What Is The Argument Against Slavery?

The Ten Commandments is a good example, yes.

What's the first of them? Obey God above all else.
What are the next four about?

Don't make graven idols. Don't use the Lord's name in vain. Keep the Sabbath day holy. Obey your parents. That's the entire first half of the list, about obedience and control over you, not ethical behaviour.

Imagine how much better Christian history would have gone if some of those were replaced with things like "Don't keep slaves", "Don't rape", or "Don't eat where you poop; wash your hands before eating".

 

So, to be useful, religion must then be subservient to reason. I'm glad you are coming around. Religion must first be refined by reason.

 

That goes without saying.

The first thing that the historical Buddha taught his followers was to ALWAYS question. What does that tell you?

 

It tells me that, at least according to your account of the Buddha, that he held reason above religion. Which is what I'm trying to convince you to do.

 

It's religion, what do you expect? But you can't cherry-pick like that. It's an entire program. There's a lot of good in it. But, and like it is said, there's an equal amount of good and bad in everything, so you have to learn to see both and understand the purpose of each. Religion is like few things because it can be the greatest thing in the world or the worst [by definition].

All things are the same.

 

Abrahamic religion is. Read it. It tells slaves to obey their masters. It tells women to obey men as men obey the Lord (as preacher's purport to speak for him). It is framed around celestial dictatorship and slave mentality. Islam literally means slave to God.

It would be wonderful if it instead said question authority and do what is ethical, but that isn't what it says. It says to blindly follow God's orders, even if that means killing your own child.

 

He understood the importance of reason [as does all religion]. But the reason is what you use to transcend the same. The wisdom and insight comes from the non-intellectual [seeing things as closely to the truth as you can]. It's the best you can do.

 

Man is the subject of ownership, but can't be the object.
To objectify someone is derogatory and criminal.

 

This is not remotely a true statement, as you well know.

 

It tells me that your understanding of Buddhism is the opposite of Abrahamic religion, which tells you to never question God.

 

I am sure that's not what is being taught in modern religious institutions [fundamentalists aside]. Probably many of those things made sense for the social order of the day.

 

Yeah, the part made by the Hebrews definitely included slavery as part of the system of government but the part made in the centuries after Christ is said to have died indicates a change in policies.

 

Not even the NT reverses this. It still supports slavery. It's less explicit, but this does challenge the notion of divine revelation

 

Like I wrote above, it is a tool for social control and cohesion. Yes, it can be used for good or ill. But either way, it does that by encouraging people to farm out their moral judgments.

 

Perhaps you should study religion a bit more. You might also remember that you might not fully understand the context of very different periods of time and societies.

 

Only because reason and empathy won out over religion. Not the opposite.

It has been a slow difficult fight. Homosexuality is maybe the most recent example. It was only a decade or so ago that gay marriage became legal, and many Christians still demand that homosexuality is a sin, with only the argument that God says so.

 

I can virtually guarantee you I've studied it for at least as long as you have, if not far more. I'm glad reason and compassion have helped correct the mistakes made by religion along the way.

 

Please explain.

 

Making someone an object means stripping off his humanity.
He becomes cattle without any rights.

 

I would like to add that religious thinking isn't limited to what we traditionally think of as religion, theism, etc.

Nationalism can be religious in nature, as people never dare question their own country and think it superior to all others just because it's theirs. It brings with it a self righteousness, endless virtue signalling, refusal to question, and blind obedience to perceived authority. It can also be seen in some political movements, such as the recent "woke".

We should always be mindful of our proclivities to groupthink, virtue signal, and to defer our moral judgments to peer pressure or perceived authority.

 

To err is human. To moo, bovine.

 

And to bark is canine,

 

The letter from Paul to Philemon shows that Paul was trying to help Philemon find freedom and also shows that the new Christian values were in conflict with the system of slavery.

 

Meow?

 

Fee line. Just as female means the bills.