1972Murat said:
calitennis127 said:
1972Murat said:
calitennis127 said:
St. Augustine actually wrote about evolution in the 4th Century A.D.
That Darwin dude! I knew he was a hack!
Still waiting for your definition of slavery Cali, and since all those great minds you cite were cool with it, I guess you would be OK with it if it was brought back?
Murat, no society has ever had debates about the morality of rape or murder or theft. Everything from Hammurabi's Law Code to the Ten Commandments has explicitly prohibited these ACTIONS.
Slavery, on the other hand, has been widely debated as a social/political/economic institution for centuries. It has not been a simple matter by any means. Many great minds for centuries have grappled with this question and reached a wide array of conclusions. It is very parochial, narrow-minded, and bigoted of you to dismiss all of them and think that your 21st century assumptions make the question an easy one.
Let me throw this out to you, Murat.
Thomas Aquinas accepted Aristotle's view that slavery was moral, but he also said that a master could never morally deprive a slave's rights to marriage, food, sleep, and religious worship.
Doesn't sound too much different than how corporations treat their employees in the modern world, does it?
By the same token, are you going to give any credit to Bishop Bartholomew De Las Casas, who condemned the Spanish for their mistreatment of Indians and called for the abolition of the enslaved peoples?
Are you going to credit Pope Gregory XIV for his 1839 papal letter condemning the slave trade, in which he wrote the following? (You completely ignored my earlier post about this.)
"We, by apostolic authority, warn and strongly exhort... that no one in the future dare to bother unjustly, despoil of their possessions, or reduce to slavery Indians, Blacks or other such peoples... We prohibit and strictly forbid any Ecclesiastic or lay person from presuming to defend as permissible this trade in Blacks under no matter what pretext or excuse, or from publishing or teaching in any manner whatsoever, in public or privately, opinions contrary to what We have set forth in these Apostolic Letters" (In Supremo Apostolatus, 1839)."
See how the question of slavery's morality and abolition is much more complicated than just Uncle Tom's Cabin? Many great minds have reached different conclusions about it in different times and places, including within the Catholic Church.
First, highlighted parts: How is slavery different from corporations treating their employees? Uhm...seriously? You can QUIT Cali, that's how it is different.
Murat, I was asking you a theoretical question. What I said was that Aquinas maintained that slaves should not be deprived of basic rights to food, sleep, marriage, religious worship, etc. And those are pretty sweeping, aren't they?
My point there was to say that in ethical theory, not every philosopher conceived of "slavery" as "Mike owns Tom and whips Tom 50 times a day and makes him sleep outside with the pitbull that bites his leg every night." If you think that the one and only form slavery ever took was one human being mercilessly and arbitrarily brutalizing another person and dictating his/her actions with no respect, then you are simply wrong as a matter of history.
Also, would you care to differentiate how Latin American illegal immigrant workers are treated by American employers who pay them $2 per hour (with no benefits) to do grunge work and how many slaves have been treated throughout history? We can change the name of the institution without it being much different in character.
1972Murat said:
I asked you about Gregory, didn't I ? I asked if slavery was so kosher, why did he bother to do what he did?
Short answer: because what he was witnessing in his historical time and place of 19th-century Europe was brutal racist exploitation that he felt was a violation of basic human dignity. That's why he condemned it. As a good Catholic, his conscience and his reason forced him to condemn what he was witnessing.
But the problem with your blanket condemnation of "slavery" is that slavery in human history was much more than just whites enslaving Africans from 1600 to 1860. Slavery was an economic and political institution that spanned numerous civilizations, races, and cultures, and in most cases it was a matter of people within one race enslaving people from that same race (including African on African, Japanese on other Orientals, etc.). It took a variety of forms and it was not by any means always a horrifying reality; not every slave was whipped 100 times a day and urinated on like Stalin's political prisoners.
What's noteworthy about your historical reference to slavery is that you automatically brought up the European colonization of Africa. That was your first reference. And that introduces an entirely separate matter, which is racism and the reasons for racism. If you want to talk about that and how we should understand it, then we can have that conversation. But the ethics of slavery goes far, far beyond just one historical episode. You're talking world history, not just the history of white racists for 200 years.
1972Murat said:
Are you going to keep beating around the bush or finally give me an answer????
I have not beaten around any bushes and I have already answered the question I am about to answer again.
1972Murat said:
WHAT IS SLAVERY, ACCORDING TO YOU,
As I said before, it has taken a variety of forms in different ages, but the essence of it is that it is an economic and political institution whereby an individual owner with property rights has total legal dominion over the actions and livelihood of another individual; it is a legal stricture governed by prevailing law and social custom. It is NOT an action. Thus, it was not something that Christ was in the business of explicitly condemning.
