Condone in another sense can be approve/sanction which gets closer to the concept of endorsement. To that I say emphatically, scripture does no such thing, certainly not in the New Testament, which is what my Christian faith is based on. I'm not as certain about the Old Testament, but I don't recall ever running across such a statement.
Not only does the Old Testament explicitly condone slavery, it even sets out laws and rules by which slavery is permissible, specifies who may own slaves and under what circumstances, and even goes so far as to specify, in detail, when a man is permitted to sell his daughter as a sex slave, who he is and is not permitted to sell her to, and what the terms of the contract of the sale are to be.
See, for example, Leviticus 25:44-46, Exodus 21:2-6, Exodus 21:7-11 (the verses which explicitly allow a man to sell his daughter as a sex slave as long as he does not sell her to foreigners).
Jesus not only condones slavery, and specifically instructs slaves not to try to gain their freedom (Ephesians 6:5, 1 Timothy 6:1-2), he even specifically condones beating a slave for wrongdoing even if that slave does not know he has done something wrong (Luke 12:47-48).
Originally Posted By: gregg
Originally Posted By: tacit
The point here is that there is an inverse correlation between being a good citizen of a modern, pluralistic society and believing in the Bible, the Koran, or other sacred religious texts; being a good citizen of a modern industrial society just about requires finding some way, if you are religious, of rationalizing the idea that the majority of the scriptures of your faith do not apply to you.
That's nonsense.
With respect, I think you just proved the point. You yourself say that you don't know what the Old Testament has to say on the subject of slavery and you believe that the New Testament supersedes the old. You have to believe these things in order to be a functioning member of a pluralistic, post-industrial society; these are the things that you have accepted as reasons not to obey the 613 commandments in the Bible, many of which (like executing any family member who turns away from god) would put you at odds with the values of the society in which you live.
If you read the Old Testament, you will see that it endorses slavery, and many other reprehensible things. It also describes people doing these things, but that's not what I'm talking about--I'm talking about the rules and commandments specifically instructing people to do these things.
If you read Matthew 5:18, you will see that the Old Testament rules and commandments are not undone by Jesus; they are still in force.
However, you cannot believe these things and also still be a functioning member of society, so you have constructed rationalizations--or perhaps accepted rationalizations constructed by others--about why you are exempt from Old Testament law, even while still accepting the divine providence of the Bible.
Which is exactly what Sam Harris is talking about.
