Why atheists, Satanists, heathens, etc can't be Americans or Westerners

MarcusA said:
There are plenty of anti-slavery themes in the Bible, both old and new. People who want to own slaves will just retroactively attempt to find a way to do it.

Ancient Greek philosophy influenced the later Christian churches as well, so your history is rather bunk, IMO.
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"Anti-slavery themes" can be interpreted subjectively. But the Bible says very clearly what the rules are for owning slaves, which means Christianity and Judaism allow for slavery.

I didn't say Greek philosophy didn't influence the churches. I said the anti-slavery movement of the Enlightenment had its roots in Greek philosophy.
 
StoneByStone said:
"Anti-slavery themes" can be interpreted subjectively. But the Bible says very clearly what the rules are for owning slaves, which means Christianity and Judaism allow for slavery.

I didn't say Greek philosophy didn't influence the churches. I said the anti-slavery movement of the Enlightenment had its roots in Greek philosophy.
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Thanks, Stoney.
 
StoneByStone said:
Yes, because that's when the Enlightenment began. Christians didn't begin thinking slavery was wrong until they stopped thinking religiously and started basing their philosophy on the Ancient Greeks.
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The Greeks were notorious slave owners. I have never heard of Plato, Aristotle, Pericles, Herodotus, or the pre Socratics speak out against slavery.

I hold Voltaire, Rousseau, and Adam Smith in the highest esteem.

But I hold facts and truth in higher esteem. The first human I am aware of to write negatively about slavery was Saint Augustine in the 4th century. By the way, that was 1,200 years before the enlightenment. Augustine wrote that slavery was contrary to God's intent, and resulted from human sin.

I actually do not think the Enlightenment era did that much to stop slavery. The enlightenment was primarily interested in reason, technology, and scientific progress. The abolition movement really got rolling in the Romantic era -- in my opinion because the Romantics placed their premium on individuality, free will, human freedom, the value of emotion, and personal conscience.
 
StoneByStone said:
Christianity definitely allows for slavery.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bible_and_slavery
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You missed the entire point that it isn't sanctified by Christ or Christianity. Please stop trying to be another cherry-picking hater. It was some Christians that were acting outside the faith and tried to vindicate themselves with scripture. I've posted the reasons and history behind it. Here's for the 3rd or 4th time showing this piece of Southern Christians critiquing their history. https://www.christianitytoday.com/history/issues/issue-33/why-christians-supported-slavery.html Now, can you stop trying to rope the abusers of Christian doctrine in with everyone else. You never even answered if you knew what the Pharisees was or why it condemns slavery. Just give fair critique if you want and I won't give a hoot. It's your right to not be a believer.
 
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Crocodile said:
You missed the entire point that it isn't sanctified by Christ or Christianity. Please stop trying to be another cherry-picking hater. It was some Christians that were acting outside the faith and tried to vindicate themselves with scripture. I've posted the reasons and history behind it. Here's for the 3rd or 4th time showing this piece of Southern Christians critiquing their history. https://www.christianitytoday.com/history/issues/issue-33/why-christians-supported-slavery.html Now, can you stop trying to rope the abusers of Christian doctrine in with everyone else. You never even answered if you knew what the Pharisees was or why it condemns slavery. Just give fair critique if you want and I won't give a hoot. It's your right to not be a believer.
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I'm not talking about the Southern Christians. I'm talking about slavery being permitted in the Bible as well as slavery being practiced throughout Christian history. If it was just the Southern Christians, I'd say they were outliers.

I know about the Pharisees, they were a movement within Judaism. Their thoughts on slavery are beside the point. The point is that Judaism and Christianity permit slavery and the majority of Jews and Christians believed slavery was ok, even though there were exceptions that went against mainstream Jewish and Christian thought.
 
Cypress said:
The Greeks were notorious slave owners. I have never heard of Plato, Aristotle, Pericles, Herodotus, or the pre Socratics speak out against slavery
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I didn't say the Greeks were against slavery. I said that Abolitionism became common when Christians switched from Christian philosophy to Greek philosophy.
Religion is about blind faith, whereas Greek philosophy required people to start thinking and examining social norms. This is what led to people coming up with things like human rights.

