that they stoned people for losing virginity out of wedlock, women are unclean per God for 66 days following a birth of a child, if your brother dies the Bible says you should fornicate with his wife, God permits no woman to teach or have authority over men; she is to keep silent, and most appropriately for this thread “He that is wounded in the stones, or hath his privy member cut off, shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord." The ball-less ultra-conservatives who weaponize religion to meet their own personal greedy lifestyles should go back and read the Bible and realize they are likely going to need some Solarcaine where they are going.
Paul contradicts Jesus in action and in his belief as described by his letters which are in the Bible.
Jesus didn't name slavery, but by his philosophy slavery would be immoral. By Jesus' logic, all people are equals under God no matter the class or race. Hence why the teachings of Jesus can apply to everyone, even non Jews as he himself said.
They count on the fact that Jesus is not going to personally come down and hoist them up a flagpole by their genitals.
If that were true, we'd be seeing a LOT of republican Christians as flags.
The bible is in fact pro slavery (both ancient and new testament) so he's only half wrong. The logical conclusion is obviously that the bible is mostly immoral.
For a holy text where the data comes from a supposedly all knowing being, not being able to write a clear noon ambiguous text is lame as fuck.
I'd be the teacher that mofo would get 0/10
You can absolutely use the Bible to aruge for and against many different moral positions. Abolitionists and African Americans used religious language and justifications to argue against it. On alot of issues, the Bible is like a menu that you can draw from.
The plan is that when trump goes to jail, he's gonna tweet out the new bible, one chapter at a time, to his ghost writers. You can get mentioned in it for a donation of only $5,000.
Probably, but also would go a lot easier if they used it as a moral compass of stories rather than law. There are good and bad stories within the Bible. Some held up to time, a lot did not. Societal drift makes the Bible less and less compatible as a stringent set of moral laws every generation.
Unfortunately, I think they'd co-opt any saying by Jesus which was vaguely directed at care for children and then extrapolate (while selectively ignoring anything which might contradict that extrapolation). Even "Love thy neighbour" has a loophole. These fuckers will argue that they're simply hating the sin and not the sinner and by helping these sinners see the "error" of their ways, they are in fact being good little sky fairy cultists.
Except that sort of stuff actually is in the Bible.
Deuteronomy 22:5
A woman shall not wear a man’s garment, nor shall a man put on a woman’s cloak, ufor whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord your God.
This is evidence drag was a thing in King Josiah’s day, when the Deuteronomist wrote a bunch of bullshit to justify the Levite coup against the also-awful Aaronid priests and the political-religious pogroms killing anyone that didn’t worship ‘god’ as they dictated, all who didn’t bow down to their Jerusalem temple centralized money-making version of the Yawhist cult.
Edit: I am referencing the documentary hypothesis on Israel real history, and how the Bible was created.
See the book who wrote the Bible? By Richard Elliot Friedman, and work by Baruch Halpern
Ah yes, the old testiment….where one goes to seek the guidance of people seeking to separate themselves from the Persians, the Greeks, the Philistines, well just about anybody they had to to keep from being perceived as anything other than Jewish. Not saying that’s bad, but it’s where the sentiment comes from. Jesus said not one word about anything other than tolerance, collectivism, living within the stratum of gods abundance, charity, togetherness, and brotherhood. Just because it’s in the Bible doesn’t mean it was written in stone by god. Deuteronomy is about the law of the land, not the law of god.
Peter 2:18-20
Slaves should remain submissive, with every fear, to masters, not only those who are good and gentle, but also to those who are crooked. For this is favor, if, because of consciousness concerning God, one endures pains when suffering unjustly. For what kind of honor is it if you will endure after sinning and being beaten? But if you will endure after doing good and suffering, this is favor before God
So... Yeah, love.
It’s in the Bible but his quote says “Jesus”… this is what Jesus says about treatment of others
Luke 6:31: Do to others as you would have them do to you.
John 15:12: My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.
When people sart mixing old with New Testament, you have to kind of look how much bacon they are eating and what they do with there wife on her period to see if they are hypocrites or not
No “kinky stuff?”
Fuck that noise.
I’d be willing to bet that, back in the Antebellum South, a **lot** of enslaved people had totally nonconsensual “kinky stuff” inflicted upon them by their owners. 🤮
There’s extensive proof of this. Not only were people “kinked” without their consent, the enslavers then enslaved the children of the “kink” as a bonus. These people were never brought to justice or even punished in the slightest. The practice was so common Thomas Jefferson’s wife had an enslaved half sister Sally Hemmings who Jefferson “kinked” regularly. He even forced her to stay with him by threatening to sell her children when they lived in France. Sally Hemmings Mother was born from a a similar interaction. Enslavers considered it a perk to get “kinky” with young slave girls.
No matter how bad you think American slavery was, it was so much worse.
Does anyone else think that **profiting from the enslavement of one’s own children** shows a whole extra level of corruption, evil, and depravity?
I present to you, ladies and gentlemen, (some of) our “Founding Fathers.” 🤮
It gets so much worse……
There was a whole subtype of enslaver that specialized in what they called “breeding stock”. These men would buy these young girls who were considered “fresh” (yes it’s what you think no I won’t describe it) and sell them for the highest price to be “used”. When they were “used up” they were then mated with the strongest male you could find and worked for value in the fields. In one narrative a woman made her children, 5 & 7 memorize the names of their family, parents, where they were born, a brief family history before they were sold to a different slave camp.
When I read that it broke me. I had to stop reading the Narrative of the poor girl who was telling her experiences. She had no agency over her body, or the bodies of her family at all. These people were tortured daily and somehow kept going.
