Posts

Showing posts from July, 2012

Slavery in the Bible

Many people mistakenly claim that the Bible supports slavery. The intention of this article is to show that the claim is not true. (I will be using several passages from a very enlightening book by Paul Copan titled “Is God a Moral Monster.” I would encourage you to get that book for an in-depth study on this subject) First of all, we normally think of the word slavery as we have seen in the antebellum South (prewar). We hear horrible stories of this wretched practice and we know deep in our hearts that “slavery” is evil. But the big question is this – when the Bible uses the word “slavery,” what is its meaning? Does it equate with the meaning of slavery that we know today? As we all agree, it’s very important to interpret any ancient writings in their proper context. Having said that, let us analyze slavery in the Bible. What we find in the Bible is not slavery like we had in the antebellum South; rather, it is indentured service. Hebrew servanthood could be compared to...

The Atheist dilemma

I was prompted to write this after observing my atheist friends call anyone who disagreed with them idiots. An atheist is one who knows for sure that God doesn’t exist and thus there are no “absolutes.” In their world view, everything is relative. (I want to clarify something here – most of my atheist friends live very peaceful lives, they are kind, and they are faithful in their marriages. I am not saying that these atheists are immoral people.) Let us consider a scenario: Jack is an atheist and Andrew is a theist. Jack believes in a set of ideas, which we will call Idea Set A (ISA). Andrew believes in another set of ideas, which we will call Idea Set B (ISB). Jack calls Andrew an idiot because ISB (Andrew’s set of ideas) is different from ISA (Jack’s set of ideas). Jack knows for sure that ISA is BETTER than ISB, which is why he calls Andrew an idiot. So now, let us analyze the situation: If I say that my idea is objectively better than yours, what does that mean...