Why is slavery wrong?

[Immanuel Can]

...we will have to talk about Black Liberation Theology...

I see no reason for that at all.

In Biblical times, there was no such thing. I don't expect to find Biblical explanations of the Napoleonic Wars or the Magna Carta...so I would be totally surprised if the Bible had anything at all to say about the trans-Atlantic slave trade or modern Catholic movements of black liberation.

One outstanding feature of the New Testament in particular is its total indifference to political issues. This is because politics is the tool of sinful mankind, not a tool of the Divine hand...and here I must quote the words of that "august theologian" Sting, who has written:

There is no political solution
To our troubled evolution
Have no faith in constitutions
There is no bloody revolution...

We are spirits in the material world.

The solutions the Bible countenances are spiritual ones, not political ones.

[Sculptor]

[RCSaunders]

... And that's the real question here: is there anything one can offer from a non-Theistic perspective as to why slavery would be "wrong'?

Wrong for whom? There are two questions here.

The first pertains to the enslaved individual. Is it wrong for an individual to be enslaved. I'm not referring to the actual case of one who is enslaved and has no choice about it. I'm referring to whatever would be best for an individual, i.e. can it ever be good for an individual to be under the coercive control of another human being? Most people see no problem with that, so for most it's a matter of degree, not principle.

The second question pertains to the individual who enslaves another human being. Is it wrong for one individual to coercively control another human being to recieve involuntary gain from their labor?

Everyone is different, but for those who choose to live their life as well as possibe and cannot be satisfied with anything they do not know they have produced or earned by their own effort and can never be satisfied with less than their own best, only complete freedom from the coercive control of others is good. But such individuals are very rare and most people actually embrace some level of control by others (usually government) over their lives. Most people prefer to be enslaved at some lever, even though they do not realize that is what it is.

As for the second question, it is only wrong for those rare individuals who themselves cannot live without being free that would be bothered by the fact that they are parasites or predators if any part of what they enjoy in life is at the involuntary cost of others. While they never ever think of it, every government employee at any level, everyone who receives government aid, support, or subsidies is a slaver, enjoying what is produced by others and confiscated from them by force.

If you have to ask, "is slavery wrong," or, "what is wrong with slavery," you are a slave and slaver and are only looking for a way to rationalize or justify your own proclivities.

[Alexis Jacobi]

I see no reason for that at all.

In my view, you have a most amazing capability at your disposal: the capability of dismissing, with the flick of a finger, any category of concern, or of 'reality' altogether, simply by saying so.

In Biblical times, there was no such thing.

I suppose that you could assert that to have been freed from the slavery condition in Egypt, which is a core trope of Judaism, had no *political* element, but to do so would be to block out reality. The implications of any 'liberation from a state of enslavement' will only bear on political questions. So for this reason the core Christian concerns now dovetail, and will always dovetail from today until Kingdom Come, with politics and political issues.

I don't expect to find Biblical explanations of the Napoleonic Wars or the Magna Carta...so I would be totally surprised if the Bible had anything at all to say about the trans-Atlantic slave trade or modern Catholic movements of black liberation.

Wait. If the Bible and Christians and Christianity do not have *things to say* about all events of history, and all concerns of humankind, then it is non-relevant to life. But the actual fact is that Christian thought deeply involves itself in all matters of modernity. Political, economic, ecological, sociological. There is no area of thought or value where it does not extend itself.

[Alexis Jacobi]

If you have to ask, "is slavery wrong," or, "what is wrong with slavery," you are a slave and slaver and are only looking for a way to rationalize or justify your own proclivities.

This does not seem right to me at all. If you believe that slavery, in any of its forms, is wrong, but especially if absolute slavery (chattel slaver) is extremely and definitively wrong, you will have to present a sound argument. If you cannot, then you cannot actually make the case. Also, your objection will remain (it seems to me) sentimental (dependent on your feelings about it).

[Immanuel Can]

I see no reason for that at all.