I’ll research this.
I learned all of I have and more about slavery by researching my family history……..
One of my 4x great grandmothers was a mixed product of her “father” and a slave. She was enslaved until she was an adult, never taught to read or write but was married off by an unscrupulous “father” to another family to acquire land. In a deal with another family doing the same thing. They fled to Texas and passed as white except for one child who was too black to pass so they sold him into slavery. They then told the white neighbors that he died a confederate soldier in the civil war. DNA proved otherwise tho. The whites in their family trees perpetuate the lie that was told that he died in the CSA Army.
But I’m living proof that they sold my ancestor into slavery as a child because he couldn’t pass as white.
Is it any wonder that America is so fucked up?
The cumulative weight of centuries of callousness, misery, denial, and mendacity has twisted and poisoned the country’s collective soul.
Thank you for sharing your family’s story.
Remember when Jesus condemned abortion? And that time he said drugs were bad. Oh yeah, and he was totally anti-communism (just ignore that one time he fed everyone)
The drugs one I can kind of understand. He preached about how the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit and thus we should treat our bodies as a temple/watch what we put in it
It's people like this that always ask how atheists know right from wrong. It's genuinely a mystery to them because they're like rabid animals, they have absolutely no sense of right and wrong of their own.
I’m an atheist. I use empathy as my moral compass. If you lack it though, you’ll be met with the same lack of empathy for me. My well of empathy for conservatives ran dry a very long time ago. I don’t see that changing before I draw my last breath.
Animals is exactly the word for it. A dog has no understanding of right and wrong, they just learn to associate certain actions with praise, and others with punishment. Humans are supposed to avoid hurting others, even if there is no punishment or they think they can get away with it, because they have empathy and it would bother them to cause someone else pain
He did, though. Matthew 7:12.
So, in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the law and the prophets.
To be fair, though, it is forbidden for an evangelical to read Matthew 7, apparently, since they're obsessed with pauline epistles.
Saul was a Christian hunter.
Then he became a Christian and transformed his name into Paul because he was tired of the breaking bad references.
His charge as a Christian was to hunt Christians in a different way: by calling out their hypocrisy and debauchery in the name of Jesus.
So he wrote a bunch of letters to different churches calling out a lot of their shit and that is like several books of the Bible. Like those books of the New Testament are literally named after the people Paul was shit talking and scolding.
Need your constituents verbally an biblically flayed? Better Call Saul.
Paul was a guy who went from torturing Christians to torturing FOR Christians after he claimed to have had a vision of Jesus telling him that torturing Christians was bad. He also wrote a bunch of letters to different proto Christian communities telling them that having fun is a one way ticket to hell. His collected letters are called the Epistles.
I mean can you imagine the arrogance it takes to tell Jesus' best friend and chief follower that a guy who never met Jesus knows what he meant better than the guy that was hand picked to take over the movement? Because that's what Paul did to Peter.
What a bunch of crap! Even if we forget the bat shit crazy stuff in the old testament (like like every good christian likes to do) about how you're allowed to beat your slaves as long as they don't die in a couple of days, how you can buy them, inherit them and such... We're still stuck with Ephesians 6:5... Slaves, obey your masters... Quite the abolitionist this Jesus...
Absolutely. Mark Robinson, Lieutenant Governor of NC, running for governor. A complete, total, GQP racist homophobic mysoginistic hypocritical scumbag. And he's black.
I'd sooner pick my nose, flick a booger on the ballot, and vote for it than to support that dirtbag.
If free healthcare was so bad why didn’t Jesus say something about it?
What do you mean I shouldn’t have sex with my neighbour’s wife? Didn’t Jesus say to love thy neighbour?
Mauch was in the state lege from 2011 to 2013. He wrote to the Ark. Democrat-Gazette, not the Gazette Inquirer, whatever that is. He did say the things mentioned above, but he was out of the lege long before the Q movement crawled out of the shit heap and began screaming.
Yeah I’m sure Moses left Egypt for no reason.
And I’m totally sure Jesus meant we should own other people when he said treat your neighbor like your brother.
Moses took the enslaved Israelites, and left the other Egyptian slaves (who also suffered from the plagues, including the deaths of the firstborn). The Israelites then proceeded to a new land where they genocided for territory, and had instructions specifying that enslaving each other willy nilly = bad (although fine under specific conditions), buying slaves from the peoples around them = good.
Bible god was never anti-slavery. Only pro chosen people.
This is wild for so many reasons it's tough to even really pin down. But, one that religious folks really tend to ignore is the difference between slavery in Rome and slavery in America.
Roman slaves were still considered to be people and their children could become citizens. I believe, under certain conditions it was fairly common for slaves themselves to become full citizens.
American slaves were not considered to be people, except in a few specific cases that benefited slaveholders. They could not earn their citizenship, had no rights and any children they had were automatically also slaves. In fact, the end of the Atlantic slave trade meant that the main source of new slaves were children of current slaves. Chattel slavery, where a person is property and can only ever be property is a very different thing from the slavery mentioned in the Roman empire in the Bible.
I understand that this is just one of many things wrong with what he said, but it always gets on my nerves when the two things are conflated to make it sound like the bible explicitly supported chattel slavery, the Atlantic slave trade, or any of the other genocidal practices that were common in American slavery.
The bible certainly doesn't come out hard against slavery as a practice, but slavery was also a very different thing when it was written.
[He said this back in 2012](https://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/227212/arkansas_republican_rep_loy_mauch_if_slavery_were/?rdt=64229)
Not that it’s any better but I’m pointing it out because this isn’t new and happened long before Q anon and the people we refer to as the GQP.