The first human I am aware of to write negatively about slavery was Saint Augustine in the 4th century. By the way, that was 1,200 years before the enlightenment. Augustine wrote that slavery was contrary to God's intent, and resulted from human sin.
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Augustine was an outlier of his time and his thoughts on slavery didn't actually cause society to change. Slavery remained normal long after Augustine and wasn't seriously questioned until the Enlightenment.
And if Augustine believed slavery was wrong, then he was going against his own religion, much like the liberal American Christians.

I actually do not think the Enlightenment era did that much to stop slavery. The enlightenment was primarily interested in reason, technology, and scientific progress. The abolition movement really got rolling in the Romantic era -- in my opinion because the Romantics placed their premium on individuality, free will, human freedom, the value of emotion, and personal conscience.
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All of those ideas were also present in the Enlightenment, especially individuality and human freedom. Romanticism was more of an artistic movement. There was some philosophy there too, but that was a continuation of the Enlightenment with extra emphasis on nature and emotion.
 
StoneByStone said:
I didn't say the Greeks were against slavery. I said that Abolitionism became common when Christians switched from Christian philosophy to Greek philosophy.
Religion is about blind faith, whereas Greek philosophy required people to start thinking and examining social norms. This is what led to people coming up with things like human rights.



Augustine was an outlier of his time and his thoughts on slavery didn't actually cause society to change. Slavery remained normal long after Augustine and wasn't seriously questioned until the Enlightenment.
And if Augustine believed slavery was wrong, then he was going against his own religion, much like the liberal American Christians.



All of those ideas were also present in the Enlightenment, especially individuality and human freedom. Romanticism was more of an artistic movement. There was some philosophy there too, but that was a continuation of the Enlightenment with extra emphasis on nature and emotion.
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I believe it ultimately required Christianity as well as deist and agnostic thinkers of the 18th and 19th century to propel the abolitionist movement. And it also required the efforts of blacks, Frederick Douglass probably did more to end slavery that any white enlightenment philosopher.

I would not call Romanticism a continuation of the Enlightenment. It was a reaction against the Enlightenment which was perceived to be too much aligned with cold, calculated reason and scientific or technological progress. The Romantic writers, philosophers, poets made individuality, free will, and personal conscience their milieu. And I believe abolition movements, first and foremost, required reaching people's souls - not appealing to their empirical reasoning. Harriet Tubman's Uncle Tom's Cabin made people feel repulsed by slavery at a deep, visceral, and emotional level. The book did not appeal to their scientific or empirical reasoning capacities.
 
A great proportion of early Christians were slaves, and women. It was a vote of confidence in imperialism, male superiority big money, and in Trumpf, was it?
 
Cypress said:
I believe it ultimately required Christianity as well as deist and agnostic thinkers of the 18th and 19th century to propel the abolitionist movement. And it also required the efforts of blacks, Frederick Douglass probably did more to end slavery that any white enlightenment philosopher.
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That seems unlikely considering Westerners had Christianity for over a thousand years before they ended slavery and, as previously stated, the Bible clearly says slavery is alright.

I would not call Romanticism a continuation of the Enlightenment. It was a reaction against the Enlightenment which was perceived to be too much aligned with cold, calculated reason and scientific or technological progress. The Romantic writers, philosophers, poets made individuality, free will, and personal conscience their milieu. And I believe abolition movements, first and foremost, required reaching people's souls - not appealing to their empirical reasoning. Harriet Tubman's Uncle Tom's Cabin made people feel repulsed by slavery at a deep, visceral, and emotional level. The book did not appeal to their scientific or empirical reasoning capacities.
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I know that's a common view, but Romanticism was really a rebellion against industrialization. The Enlightenment promised that industrialization would make life easier because people would be able to spend less time working while making more money. Instead what happened is people got laid off and went poor. It was the cold uncaring hand of Capitalism that brought about Romanticism.
 