In my view, you have a most amazing capability at your disposal: the capability of dismissing, with the flick of a finger, any category of concern, or of 'reality' altogether, simply by saying so.

Not at all. I did not "simply say so, at all.

I gave you two very good reasons for realizing that Liberation Theology is not only not something we must talk about...but why it's also totally irrelevant to do so. I will list them again:

1. It's anachronistic -- LT is a recent phenomenon and Modern...about 2,000 years later than the Bible.

2. It's Catholic -- and as I've said before, Catholic is its own thing, distinct from Christian. (I am aware you don't see it that way, but you can hardly expect me to speak for a view you hold and I don't, can you?)

I suppose that you could assert that to have been freed from the slavery condition in Egypt, which is a core trope of Judaism, had no *political* element,

I certainly did not say that. I said that the New Testament (not Exodus, to which you refer) is entirely uninterested in poltical solutions. The OT does contain some references to polltical "elements," as you put it: but it shares with the NT this feature: that it describes such things, but never looks to human political rearranging for any solution. As in the NT, all the solutions have to do with God and with the spiritual conditions of his people.

Liberation Theology certainly is politically-focused in a way that the Bible never is; and among it's other "charming" elements, is highly supersessionist and highly fanciful.

I don't expect to find Biblical explanations of the Napoleonic Wars or the Magna Carta...so I would be totally surprised if the Bible had anything at all to say about the trans-Atlantic slave trade or modern Catholic movements of black liberation.

Wait. If the Bible and Christians and Christianity do not have *things to say* about all events of history, and all concerns of humankind,

??? Where did you get those words? They were certainly nothing I ever said or implied. Let's deal with what I have said, not somebody else's words.

The Bible does talk about the situation of servants and slaves, as I have pointed out: and it does so compassionately, to a degree remarkable and unique in ancient literature. But you can't fault it for failing to address directly things that did not even exist at the time of its writing, like Liberation Theology. There is enough in Scripture that is different from LT to reassure us that it is heretical and incorrect...but it is not directly mentioned, precisely because it didn't even exist. And even in the present landscape LT is largely only a South American concern. (Perhaps where you live suggests to you it's much more influential worldwide than it is.)

Now, let me just add that Scripture is always relevant to human beings, to real life, to history, and to basic issues in every age. But it does not address the sorts of things men would often like it to address. It will not tell you if you must vote Democrat or Republican in the next election in the US, or whether your electric toothbrush is better than a manual one, even if somebody decides it should. It also does not addresss how political projects men want to do can be launched in successful directions, or how men can obtain divine sanction for their selfish political aims and causes. None of that is the divine concern. It's merely an artifact of human hubris...nothing more important than that.

The focus of Scripture is on the relationship between God and mankind. Anything that interferes with that or distracts from it -- such as any belief that man can, on his own, achieve liberation without that relationship or reach Heaven without God -- is totally outside the scope of what Scripture promises. In fact, it promises the utter failure of all such hopes of human self-satisfaction or human independence.

[Immanuel Can]

Is it wrong for an individual to be enslaved.

Well, per any view without God in it, no.

Why should any particular phenomenon that happens on the indifferent and uncaring Earth be dubbed "wrong"? What justifies that judgment?

..whatever would be best for an individual...

First, you'll have to show why any one person is morally bound to have to care for what is "best" for somebody else. And, of course, you'd have to justify your account of "best."

The second question pertains to the individual who enslaves another human being. Is it wrong for one individual to coercively control another human being to recieve involuntary gain from their labor?

That's the key question.

Most people prefer to be enslaved

True or not, it's irrelevant. That statement neither justifies nor disproves the morality of slavery.

Why should we think people are owed whatever they "prefer"? That's certainly not obvious. Nor is it obvious we ought to take it away. In fact, nothing is really obvious from their "preferring" anything.

