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Atheist's mistake about Bible

For Fapstronauts who are disciples of Christ

  1. parkurman123

    parkurman123 Fapstronaut

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    I've seen plenty of atheists criticize the old testament because it supposedly supports slavery. Ephesians 6:5 and Colossians 3:22 - call on slaves to be obedient to their masters. The problem with most atheists is that they don't know the original text and
    translation problems. In ancient Hebrew, the word "eved" was often used to refer to a servant or a worker who was owned by someone else not a slave. Writer Paul Copan says that the word eved should not be translated into slavery.
     
  2. Meshuga

    Meshuga Fapstronaut

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    Even without translation errors, there is a difference between tolerance and endorsement. Ephesians and Colossians are written to early Christians who are an extreme minority in their culture, and are already considered to be a threat by their neighbors for refusing to worship the Roman emperor. It was a spiritual and religious decision with massive political implications, and Christians were taking significant heat for it. Paul, the leader who wrote these letters, thought they could not afford to be any more controversial than they already were, so he advised Christians to remain as socially conservative, that is, conserving the culture they were already in, as they could be without compromising their spiritual beliefs. Even as they were, they were known as “a religion for women and slaves” for the leadership and service roles they permitted these social classes to assume within the church.
    This isn’t inconsistent with the theology, either. Jesus taught that everything in the physical world is temporary, and largely inconsequential in spiritual terms. Things like material wealth and social class don’t really matter, unless as a distraction from or an indicator of spiritual concerns. With that in mind, Christian slave owners were ordered to be humane to their charges, and Christian slaves were advised to get their freedom if they could, but a carte blanche order for all Christian owners to free their slaves and a recommendation to start a slave revolt would not have been feasible.

    A better criticism would be on how the Bible treats slavery when the believers are the ones creating the laws. We find the Jews did legalize a form of slavery. There were also laws addressing how slaves are to be treated, and they were freed on a regular basis. Slavery was as much a part of life in then as blisters, wars, and dirty dishes. It was practiced worldwide, and the history of slavery is very sticky, but it wasn’t outright abolished by any nation until Haiti did it, in conjunction with their declaration of independence, in 1804. Hebraic law was about as humane and progressive as it possibly could have been. To criticize them for not abolishing slavery is on the same level of ignorance as Marie Antoinette’s alleged “Let them eat cake” statement.
     
    Voyager22 likes this.
  3. JustinX

    JustinX Fapstronaut

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    Those were not really atheist then, sounds more like people from other religions trying to prove why their religion is better/superior.
    The real atheist dont really care if those are correctly translated fairy tales or incorrectly translated fairly tales. It's still just fairy tales.
     
  4. Also I reckon atheists don't understand that Christians are called to be servants. Like it's not like serving is a bad thing. But lots of people think it is.
     

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