As Kieran has so eloquently explained to you, much of what Christ said was an implicit condemnation of slavery. And Christ offered many such implicit insights with his words. He talked of the "slavery of sin", which implicitly indicates that slavery is an unhealthy condition. That had an impact on how the actual institution was viewed over time by many Christians.
1972Murat said:
AND SINCE ALL THESE GREAT MINDS AGREE IT WAS ALL RIGHT, ARE YOU FOR BRINGING IT BACK?
Absolutely not. I think that slavery is susceptible to taking on an appalling character, and I think that the modern world has evolved to a point technologically and economically where the case can no longer be made that it is a "natural" part of economy or society. Plus, many recent manifestations of slavery have been utterly despicable.
But here's the point Murat: as I have already illustrated, many good Catholics over the centuries have come to different conclusions on slavery. It has been, essentially, a political debate. Some Catholics were for the war in Iraq, others were against it (and war is as serious an issue as there is, because it involves the moral question of when it is justifiable to actually kill someone). I would argue that Pope John Paul II was right and that American Catholics who sided with Bush over the Pope were quite foolish. But the point is that slavery was a political institution and a matter of debate for many intelligent people, and you could be a good Catholic at different times and go either way on the question. In some contexts (like the Middle Ages in Europe), it seemed natural and acceptable; most slaves had normal lives and lived peacefully within society. In 19th century Europe, there were instances of horrific racist exploitation intertwined with slavery, which made it appear intolerable to Pope Gregory. In ancient Rome, slavery was taken for granted by all levels of society and it was almost seen as the equivalent of being born poor nowadays; people had the opportunity to work their way out of slavery by doing their jobs well and earning free status. Some Roman slaves even made it to the level of political power, which was very difficult with the ruling class being so aristocratic.
Now my point about the many great minds in history is this Murat: if humans of all races and cultures have agreed for millenia on certain basic immoral actions (theft, murder, rape, lying, etc.) in their traditions and laws, why has slavery not been on the list, especially for very noble human beings such as Aristotle and Thomas Jefferson? Are we, in the post-1900 era, just so much better people than everyone that came before? Are we more virtuous all of a sudden? Does Rachel Maddow exceed Thomas Jefferson in goodness and moral sense?
I find it astoundingly arrogant and short-sighted to condemn everyone in history who ever condoned slavery, without any regard to the details and context of their age, as morally warped and morally bankrupt human beings. I find that position to be highly illogical.
Furthermore, I have to stress that slavery is NOT AN ACTION, BUT A POLITICAL-ECONOMIC INSTITUTION. It is not as simple a matter as Christ saying "don't do it" to people who had had it in their laws and traditions for hundreds of years (like the Romans).
Let me give you this example Murat: we both agree on the immorality of the welfare state. We both agree that it is wrong to rob Peter to pay Paul, and we both see in front of our eyes all the time the depraved consequences of the welfare state. The social realities are not pleasant (think back to my thread with the Strawberry Mansion video.)
Now if Christ came back tomorrow, would you demand that he be a political advocate demanding the instant abolition of the welfare state to prove his divinity? Would you want him to start a civil rights organization in D.C. to show you how divine he is? That would be ridiculous.
I may oppose the welfare state, but I also know that overnight abolition of it would be a disaster. Many welfare dependents are not ready to lead independent lives and they don't have the opportunities or the character to just start being self-sufficient tomorrow. Effectively and smartly abolishing the welfare state would be a process of decades, if not a couple centuries, and it would take hard work from a large number of people of good conscience.
The same applies to slavery and how it had to be abolished.
1972Murat said:
See Cali, slavery by its definition assumes some people are better than others.
So do universities when they accept certain applicants and deny others. So do newspaper outlets and Hollywood when they demean Christians and praise whatever is non-Christian. So do businesses when they hire certain candidates and deny others. So do parents when they tell their sons or daughters to not marry someone and marry someone else. So do voters when they look at politicians' resumes to examine their capabilities. So do coaches when they evaluate who will make the team and who won't.
Status, merit, and ability are all natural parts of human society.
1972Murat said:
Do you consider yourself better than others Cali?
:laydownlaughing
Yes, I do, especially my fellow white people, who are mostly stiff and very predictable, who aren't athletic, who have no rhythm, and who are bullshitting, devious hypocrites of the highest magnitude much of the time. And come to think of it, since Nalbandian was better than Nadal, I must say that in many rallies Nadal did look like Nalbandian's slave. I think I will use that line from now on.
Did you read that Kieran? Nalbandian made Nadal look like his slave in many rallies.:clap