[Alexis Jacobi]

I gave you two very good reasons for realizing that Liberation Theology is not only not something we must talk about...but why it's also totally irrelevant to do so. I will list them again:

1. It's anachronistic -- LT is a recent phenomenon and Modern...about 2,000 years later than the Bible.

2. It's Catholic -- and as I've said before, Catholic is its own thing, distinct from Christian. (I am aware you don't see it that way, but you can hardly expect me to speak for a view you hold and I don't, can you?)

The question Why Is Slavery Wrong is not confined to the Bible, is it? Those who participate on this forum are modern persons, and all of them, all of us, have been informed, in one degree or other, by the political and social struggles of the last 60-80 years.

Currently, society is embroiled in conflicts that arose in those cultural clashes known as 'the Culture Wars'. So anyone approaching this thread will likely approach it in some degree through the lens of our present.

If the question is Why Is Slavery Wrong -- there is obviously a connection to the issue of Colonialism. The issue is subjugation and that also involves the notion of conquest. So Black Liberation Theology, which arose in response to the awareness of the Black experience (mostly in America though the Caribbean and Central and South America is another locus), is intimately connected with these questions and considerations.

Black Liberation Theology is distinct from Liberation Theology which is largely, but not exclusively, a movement within Catholicism. BLT arose within Protestantism, at least in the US, and is a critique that is not dependent on Catholicism or Catholic doctrines. Black Liberation Theology is highly relevant to the present social struggles in the US. Critical Race Theory has numerous points of connection to BLT.

I certainly did not say that. I said that the New Testament (not Exodus, to which you refer) is entirely uninterested in poltical solutions. The OT does contain some references to polltical "elements," as you put it: but it shares with the NT this feature: that it describes such things, but never looks to human political rearranging for any solution. As in the NT, all the solutions have to do with God and with the spiritual conditions of his people.

Yet the NT does not operate independently of the OT and when considering what Christianity is the OT is included. But no matter if the NT exluded political considerations, as it happened political considerations certainly became relevant in Christian cultures. And all later political organizations have Christian philosophy as their backdrop.

It seems to me that it is the 'spiritual condition' of Europeans that formed the base on which their political structures were built. And that goes for all things -- jurisprudence, ethics, government.

The Bible does talk about the situation of servants and slaves, as I have pointed out: and it does so compassionately, to a degree remarkable and unique in ancient literature. But you can't fault it for failing to address directly things that did not even exist at the time of its writing, like Liberation Theology.

Wait! Black Liberation Theology is a direct product of Protestant Christian culture and history. There is a direct line that runs from the spiritual view and position of, say, African American religious that goes directly back to 'Biblical times'. The concerns and focus that developed out of Judaism and Christianity are non-different in a host of ways from the considerations in modern times. In any case there is a connection. How could that connection be denied? Black Liberation Theology, therefore, defined the conditions of America as similar to that of Egypt or the pagan world, and through that situational awareness revivified their sense of what being Christian meant.

And these struggles to define *structures* as oppressive and evil, not good and liberating, are playing out directly in front of all of us. So, America once described itself as 'land of freedom', as 'liberator', as 'beacon of justice', but now it is changing its definition to 'oppressive structure' with enough bad history that can be severely and effectively challenged. It is at least in some sense a Christian conscience that is doing this.

None of that is the divine concern. It's merely an artifact of human hubris...nothing more important than that.

Respectfully, I think what you state here is chemically-pure opinion. How could you possibly know, and how could you possibly set limits on, what is of divine concern?

I admit that this sort of phrasing and statement is so odd to me that it clangs in my ears. It seems to me that if we are to define God and divinity, that we must define an intelligence involved in and concerned about all possible concerns.

The focus of Scripture is on the relationship between God and mankind. Anything that interferes with that or distracts from it -- such as any belief that man can, on his own, achieve liberation without that relationship or reach Heaven without God -- is totally outside the scope of what Scripture promises. In fact, it promises the utter failure of all such hopes of human self-satisfaction or human independence.

Your perspective is totally different from what mine is. Or I should say your *orientation*. We continue to disagree on many points because our basic view and understanding is so different. But as I always say *I respect your ideas and your opinions*.

