Source: bridgewatersociety.wordpress.com

My father recently referred to basic ethics as “biblical morals.” I rehashed the tired arguments that suggest our morals come from elsewhere and encountered, in response, a religious meme I’d like to address.

“The bible is a great source of moral wisdom. Yes, admittedly, some parts are…complicated.”

Appeals to mystery and complexity are ever the theist’s ally, and they can be slippery arguments to handle, but in this case I think it’s important to nip it right in the bud. I replied, roughly:

The bible endorses human ownership. You can own a person as a slave. This person is transferable to your children upon your death. If they happen to be Jewish, great, on the year of Jubilee you have to set them free if they’d like (but not their family). If they are not Jewish, you own them forever. You can beat them as punishment as long as they don’t die immediately afterward. If it takes them a few days to die, the slavemaster goes unpunished. This is from the most perfectly moral book ever written by the most loving, perfect being conceivable – a being whose compassion is so fierce as to defy our understanding.

He responded, “Yes, I’ll have to go back and take a look at some of those scriptures again. There are some passages that require a deeper reading, and the slave issue is really complicated.”

This is one hazard attached to appeals to absolute moral authority, especially a lousy one. These scriptures are straightforward, clear instructions, yet because we know with our modern moral sensibilities that owning a person is morally impermissible, we assume some unknown bit of data must …continue reading the discussion at bridgewatersociety.wordpress.com