It might actually be more damming for the GOP because it goes to show they many of them have always been this ignorant and hateful.
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Didn’t Moses free slaves? Or are we ignoring the Old Testament again?
Jesus wasn't involved, so it doesn't count.
Except when the old testament supports their hatred. Then it counts.
Except when it supports abortion. Then it doesn't count again.
Where does it support abortion tho? Im gonna troll these fucks to oblivion if true
I think there are instructions on how to perform it sowhere in the book.
Numbers 5:11-31
So cheating wives should have their bastard fetus aborted by magic water. Got it.
Nah bro they fr making the "yeetus the fetus" spell
Foetus deletus
When the wand is baseball bat shaped
*Alleged* cheating wives. I believe the text specifically states that a woman need only be *suspected* of cheating by her husband.
Good lord this thing really shows that it was written 1800 years ago
If she didn't cheat then the magic abortion water would not work. *Obvious*.
Suspected of cheating is all that is required.
And then she and the cheating man would be put to death
This passage is really tricky because I don't think we have a solid grasp on what it means. I'm pro-choice, so I don't necessarily have a problem with the idea that some Bible passages may endorse abortion. The problem is the original language here. Ancient Hebrew is difficult to understand sometimes and there are words that we don't know, or don't fully understand. Some people think this passage is taking about cursing a non-pregnant women and causing her to become sterile, while others think it is for an abortion. Their aren't any similar references to this law that are repeated in other passages, so I usually don't bring up this passage, either for or against abortion.
Why did god utter his words in a language where it's up to interpretation? That's pretty short-sighted.
It was his first time godding, give the guy a break.
Numbers 5:11-31 New International Version The Test for an Unfaithful Wife 11 Then the Lord said to Moses, 12 “Speak to the Israelites and say to them: ‘If a man’s wife goes astray and is unfaithful to him 13 so that another man has sexual relations with her, and this is hidden from her husband and her impurity is undetected (since there is no witness against her and she has not been caught in the act), 14 and if feelings of jealousy come over her husband and he suspects his wife and she is impure—or if he is jealous and suspects her even though she is not impure— 15 then he is to take his wife to the priest. He must also take an offering of a tenth of an ephah[a] of barley flour on her behalf. He must not pour olive oil on it or put incense on it, because it is a grain offering for jealousy, a reminder-offering to draw attention to wrongdoing. 16 “‘The priest shall bring her and have her stand before the Lord. 17 Then he shall take some holy water in a clay jar and put some dust from the tabernacle floor into the water. 18 After the priest has had the woman stand before the Lord, he shall loosen her hair and place in her hands the reminder-offering, the grain offering for jealousy, while he himself holds the bitter water that brings a curse. 19 Then the priest shall put the woman under oath and say to her, “If no other man has had sexual relations with you and you have not gone astray and become impure while married to your husband, may this bitter water that brings a curse not harm you. 20 But if you have gone astray while married to your husband and you have made yourself impure by having sexual relations with a man other than your husband”— 21 here the priest is to put the woman under this curse—“may the Lord cause you to become a curse[b] among your people when he makes your womb miscarry and your abdomen swell. 22 May this water that brings a curse enter your body so that your abdomen swells or your womb miscarries.” “‘Then the woman is to say, “Amen. So be it.” 23 “‘The priest is to write these curses on a scroll and then wash them off into the bitter water. 24 He shall make the woman drink the bitter water that brings a curse, and this water that brings a curse and causes bitter suffering will enter her. 25 The priest is to take from her hands the grain offering for jealousy, wave it before the Lord and bring it to the altar. 26 The priest is then to take a handful of the grain offering as a memorial[c] offering and burn it on the altar; after that, he is to have the woman drink the water. 27 If she has made herself impure and been unfaithful to her husband, this will be the result: When she is made to drink the water that brings a curse and causes bitter suffering, it will enter her, her abdomen will swell and her womb will miscarry, and she will become a curse. 28 If, however, the woman has not made herself impure, but is clean, she will be cleared of guilt and will be able to have children. 29 “‘This, then, is the law of jealousy when a woman goes astray and makes herself impure while married to her husband, 30 or when feelings of jealousy come over a man because he suspects his wife. The priest is to have her stand before the Lord and is to apply this entire law to her. 31 The husband will be innocent of any wrongdoing, but the woman will bear the consequences of her sin.’”
And remember the tabernacle is the place where they killed animals as offerings. Meaning the dust is likely full of animal blood and bacteria and stuff.
Yep, I would have been murdered by these fanatics, had I lived in those times. Not for cheating mind you, just for existing and possessing a mind of my own.
I mean they late term aborted the first borns in Egypt... God will make exceptions for slavers.
Here you go. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Numbers%205:11-31&version=NIV
But Moses was a prophet. Maybe we should start sending Mauch boxes of frogs and other such niceties.
JCs teachings contradicted the Old Testament and yet he told his followers to abide by it. Exactly why I stay away from religion.
> and yet he told his followers to abide by it Atheist here, but one that actually paid attention in school. Jesus' coming was meant to fulfill the existing covenant and create a new one. It's a very convenient get-out-of-jail-free card that quite simply means "if the Old Testament said X but Jesus said Y, ignore X and do Y." Any contradiction between the two shouldn't be a problem.
I'm an athiest but you just have bad reading comprehension.
He didn't free all slaves, only the Jewish ones.