[promethean75]

"Why should any particular phenomenon that happens on the indifferent and uncaring Earth be dubbed "wrong"? What justifies that judgment?"

I could ask the same question about phenomena being dubbed 'wrong' on and earth created by a god. What makes a particular act 'wrong'? God's decision? And what moves him to decide what he is to call 'right' and the 'wrong'? Is this decision made by fiat, or is this god convinced, instructed and encouraged by some reason not his own?

If the former, then he could have just as easily decided that murder was 'right', and our obedience to a god who just happened to decide the contrary (that murder is 'wrong') is as arbitrary as god's choice itself.

"If you say, as more orthodox theologians do, that in all the laws which God issues he had a reason for giving those laws rather than others -- the reason, of course, being to create the best universe, although you would never think it to look at it -- if there was a reason for the laws which God gave, then God himself was subject to law, and therefore you do not get any advantage by introducing God as an intermediary. You really have a law outside and anterior to the divine edicts, and God does not serve your purpose, because he is not the ultimate law-giver. In short, this whole argument from natural law no longer has anything like the strength that it used to have." - Bertrand 'the pipe' Russell

"I am not for the moment concerned with whether there is a difference between right and wrong, or whether there is not: that is another question. The point I am concerned with is that, if you are quite sure there is a difference between right and wrong, you are then in this situation: is that difference due to God’s fiat or is it not? If it is due to God’s fiat, then for God Himself there is no difference between right and wrong, and it is no longer a significant statement to say that God is good. If you are going to say, as theologians do, that God is good, you must then say that right and wrong have some meaning which is independent of God’s fiat, because God’s fiats are good and not bad independently of the mere fact that He made them. If you are going to say that, you will then have to say that it is not only through God that right and wrong came into being, but that they are in their essence logically anterior to God." - same guy with the pipe

But suppose you still insist on believing that god was not inclined by reason beyond his own and by fiat decided what it to be 'right' and 'wrong'. Now you have bigger problems...

"The world, we are told, was created by a God who is both good and omnipotent. Before He created the world He foresaw all the pain and misery that it would contain; He is therefore responsible for all of it.

It is useless to argue that the pain in the world is due to sin. In the first place, this is not true; it is not sin that causes rivers to overflow their banks or volcanoes to erupt. But even if it were true, it would make no difference. If I were going to beget a child knowing that the child was going to be a homicidal maniac, I should be responsible for his crimes. If God knew in advance the sins of which man would be guilty, He was clearly responsible for all the consequences of those sins when He decided to create man.

The usual Christian argument is that the suffering in the world is a purification for sin and is therefore a good thing. This argument is, of course, only a rationalization of sadism; but in any case it is a very poor argument.

I would invite any Christian to accompany me to the children’s ward of a hospital, to watch the suffering that is there being endured, and then to persist in the assertion that those children are so morally abandoned as to deserve what they are suffering. In order to bring himself to say this, a man must destroy in himself all feelings of mercy and compassion. He must, in short, make himself as cruel as the God in whom he believes. No man who believes that all is for the best in this suffering world can keep his ethical values unimpaired, since he is always having to find excuses for pain and misery.” - same guy with the pipe

To resolve this mess, you have to accept as a fatalist everything that happens in the world, including all its horrors and atrocities, as both necessary and part of a larger plan that can only remain mysterious to anyone who might inquire about it.

So you're pretty much screwed. This is what happens when you accept a preposterous premise (that there is a god) and then become forced to make sense out of the nature of the world without inadvertently reducing your premise to a grand absurdity; your final words are, and can only be: 'god works in mysterious ways.'

But note that only here do you make this concession. Everywhere else concerning what, how and why he is and does what he does, you claim to have a convincing argument that will strike any intelligent person as both logically sound and reasonable.

How convenient.