MarcusA said:
The Common Law in the US is based off of "religious" morality and values.

For example, not only rape, murder and things of that nature "sins" in Christianty and world religions, but are also "crimes" under "secular" law; with "secular law" having developed or evolved out of older religious and legal systems, such as Roman, Exodus, and so on.

An atheist, for example, can't have any objection to murder, rape and things of that nature except on faith, or on stealing and appropriating those moral values and axioms from world religions (much as degenerate heathen "religions" and cults such as "Satanism" have no morality to speak of which is compatible with that that of law, society and so forth).

So yes, I'd argue based on these facts, state and federal can and should, indeed favor Christianity (and monotheistic, world religion with compatible values) both in public and private over inferior and socially unacceptable trash such as atheism, Satanism and so forth, rather than pretending that such filth and worthlessness is in anyway "equal" to them, when it is decidedly inferior, and has no right to exist it all.
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Plenty of atheists actually subscribe to Christian morals, whether they admit it or not. Secular humanism is basically just Christianity without the supernatural aspects.

95% of the American population was raised in a Christian context in terms of morals, so whether an individual actually believes in God or not is somewhat irrelevant in terms of ethical frameworks.
 
MarcusA said:
Oh really?

An atheist can't have any objection to rape, murder, or other immoral acts by virtue of some "lack of belief in a God".

He can only steal or culturally appropriate those moral axioms from religion, of course.

So yes, a monotheistic religion which prohibits rape and murder as immoral, is decidedly more compatible and acceptable with our Law than a weak and effeminate little atheist who has no morality to speak of beyond that perhaps of a beast, or what he has stolen from his moral and religious superiors.
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I'm an atheist that doesn't have a problem with following several laws that fit what you're discussing. Rational self-interest is part of why. Any reasonable person doesn't want to live in a society that permits wanton violence and murder.
 
MarcusA said:
The point is that atheists than those with no morality to speak of beyond that of a beast or dog can't be trusted to govern or regulate themselves without the aid of a comparatively enlightened individual, so to indoctrinate them in to the right and moral superior way and path is the duty of the god-fearing and enlightened, much akin to a shepherd hearing a flock of sheep, who would otherwise be lost if left to their own devices.
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Culture doesn't require a deity, although it does help. That being said, the West's long history of Christian influence makes it feasible to raise children with Christian ethics without having to believe in the supernatural side of Christianity.
 
MarcusA said:
So why should one who by virtue of their own views claim any moral qualm against rape, murder, child molestation, and vile things of said nature.

I see no reason why such and individual should be presumed to have any rights or means of self-governance; they should merely be quarreled and chatteled like the feral animals which they have so much more in common with than a comparatively enlightened man or woman.
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That goes against the basis of having a free society. Granted, there are Islamic societies that behave this way. Atheists are routinely oppressed (and sometimes executed) by many Islamic societies. Laws against apostasy are effectively one of the methods of doing so.

I don't think we want to follow their example.
 
MarcusA said:
Hatred of evil? Why is that "bad".

Even in the Old Testmant, it was forbidden to make a graven image of God, like those of "heathens" whose pagan "gods" were simply akin to powerful "mortals", probably more akin to TV celebrities and the superstitious ways in which idiotic voyeurs fictitiously imagine and idolize them.

On the other hand, God as in the Supreme Being of the Cosmos was transcendent, unable to be depicted with the imagery and simplistic of the childish and simple-minded atheist or heathen. (Much as even in the days of the Medieval Church, images of God were not said to be "God" himself, but merely depictions of God for those who were not literate).

So no, simplistic imagery, or Jungian archetypes like "ghosts, goblins, flying spaghetti monsters", and ugly and inferior little things of that nature are merely the property of the atheist, the heathen, and comparatively simplistic, materialistic, and unenlightened rabble.

God, on the flip side, the Supreme Being or Principle of all the Universe, so infinite, like mathematics, that it could never be depicted in words or symbolism which a mere simpleton could comprehend to begin with.
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Have you considered Islam? It definitely fits your mindset better than most modern Christianity.
 
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