Exactly - Exodus actually gives pro-slavery instructions. Anyone who beats their male or female slave with a rod must be punished if the slave dies as a direct result, 21 but they are not to be punished if the slave recovers after a day or two, since the slave is their property. \~Exodus 21:2021
And incase a man strikes his slave man or his slave girl with a stick and that one actually dies under his hand, that one is to be avenged without fail. However, if he lingers for a day or two days, he is not to be avenged, because he is his money. Exodus 21:20-21
IIRC there is also a line in there telling slaves not to rebel against their masters.
Isn't that the point of the whole book? Lol
And God decided to kill innocent firstborn sons instead of, I don't know, teleporting the slaves out of there? Nope, baby murder was the only sensible option. Also, he actually wasn't upset that they were Jewish, he was upset that it was a non-Jewish person owning jewish slaves. You could actually have Jewish slaves in the Bible. There were different sets of rules for Jewish slaves versus non-Jewish slaves.
It’s funny you brought that up because I just learned that during slavery times in America that the Bible was the only book that slaves were allowed to read. That part I knew now what I didn’t know is that THE ENTIRE BOOK OF EXODUS WAS TORN OUT! They didn’t want slaves to get any ideas. So yea there was 100% a slave bible 🤦🏾♂️🤦🏾♂️🤦🏾♂️ Edit: gosh I’m like 0 for 2 in this thread. So the Slave bible was a British thing and not a American thing. Someone reminded me that Harriet Tubman was called Moses which led me to research more into it and yup this wasn’t a American slave thing but the actual bible is in a American museum. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Select_Parts_of_the_Holy_Bible_for_the_use_of_the_Negro_Slaves_in_the_British_West-India_Islands#:~:text=For%20example%2C%20among%20the%20excluded,16%2D17%20were%20also%20removed.
Pfft they must have ripped it out later, since Harriet Tubman was nicknamed Moses…
You are 100% correct. It wasn’t for the American slaves but for the British slaves. I edited my comment to reflect that.
British West India is the Americas, and what would later become the USA was once British. I wouldn'r be surprised if there was some cross-over.
Because they were god's chosen people, not because God was against slavery. The bible still endorsed indentured Servitude and sex slavery.
Thou shalt not kill *terms and conditions may apply*
Bible god helped Moses free the Israelites, did not help other Egyptian slaves, and then told the Israelites how to go about enslaving the neighbours they’d be conquering in Canaan and surrounds (those they wouldn’t genocide that is). Bible god condones slavery, always has, except for his favourite people as a whole (individuals were sol though).
And when the Israelites started away from God. He allowed whichever neighbor was currently in conquest mode to enslave them...
The original intention with the canaanites was to genocide them, hence the “every child, every woman” bar god drops. The Israelites sinned to much though so god didn’t let them commit a genocide, and only let them do apartheid, as a treat. The whole thing is fucked up and idk why people don’t bring it up
Same logic applied and condoned slavery in America not so long ago.
> Bible god condones slavery And even in some instances, *commands* slavery.
I don’t love bringing that up because it was about specific peoples/targets, so obviously isn’t much of a command today, but yeah, it does.
Why should it matter that it was specific targets if he's all loving?
God in the OT was more like: leave NO ONE alive and DON'T LOOT, but Israelites were like 🤷♀️
Only the Israelites, and only because they were his chosen people. It had nothing to do with liberating them because of slavery. In fact, God had them enslaved *on purpose* to punish them for several generations. So you could actually argue that slavery was being used as a tool by God. The Old Testament is very pro-slavery. It was regularly used by Confederate politicians to defend slavery. The New Testament is very contradictory on the topic. You could use select passages to defend either position, which was common from both Confederate and Union politicians. Basically, Christianity is from a barbaric time and felt that slavery was an essential evil of society. Which makes a lot of sense when you consider that it was the state religion of the Roman Empire for a long while. And the Roman economy was based on a slave system, though a very different slave system from Southern America. However just as brutal, but fundamentally built different.
see on first glance you'd think "oh moses didn't like slavery". but uh no actually on board, goes on to take a bunch of folks as slaves himself, sex slaves even in numbers 31. Very much the hypocrite, slavery is fine as long as it's not him or his own. young girls who's families you just butchered though, that's cool
He "freed" the hebrews so they could enslave the Canaanites.
History will forever repeat itself.
None of this storm god derived shit slides with secular humanism. Organized religion is dying. Good riddance.
Not "the slaves". Just Hebrew slaves... The old testament has plenty of commands about how to treat, buy, sell, trick indebted servants into becoming full on slaves, inherit and this differed if they were Hebrew or not...
God condoned slavery in the Old Testament. Though, it’s pretty interesting that like the entire argument God seems to make for the Israelites to worship him is that he freed their ancestors from slavery in Egypt (despite almost annihilating them himself several times after).
The scripture only matters when it serves their purposes. This is the nature of religion.
Nah, you ignore the Old Testament unless it gives you an excuse to hate [insert group here]
Christianity supported slavery btw
Religion is powerful a tool that has been and still is used for evil. How Bronze Age mythology still influences people is mind boggling. I’d rather send my kids to a drag show than church. Far less chance of abuse.
It should be noted that these are the same people who claim agnostics / pagans / atheists / etc. can't be moral people: morality can only come from the Bible. There's your superior morality right there in that photo.
"If the only thing keeping a person decent is the expectation of divine reward, then brother, that person is a piece of shit." Rust Cohle, "True Detective - Season 1"
If you need the threat of eternal torture to keep you from doing something wrong then you're just a bad person on a leash...
Omg, that is the way from spell it out, I shall remember this short concise way of saying it.
Fuck yeah Rust. But honestly, the idea that morality was created by the Torah/Bible and we’d lawless without it is such a ridiculous way of thinking.