[Immanuel Can]

I gave you two very good reasons for realizing that Liberation Theology is not only not something we must talk about...but why it's also totally irrelevant to do so. I will list them again:

1. It's anachronistic -- LT is a recent phenomenon and Modern...about 2,000 years later than the Bible.

2. It's Catholic -- and as I've said before, Catholic is its own thing, distinct from Christian. (I am aware you don't see it that way, but you can hardly expect me to speak for a view you hold and I don't, can you?)

The question Why Is Slavery Wrong is not confined to the Bible, is it? Those who participate on this forum are modern persons, and all of them, all of us, have been informed, in one degree or other, by the political and social struggles of the last 60-80 years.

Back to the main question, then.

Prove to me, with reference to "modern persons" and "modern information...from the political struggles of the last 60-80 years" (as you stipulate) that slavery is wrong.

I'm listening.

If the question is Why Is Slavery Wrong -- there is obviously a connection to the issue of Colonialism.

Do you mean the "colonialism" of whites, or of Arabs, who have been fare more involved in slavery, especially the Trans-Saharan trade? What about the black enslavers and slave traders on the African continent? Or how about the colonialism of the South American and Caribbean slave trades?

Critical Race Theory has numerous points of connection to BLT.

Both are thoroughly poisonous ideologies, actually. Both are deeply racist and Neo-Marxist, and both are driven by what Nietzsche called "ressentiment."

But I'm not clear on how either one of them is capable of answering the question: in fact, I know they can't.

Black Liberation Theology is a direct product of Protestant Christian culture and history.

Well, we're going to get into some more technical stuff and deep waters here. BLT is not a product of all, or even of most Protestant theology. It's a product of things like Neo-Marxism, racist resentment and the weak and debased humanist theology of "social justice" congregations.

There is a direct line that runs from the spiritual view and position of, say, African American religious that goes directly back to 'Biblical times'.

Not quite right.
It is certainly true that slaves in, say, America, co-opted Biblical narrative to their own purposes. And why not: after all, these were largely uneducated people, living under considerable tyranny; why should they not find themselves sympathetic with the plight of ancient Jews in Egypt?

But they were not in Egypt. And they were not Jews. And there circumstances were not the circumstances of the ancient Israelites. So their enthusiasm was merely by way of feeling and analogy, not at all by way of the literal or the text. We can understand and sympathize with their affinity with the Biblical story: but, to state the obvious, Exodus was not written to or about them, no matter how passionately they may have wished it had been.

It is at least in some sense a Christian conscience that is doing this.

Objecting to slavery? Yes.

William Wilberforce, an evangelical Christian, was responsible for the elimination of slavery in the British Empire. He gave his life to that cause. And he did so because of his Christian conscience.

Likewise, the anti-slavery movement in America was powerfully backed by Christians of conscience. And Republican soldiers marched into battle to Protestant hymns. The fact that, as Genesis says, and as Acts reaffirms, all men are made "of one" and "in the image of God" made it inevitable that Christians of good conscience would end up against slavery. Not all the powerful cultural rhetoric of the South and its Democrats could prevent that.

And MLK was, officially, a Protestant pastor, you will know. His co-optation of Biblical language was frequent, emotive and rhetorically powerful. And it, too moved the consciences of Americans raised in a Protestant ethos.

So yes, Protestants had a heck of a lot to do with the ending of slavery.

But what are we to make of that next?

None of that is the divine concern. It's merely an artifact of human hubris...nothing more important than that.

Respectfully, I think what you state here is chemically-pure opinion. How could you possibly know, and how could you possibly set limits on, what is of divine concern?

Biblically.

But as I always say *I respect your ideas and your opinions*.

Likewise. I don't have to partake of all the same opinions you hold in order to find I respect you and appreciate your conversation. Agreeing with me is never a prerequisite for respect.

So please, continue as you think appropriate. Remain assured that you are in no way out of good standing with me. I quite enjoy our exchanges. You're quite circumspect, fair, and not prone to ad homimems or other irrelevancies, and even if I don't always agree, I don't find your thinking the least bit superficial.

[Immanuel Can]

"Why should any particular phenomenon that happens on the indifferent and uncaring Earth be dubbed "wrong"? What justifies that judgment?"