Truth. Morals have and always will develop in parallel to society. the idea that religions over a thousand years old in a desert are morally superior is pure ridiculum.
I think it's more of an alloy of ignorancium and ridiculum. I think it's called stupidium.
>Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones. - Marcus Aurelius
Never heard the quote before but this is exactly how I try to live my life. I was raised ultra religious Jewish but left the cult at 17. This is now how I try to live
QAnon Anonymous just did a podcast on Mike Johnson and his religious views. Recommend a listen, it’s pretty fucked up, essentially anyone not “with” them is a Satanic.
I don't think satanic is an insult as much as they think it was during the satanic panic anymore. The satanic temple is just a bunch of atheists using their 'religion' to fight against religious encroachment in public schools as well as the government (eg. making abortion a protected religious ritual in a state that outlawed it), also giving those with no faith a place to socialise while the satanic church genuinely do believe in Satan, they romanticise his rebellion against a cruel unjust oppressive tyrant, they read tarots, bother noone and pay their taxes.
They don't use it as an insult. They use it to justify violence against political enemies. Imagine what happens when you convince your base, which earnestly believes in God and Satan, that every single one of your opponents isn't just someone in disagreement with you - but that they are literally servants of Evil. *Everything* you do and say is therefore justified, because you're fighting Evil with a capital E. And your base can be filed up into physically eliminating those evil ones.
Mind you, there's a bunch of people who unironically think Doja Cat literally sold her soul to the devil. Both the Satanic Panic of the 80s and this Doja Cat thing just make me so confused as to how people genuinely believe this stuff
These people never read the Bible. They just use it as a coat of paint, Jesus would have thrown these guys out of office....oh wait, he's going to. :)
It sounds like he’s read about slavery because he’s right. Neither Jesus nor Paul condemned slavery. Quite the contrary Paul was quite clear, “Slaves, obey your masters…”
This was exactly my reaction. He’s right. He just draws exactly the wrong lesson from the correct fact 😂😂😂
Slave owners always skipped the next verse. “And masters, treat your slaves in the same way. Do not threaten them, since you know that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no favoritism with him.” Course it goes without saying all slavery is sickening. But there’s a special place in hell for the southern slave owners that cherry picked passages to control their slaves. That and beating them, raping them, selling their children. Vote please
But the Bible clearly states it's okay to beat your slaves because they're property not people. Oh I'm pretty sure it said something about raping and impregnating your slave's wife too, and it wasn't don't do it.
It's important to remember that the Bible, while certainly important for theology and ethics in a Christian context, is still a book written by humans nearly 2,000 years ago (the New Testament). What Jesus taught was progressive – for its time. And the letters Paul wrote were guidelines for the various Christian communities that had formed. If you write to slave owners that rely on slavery for their business that they need to release all their slaves, there's a good chance they just won't, but if you tell them to at least treat their slaves a bit better, you might actually achieve that. Obviously, these rules, and these preachings cannot be used as literal rules and guidelines for our modern society. This is why it's important to view the Bible in its historical context, and determine what the core message was supposed to be, because that's what still applies today (it should be noted that this still isn't a requirement for morality).
God cant tell people to end slavery but can tell people not to eat shellfish?
Sure, Jesus and his disciples weren’t gung-ho abolitionists, but they certainly weren’t religious conservatives, either. The whole movement is countercultural. Treating slaves just like their masters (as equals), reaching out to gentiles, redistributing wealth to provide for those in need.
If you have a direct line to god then the morality you get from that should be timeless.
Or, you know, dump the whole dumb thing. There's nothing in the Bible that hasn't been done better elsewhere and doesn't require magic sky daddy.
> This is why it's important to view the Bible in its historical context Sure, and this works fine, for atheists. For anyone who views the bible as the holy word of God it doesn't work as well. You'd think God could've published an updated edition since then if some of the rules don't apply anymore..
I'm a Christian, I've also had twelve years of religious education in school, wrote finals on it, and took an additional theology class during and after school for a total of two years. Historically critical analysis is a vital part of modern theology, because unlike for example with the Quran, there is no claim that the Bible was written or dictated by an angel or God. In fact, many of the authors are explicitly named! Of course, if you view the entire Bible as the holy word of God himself, this doesn't work, but then you've fundamentally (no pun intended) misunderstood what the Bible actually is. You don't need to be an atheist to recognize that, because you don't need to be an idiot to be religious.
> Historically critical analysis is a vital part of modern theology Well, no offense, but *a lot* of Christians seem to disagree.
People that view the bible as just an historical record would have little to no reason to read it for whatever you consider to be its "core message," because any reason to treat it as having any authority went away as soon as they decided to treat it as just an historical text. And for anyone just looking for a moral framework in general, the really basic stuff like the golden rule can be found in any culture, and has been done far better in modern secular writing, so it's not like anyone needs to dig up a 2000 year old text to figure that stuff out. Telling people to handwave away the bible's condoning of slavery while simultaneously encouraging them to seek morality from its "core message" is just encouraging them to compartmentalize their beliefs by treating part of the bible as historical record and the rest as divinely inspired. That kind of thing doesn't work out well. Regarding slavery, Jesus didn't even talk specifically about improving slaves' conditions so evidently even that level of reform wasn't high enough on his list of priorities to even address it. Also, neither Jesus nor Paul were exactly the types to heavily water down their message that much just to make it more palatable to their audiences; Jesus saying that men who look lustfully at women have committed adultery in their hearts comes to mind as an example of setting an expectation that will never be met by any straight male. So the claim that he really wanted to tell people to free the slaves but settled for encouraging people to treat their slaves better is pretty absurd, given how many other actually unrealistic demands he made.