I could ask the same question about phenomena being dubbed 'wrong' on and earth created by a god. What makes a particular act 'wrong'? God's decision? And what moves him to decide what he is to call 'right' and the 'wrong'? Is this decision made by fiat, or is this god convinced, instructed and encouraged by some reason not his own?

What God says IS the right thing. What the right thing is, IS what God says. It's the same statement.

You're just recycling the old Euthyphro "dilemma," which has been asked-and-answered, including on this site, by me. Short answer: it's premised on a false dichotomy.

And Bertrand Russell? I don't know about his mathematics...I can't speak to that...but his grasp of theology was so embarassingly weak that apologists often use his book "Why I Am Not a Christian" as a launchpad for their own apologetics. The guy threw nothing but softballs, underhand. Any good theologian can hit them out of the park.

"The world, we are told, was created by a God who is both good and omnipotent. Before He created the world He foresaw all the pain and misery that it would contain; He is therefore responsible for all of it.

You're presuming Determinism already.

I'm not a Determinist. Neither is God.

I would invite any Christian to accompany me to the children’s ward of a hospital, to watch the suffering that is there being endured,

We know. And very likely, we or the Jews built the hospital.

So you're pretty much screwed.

You're waaaaay overconfident.

Nothing close. Do you seriously imagine that in 2,000 years we Christians haven't thought of these things?

Seriously...sometimes the naivete of cynics just astounds me.

What you need to do is go and read something from even a moderately competent Christian apologist. All of this has been dealt with, and there are serious answers to every question you've raised.

But if you spend all your time reading Dawkins or Bertrand Russell's dust jackets, you're never going to know that. You're going to be reassured that all your objections are devastating, and that nobody's ever heard them before.

So amusing.

[RCSaunders]

If you have to ask, "is slavery wrong," or, "what is wrong with slavery," you are a slave and slaver and are only looking for a way to rationalize or justify your own proclivities.

This does not seem right to me at all.

That's quite telling.

If you believe that slavery, in any of its forms, is wrong, but especially if absolute slavery (chattel slaver) is extremely and definitively wrong, you will have to present a sound argument. If you cannot, then you cannot actually make the case. Also, your objection will remain (it seems to me) sentimental (dependent on your feelings about it).

It has nothing to do with feelings. It is entirely a matter of how one evaluates one's own individual life.

There is a psychological flaw in the thinking of any human being who can, even for a moment, entertain the idea of using another human being against that other human being's will for one's own gain or pleasure. It says, in essence, "I cannot succeed or survive if I have to depend entirely on my own will and effort and therefore, to have the kind of life I want, I have to be a parasite or predator--not a fully competent, viable human being."

Slavery is just one of the ways that psychological flaw manifests itself.

There is an equal and opposite flaw in the psychology of anyone who would allow themselves to be so used.

You may see nothing wrong with that. Most people don't. Apparently you don't.

[RCSaunders]

Is it wrong for an individual to be enslaved.

Well, per any view without God in it, no.

Why should any particular phenomenon that happens on the indifferent and uncaring Earth be dubbed "wrong"?

Of course you are speaking from your own Christian perspective.

I assure you there are many individual human beings on this earth who care very much about their life and are not at all indifferent to either their own or other's interests.

Why do, "indifferent Christians," even get involved in such discussions if they don't care?

..whatever would be best for an individual...

First, you'll have to show why any one person is morally bound to have to care for what is "best" for somebody else. And, of course, you'd have to justify your account of "best."

I cannot imagine the kind of psychology that could possibly believe their only reason for wanting what is best for all human beings is because some force or mandate outside themselves, "binds," them to that attitude. Anyone who cannot see that no one gains any real objective self-enriching value at anyone else's involuntary expense suffers from either short-sightedness or some sociopathic disorder. We can all profit from others by voluntary exchange, but taking by force is always killing the goose that lays the golden egg.

Most people prefer to be enslaved

True or not, it's irrelevant. That statement neither justifies nor disproves the morality of slavery.