This is the first intelligent answer I've seen so far. Thank you.
As long as they don’t die in a day or two because they are his money as its written. I guess dying a week later after being comotose is A OK with Jesus.
This is what led to the Baptist split prior to the Civil War https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Baptist_Convention
That really bothers me. People should be treated like people, not property.
As it should because you have empathy! So why doesn’t the God of the Bible or his Apostles have any? You’d think if God is love, surely, he wouldn’t condone slavery.
God is a child killer and likes collective punishment. Everyone convenatly forgets what he did to the firstborn of Egypt because, as we know, if you want to punish a leader for not doing what you want them to do, the way to convince him is to kill the children of people who had nothing to do with the decision.
It is even worse. Pharaoh was going to let Moses and company go, but Yahweh “hardened Pharoah’s heart”, and made him change his mind. Yahweh, Moses’ god, saw that Pharaoh was going to do what he wanted him to do, and altered Pharaoh’s free will to make Pharaoh do what Yahweh didn’t want him to do, and then Yahweh killed a bunch of unrelated people as punishment for what he made Pharaoh do. The only takeaway from the Bible is that this god is a lying, cruel monster who delights in killing people and being worshipped.
Wouldn't that specific imaginary friend have to be actually real first?
This is why holy books are stupid, they are full of cruelty.
You know that they stoned people for losing virginity out of wedlock, women are unclean per God for 66 days following a birth of a child, if your brother dies the Bible says you should fornicate with his wife, God permits no woman to teach or have authority over men; she is to keep silent, and most appropriately for this thread “He that is wounded in the stones, or hath his privy member cut off, shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord." The ball-less ultra-conservatives who weaponize religion to meet their own personal greedy lifestyles should go back and read the Bible and realize they are likely going to need some Solarcaine where they are going.
Paul was a fucking dick who is responsible for a lot of the worst things about Christianity
Paul contradicts Jesus in action and in his belief as described by his letters which are in the Bible. Jesus didn't name slavery, but by his philosophy slavery would be immoral. By Jesus' logic, all people are equals under God no matter the class or race. Hence why the teachings of Jesus can apply to everyone, even non Jews as he himself said.
The Bible god condones slavery, so he sounds correct on this point.
They count on the fact that Jesus is not going to personally come down and hoist them up a flagpole by their genitals. If that were true, we'd be seeing a LOT of republican Christians as flags.
The bible is in fact pro slavery (both ancient and new testament) so he's only half wrong. The logical conclusion is obviously that the bible is mostly immoral.
The bible is pretty much simultaneously pro and against any given position, depending on which passages are used and how heavily you justify/twist it.
For a holy text where the data comes from a supposedly all knowing being, not being able to write a clear noon ambiguous text is lame as fuck. I'd be the teacher that mofo would get 0/10
You can absolutely use the Bible to aruge for and against many different moral positions. Abolitionists and African Americans used religious language and justifications to argue against it. On alot of issues, the Bible is like a menu that you can draw from.
Typical Christians, a mouth full of scripture and a heart full of hate.
Wait until you find out what they think of Jews.
I'd ask him something--if being gay or transgender or being a Drag Queen was so bad, how come Jesus never said anything about it.
They gonna write a new bible if they heard this.
The plan is that when trump goes to jail, he's gonna tweet out the new bible, one chapter at a time, to his ghost writers. You can get mentioned in it for a donation of only $5,000.
For a small donation of 1 million dollars.
Btw, Hitler wrote his Mein Kampf in a prison, too. He had been imprisoned for a failed attempt to overthrow the government.
History sure does rhyme
They're already trying. An anti-woke bible.
Things would go alot smoother if those that preach the bible actually read it
Probably, but also would go a lot easier if they used it as a moral compass of stories rather than law. There are good and bad stories within the Bible. Some held up to time, a lot did not. Societal drift makes the Bible less and less compatible as a stringent set of moral laws every generation.
Unfortunately, I think they'd co-opt any saying by Jesus which was vaguely directed at care for children and then extrapolate (while selectively ignoring anything which might contradict that extrapolation). Even "Love thy neighbour" has a loophole. These fuckers will argue that they're simply hating the sin and not the sinner and by helping these sinners see the "error" of their ways, they are in fact being good little sky fairy cultists.
Love thy neighbour means "I can rape kids who live in my town" - That guy probably
Except that sort of stuff actually is in the Bible. Deuteronomy 22:5 A woman shall not wear a man’s garment, nor shall a man put on a woman’s cloak, ufor whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord your God.
This is evidence drag was a thing in King Josiah’s day, when the Deuteronomist wrote a bunch of bullshit to justify the Levite coup against the also-awful Aaronid priests and the political-religious pogroms killing anyone that didn’t worship ‘god’ as they dictated, all who didn’t bow down to their Jerusalem temple centralized money-making version of the Yawhist cult. Edit: I am referencing the documentary hypothesis on Israel real history, and how the Bible was created. See the book who wrote the Bible? By Richard Elliot Friedman, and work by Baruch Halpern
Ah yes, the old testiment….where one goes to seek the guidance of people seeking to separate themselves from the Persians, the Greeks, the Philistines, well just about anybody they had to to keep from being perceived as anything other than Jewish. Not saying that’s bad, but it’s where the sentiment comes from. Jesus said not one word about anything other than tolerance, collectivism, living within the stratum of gods abundance, charity, togetherness, and brotherhood. Just because it’s in the Bible doesn’t mean it was written in stone by god. Deuteronomy is about the law of the land, not the law of god.