It doesn't matter. It has nothing to do with someone's view of, "morality." What is right or wrong is not determined by dictate or agreement or any individual's feelings. Right and wrong are determined by whatever objective is to be achieved by a principle. If the objective is a successful, (fully satisfying life of achievement without regret or despair and fully enjoyed in this real world), that excludes using others for one's own gain against their will. Not understanding that is a form of pathology.

Very few understand it. The world is dominated by the stupid, ignorant, and loopy.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Prove to me, with reference to "modern persons" and "modern information...from the political struggles of the last 60-80 years" (as you stipulate) that slavery is wrong.

It was Abe Lincoln who said "I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel." And it is my sense of it that it is this sentiment that defines the anti-slavery position.

It is totally a question of what is 'felt' and what is 'seemly'. My sense of the historical process is that as time marched on the cruelty of slavery became intolerable and unacceptable to those who viewed it. But at one time, when they looked, this was not seen. So I refer to an internal shift. (I remind myself of Kafka's In the Penal Colony, an ingenious recapitulation of Genealogy of Morals). At the same time, and I say this literally, the anthropology (how man is defined) of the era developed and shifted. It became no longer possible to look at an enslaved Black and feel or believe that this was anything one could rationally feel was 'right'. And then there was the state of realization of the slaves themselves. To have been ripped out of their own contexts and transplanted into contexts not their own required learning and integrating the tenets that directed those contexts. The very cultural conversation that did in fact go on in the early and middle 1800s about slavery was expansive and broad. And those ideas and arguments, when heard and understood by Blacks that began to be educated, informed their own ideas about the topics. But in some other cultural situation (it has seemed to me) those ideas and those conversations would never have been discussed. Was there a *conversation* in their own African context? In the Arab context? In any other context but the Occidental context. I don't think so.

So African Americans absorbed all these idea from the context. Just like you and I would if we were illiterates. We would eventually become conversant, and we would then become activist and effective. Think Frederick Douglass.

I think it is more interesting to realize that those *modern persons* do not have any ultimate argument against it, except those who insist that 'slavery is a sin'. With that statement, they attempt to put it on a theologically-supported ground.

I think that when you make the distinction between indentured slavery and servitude and 'chattel slavery', as if one is at least a bit acceptable and the other totally indefensible, that you could only make this argument through a form of insistence that, somehow, God Himself ordained that slavery to be absolutely wrong but could condone the former because it has a time-stamp on it. But that would depend on a theological argument -- that God said this or that -- and that is not really an argument, it is a theistic assertion.

So let us reduce the opposition to slavery right down to its brass tacks. The *argument* against it is If you do that to me I will kill you. Why bother to concoct justification or to take justification apart?

[Immanuel Can]

Is it wrong for an individual to be enslaved.

Well, per any view without God in it, no.

Why should any particular phenomenon that happens on the indifferent and uncaring Earth be dubbed "wrong"?

Of course you are speaking from your own Christian perspective.

"From"? Yes, I can do no other...I am a Christian.

But I'm speaking "about" what's true in a Godless universe...and that's not dependent on a Christian perspective at all. In fact, it requires at least the heuristic trick of thinking about what is true from the other perspective.

And I'm asking people who live in that perspective: how do you prove to yourselves -- and to people who don't already want to think it -- that slavery is wrong?

First, you'll have to show why any one person is morally bound to have to care for what is "best" for somebody else. And, of course, you'd have to justify your account of "best."

I cannot imagine the kind of psychology that could possibly believe their only reason for wanting what is best for all human beings is because some force or mandate outside themselves, "binds," them to that attitude.

You dodged.

This isn't about what I think. It's about how secularists justify their own viewpoint.

What is right or wrong is not determined by dictate or agreement or any individual's feelings.

That was my point.

That's why your ealier statement that people don't like to be enslaved added nothing relevant to the answer.

Right and wrong are determined by whatever objective is to be achieved by a principle.

Great: name the "principle."