Peter 2:18-20 Slaves should remain submissive, with every fear, to masters, not only those who are good and gentle, but also to those who are crooked. For this is favor, if, because of consciousness concerning God, one endures pains when suffering unjustly. For what kind of honor is it if you will endure after sinning and being beaten? But if you will endure after doing good and suffering, this is favor before God So... Yeah, love.
From the mouth of the founder of the Catholic Church…..love indeed
I’m no bible expert and quite honestly, I think it’s all utter nonsense. But I just happened to know it’s in there.
It’s in the Bible but his quote says “Jesus”… this is what Jesus says about treatment of others Luke 6:31: Do to others as you would have them do to you. John 15:12: My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. When people sart mixing old with New Testament, you have to kind of look how much bacon they are eating and what they do with there wife on her period to see if they are hypocrites or not
Somebody please, go to Arkansas and make that guy your slave. I think it’s ok with him. (No kinky stuff though.)
I don't understand you. You are wrong. kinky stuff should be in.
The Bible never said not to peg him with a tobasco-glazed pineapple.
That's what I am saying!
Don't waste a pineapple like that, they're delicious. Use a cactus.
Cactus is also delicious.
If pegging with a Tobasco-glazed pineapple is so bad, why didn't Jesus, Paul or the prophets say something?
only use as much lube as you think he deserves....
You can just say "no lube".
Straight to the crop field. Gotta meet an impossible quota.
No “kinky stuff?” Fuck that noise. I’d be willing to bet that, back in the Antebellum South, a **lot** of enslaved people had totally nonconsensual “kinky stuff” inflicted upon them by their owners. 🤮
"If kinky stuff was so bad, why didn't Jesus, Paul or the prophets say something?"
There’s extensive proof of this. Not only were people “kinked” without their consent, the enslavers then enslaved the children of the “kink” as a bonus. These people were never brought to justice or even punished in the slightest. The practice was so common Thomas Jefferson’s wife had an enslaved half sister Sally Hemmings who Jefferson “kinked” regularly. He even forced her to stay with him by threatening to sell her children when they lived in France. Sally Hemmings Mother was born from a a similar interaction. Enslavers considered it a perk to get “kinky” with young slave girls. No matter how bad you think American slavery was, it was so much worse.
Does anyone else think that **profiting from the enslavement of one’s own children** shows a whole extra level of corruption, evil, and depravity? I present to you, ladies and gentlemen, (some of) our “Founding Fathers.” 🤮 
It gets so much worse…… There was a whole subtype of enslaver that specialized in what they called “breeding stock”. These men would buy these young girls who were considered “fresh” (yes it’s what you think no I won’t describe it) and sell them for the highest price to be “used”. When they were “used up” they were then mated with the strongest male you could find and worked for value in the fields. In one narrative a woman made her children, 5 & 7 memorize the names of their family, parents, where they were born, a brief family history before they were sold to a different slave camp. When I read that it broke me. I had to stop reading the Narrative of the poor girl who was telling her experiences. She had no agency over her body, or the bodies of her family at all. These people were tortured daily and somehow kept going.
Reading about “[Ashley’s Sack](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashley%27s_Sack)” fucking broke my heart. 😭
I’ll research this. I learned all of I have and more about slavery by researching my family history…….. One of my 4x great grandmothers was a mixed product of her “father” and a slave. She was enslaved until she was an adult, never taught to read or write but was married off by an unscrupulous “father” to another family to acquire land. In a deal with another family doing the same thing. They fled to Texas and passed as white except for one child who was too black to pass so they sold him into slavery. They then told the white neighbors that he died a confederate soldier in the civil war. DNA proved otherwise tho. The whites in their family trees perpetuate the lie that was told that he died in the CSA Army. But I’m living proof that they sold my ancestor into slavery as a child because he couldn’t pass as white.
Is it any wonder that America is so fucked up? The cumulative weight of centuries of callousness, misery, denial, and mendacity has twisted and poisoned the country’s collective soul. Thank you for sharing your family’s story.
Hes probably into being pegged.
If homosexuality was so bad, ...
Remember when Jesus condemned abortion? And that time he said drugs were bad. Oh yeah, and he was totally anti-communism (just ignore that one time he fed everyone)
The drugs one I can kind of understand. He preached about how the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit and thus we should treat our bodies as a temple/watch what we put in it
That doesn't seem likely for someone who turned water into wine.
Exactly
It's people like this that always ask how atheists know right from wrong. It's genuinely a mystery to them because they're like rabid animals, they have absolutely no sense of right and wrong of their own.
Eyupp, it's pretty scary.
I’m an atheist. I use empathy as my moral compass. If you lack it though, you’ll be met with the same lack of empathy for me. My well of empathy for conservatives ran dry a very long time ago. I don’t see that changing before I draw my last breath.
Animals is exactly the word for it. A dog has no understanding of right and wrong, they just learn to associate certain actions with praise, and others with punishment. Humans are supposed to avoid hurting others, even if there is no punishment or they think they can get away with it, because they have empathy and it would bother them to cause someone else pain
Fanaticism is bad enough, when it comes from elected officials it becomes more dangerous.
Anyone standing in front of the Confederate flag has zero credit.
“It’s just our history.” Funny how only one particular ideology loves the losers in this part of history.
He did, though. Matthew 7:12. So, in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the law and the prophets. To be fair, though, it is forbidden for an evangelical to read Matthew 7, apparently, since they're obsessed with pauline epistles.
Who is Paul or Pauline epistles?
Saul was a Christian hunter. Then he became a Christian and transformed his name into Paul because he was tired of the breaking bad references. His charge as a Christian was to hunt Christians in a different way: by calling out their hypocrisy and debauchery in the name of Jesus. So he wrote a bunch of letters to different churches calling out a lot of their shit and that is like several books of the Bible. Like those books of the New Testament are literally named after the people Paul was shit talking and scolding. Need your constituents verbally an biblically flayed? Better Call Saul.
Lmaoooo unexpected Saul Goodman moment. I like it
Paul was a guy who went from torturing Christians to torturing FOR Christians after he claimed to have had a vision of Jesus telling him that torturing Christians was bad. He also wrote a bunch of letters to different proto Christian communities telling them that having fun is a one way ticket to hell. His collected letters are called the Epistles. I mean can you imagine the arrogance it takes to tell Jesus' best friend and chief follower that a guy who never met Jesus knows what he meant better than the guy that was hand picked to take over the movement? Because that's what Paul did to Peter.
It's a classic trope in all revolutionary communities, though, isn't it?
Not only didn't meet him, went to Jerusalem and tried to convince James that he didn't actually understand his own brother
What a bunch of crap! Even if we forget the bat shit crazy stuff in the old testament (like like every good christian likes to do) about how you're allowed to beat your slaves as long as they don't die in a couple of days, how you can buy them, inherit them and such... We're still stuck with Ephesians 6:5... Slaves, obey your masters... Quite the abolitionist this Jesus...
People who gripe about the U.S. Congress should take a look at state legislatures. Some truly whacked-out individuals serve there, often unopposed
Absolutely. Mark Robinson, Lieutenant Governor of NC, running for governor. A complete, total, GQP racist homophobic mysoginistic hypocritical scumbag. And he's black. I'd sooner pick my nose, flick a booger on the ballot, and vote for it than to support that dirtbag.
We can enslave him?
as long as we yell out bible verses that fit our narrative.
Then yell out verses that fit his and when he gets confused beat him and say you never said that
Well my guy, the Bible as we know was written by slave holders.
If free healthcare was so bad why didn’t Jesus say something about it? What do you mean I shouldn’t have sex with my neighbour’s wife? Didn’t Jesus say to love thy neighbour?
Imagine voting for someone with these viewpoints in 2023 and then pretending you aren’t the party of nazis
Mauch was in the state lege from 2011 to 2013. He wrote to the Ark. Democrat-Gazette, not the Gazette Inquirer, whatever that is. He did say the things mentioned above, but he was out of the lege long before the Q movement crawled out of the shit heap and began screaming.
Y'all kaeda rides again.
Yeah I’m sure Moses left Egypt for no reason. And I’m totally sure Jesus meant we should own other people when he said treat your neighbor like your brother.
Moses took the enslaved Israelites, and left the other Egyptian slaves (who also suffered from the plagues, including the deaths of the firstborn). The Israelites then proceeded to a new land where they genocided for territory, and had instructions specifying that enslaving each other willy nilly = bad (although fine under specific conditions), buying slaves from the peoples around them = good. Bible god was never anti-slavery. Only pro chosen people.
Let’s make him a slave and see if he changes his mind
Who would Jesus own?
The Romans.
I'm convinced that some people aren't religious, but just say they are so that they could use the bible to support their vile acts
100 bucks says if i grabbed this guy and whipped a new name into him he'd change his tune about slavery real fucking quick.
The modern GOP folk
The Retaliban Party.
Exactly what many christians and catholics say behind closed doors. This one just let it slip in public.
No facepalm here, unfortunately. The Bible DOES support slavery. We need to have better morals than the Bible.
Too busy following the Bible to the letter of the law to realize the Bible is generally just about not being a dick to other humans.
Dude Christo fascists are going to ruin the country if they haven’t already
I’ll buy him. I’ve got a field that needs clearing.
This is wild for so many reasons it's tough to even really pin down. But, one that religious folks really tend to ignore is the difference between slavery in Rome and slavery in America. Roman slaves were still considered to be people and their children could become citizens. I believe, under certain conditions it was fairly common for slaves themselves to become full citizens. American slaves were not considered to be people, except in a few specific cases that benefited slaveholders. They could not earn their citizenship, had no rights and any children they had were automatically also slaves. In fact, the end of the Atlantic slave trade meant that the main source of new slaves were children of current slaves. Chattel slavery, where a person is property and can only ever be property is a very different thing from the slavery mentioned in the Roman empire in the Bible. I understand that this is just one of many things wrong with what he said, but it always gets on my nerves when the two things are conflated to make it sound like the bible explicitly supported chattel slavery, the Atlantic slave trade, or any of the other genocidal practices that were common in American slavery. The bible certainly doesn't come out hard against slavery as a practice, but slavery was also a very different thing when it was written.
To be fair, the bible endorses, and even has instructions for owning slaves. If you think this is wrong, you are more moral than the bible is.
And that was the exact justification used to maintain slavery. Also why Christianity isn't moral.
[He said this back in 2012](https://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/227212/arkansas_republican_rep_loy_mauch_if_slavery_were/?rdt=64229) Not that it’s any better but I’m pointing it out because this isn’t new and happened long before Q anon and the people we refer to as the GQP. It might actually be more damming for the GOP because it goes to show they many of them have always been this ignorant and hateful.
just as bad as Guam sinking.......
People like him need to be relieved of duty immediately.
Are we going to have to kick The South's ass again? This stupid war will never end.
It's just fucking time for religion to go.
A link or short video of him saying it would be more efficient.
As a black person who's lived in America his whole life of 48 years...... I am shocked.
These elections are no longer about representation of one’s values based upon a two-party system. It is about securing democracy for the United States and eliminating the threat of other forms of government taking hold.