No big surprises here, but it's interesting to see it in numbers in print.
From the Gospel Herald on a recent Gallup poll:
Americans, however, were most closely split down the middle on doctor assisted suicide with 49 percent saying it is morally acceptable and 44 percent saying it's morally wrong, and homosexual relations with 47 percent calling it morally acceptable and 49 percent, morally wrong. The latter issue also had the largest liberal-conservative gap with 83 percent of liberals calling homosexual relations "morally acceptable" compared to only 23 percent of conservatives.
Of the 16 social issues Americans rated, the gap between liberals and conservatives were starkly large on issues around sexuality. According to the poll, 89 percent of liberals call sex between an unmarried man and woman morally acceptable while only 34 percent of conservatives say the same; 83 percent of liberals say it is morally acceptable to have a baby outside of marriage while only 33 percent of conservatives agree.
A significant gap was also seen on the issue of abortion and divorce with 67 percent of liberals calling abortion morally acceptable compared to 24 percent of conservatives, and 87 percent of liberals saying divorce is morally acceptable compared to 49 percent of conservatives.
Liberals like to claim they're moral, too. Maybe compared to the ancient Mayans or pre-Christian Romans, maybe they are. Maybe.
14 comments:
Well actually people make their own morals through time. For example: Bible says that slavery is okay and from what I know slave owners used that as a way to approve of slavery. Well, as you can see it is no longer moral to keep people as slaves even though Job was a great man with many slaves.
People are always trying to make their own morality. However, there remains one set of absolute truths, and they’re determined by the creator of the universe. And the Bible does not say slavery is okay. It acknowledges the existence of slavery, but actually promotes the equality of all people, especially in the New Testament (Jew, Gentile, men, women, everyone).
The Bible does say slavery is okay because it promotes "rules" for slavery, it specifically describes how things should be done. If it just acknowledged slavery then it would just cite such as Job had many slaves. However, in Job it is cited as a great thing too because it represents his wealth along with his cattle.
"Christians who are slaves should give their masters full respect so that the name of God and his teaching will not be shamed. If your master is a Christian, that is no excuse for being disrespectful. You should work all the harder because you are helping another believer by your efforts. Teach these truths, Timothy, and encourage everyone to obey them." 1 Timothy 6:1-2
"When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she will not be freed at the end of six years as the men are. If she does not please the man who bought her, he may allow her to be bought back again. But he is not allowed to sell her to foreigners, since he is the one who broke the contract with her. And if the slave girl's owner arranges for her to marry his son, he may no longer treat her as a slave girl, but he must treat her as his daughter. If he himself marries her and then takes another wife, he may not reduce her food or clothing or fail to sleep with her as his wife. If he fails in any of these three ways, she may leave as a free woman without making any payment." (Exodus 21:7-11
I honestly don't know how to answer that one, Cris.
All I do know is that God created all people and everyone, regardless of ethnicity or labor status, is one of his children and he's not willing that any of them suffer unnecessarily...or go to Hell for that matter.
So while this may look inconsistent with His character on the surface, sometimes things do look that way at first glance. I don't understand why God does some of the things He does; if I did, I guess I might be a candidate to replace Him. But He has no particular reason to have it out for a specific group of people, and He has no reason to lie, and existing outside of time/space, He doesn't change either. So I'll just have to take this on faith that He had a good reason, until I understand it better.
But if you're a Christian, you can't say killing the innocent and buggering your fellow man is acceptable in the sight of God, because He clearly says it isn't. And that's the point of this story.
So you are going to ignore the fact that the Bible promotes slavery?
Oh and the Bible also promotes murder. Extremely religious countries also tend to have higher murder rates.
I'm not going to ignore it at all. I said I don't understand that passage, as it appears to be inconsistent with the rest of the Bible and what I know of God's character. I think the best case you could make is that the Bible acknowledges slavery, but it doesn't promote it. The Bible tells of King David's murder, adultery, and numerous wives, but it gives a historical account, it doesn't put a seal of approval on David's behavior.
The Bible also doesn't promote murder. The Bible allows for killing in self defense, capital punishment, etc. But it condemns murder, which is defined as the WRONGFUL taking of human life. In our fallen, imperfect world, God acknowledges that there will be those who don't respect human life, and makes allowances for us to deal with people like that in such a way as to protect the public and demonstrate the high price of wrongful life taking.
Well the whole Bible is inconsistent.
It promotes slavery because it specifies the rule and it GLORIFIES it by saying how great Job was with all his slaves.
Capital punishment is murder and it does not lower crime.
Job had servants, not slaves.
And capital punishment isn't murder; it's justice. Only one-dimensional or liberal thinkers (pretty much the same thing) believe it's murder. It punishes the murderer and demonstrates the value of human life.
Whether it lowers crime or not is debatable; it wouldn't be surprising if it didn't lower crime, however, since those accused get so many childish technicalities with which to get off, and considering the average 12 year gap between the imposition of the sentence and the time it's carried out, the cause and effect are so far removed that it wouldn't be surprising if it had little deterrent effect.
Well actually servants are slave. If you took latin in school and read the roman stories then you would know that they called their slaves servants. They sold them, bought them, etc.
Murder: kill intentionally and with premeditation. http://wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=murder
Death and murder by state shows that the death penalty does not lower crime: http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?&did=1705#STATES%20WITH%20THE%20DEATH%20PENALTY%20V.%20STATES%20WITHOUT
"Scientific studies have consistently failed to find convincing evidence that the death penalty deters crime more effectively than other punishments. The most recent survey of research findings on the relation between the death penalty and homicide rates, conducted for the United Nations in 1988 and updated in 2002, concluded: ". . .it is not prudent to accept the hypothesis that capital punishment deters murder to a marginally greater extent than does the threat and application of the supposedly lesser punishment of life imprisonment." http://web.amnesty.org/pages/deathpenalty-facts-eng
The Bible may not explicitly say slavery is wrong, but it is inconsistent with God’s teaching to believe slavery is morally acceptable. The verses Chris pointed out need to be looked at in Context. Slavery in the Biblical times was much different than what we saw in our early US history. Slavery was not based on race or nationality but instead it was more of a social status. Poor people often sold themselves into slavery to pay off debts or provide for their family—all the needs of slaves were provided for and therefore many people were willful slaves. Check out “Hard Sayings of the Bible” for more info.
Slaves and servants can be similar, or even the same, but not always. A servant serves, but is not enslaved (i.e. owned). A slave has no rights and is property.
You might try a better definition than that onehere. Or here are a number of definitions, most of which recognize acceptable killing versus wrongful killing such as these.
Under your logic that capital punishment is murder, then no wrongful act could ever be punished, because the punishment would also be a wrongful act (that sounds right out of the adolescent liberal handbook). For instance, it would be illegal for a cop to handcuff you and take you away because it would be illegal for the average citizen to bind someone and take them away; the cop would be kidnapping. It would also be illegal to incarcerate a kidnapper because his incarceration would also be kidnapping (and possibly enslavement). It would be illegal for you to shoot someone who was trying to shoot you or your family (otherwise known to rational people as "defending yourself") because you would then be a murderer. It would be illegal to fine a thief or embezzler because taking the thief's money would also be theft.
See what I mean by one-dimensional thinking? When the average person does it to another person, it is without justification and without legal authority. When the state does it, it is to achieve justice by punishing the wrongdoer and sending a message to society that this behavior is unacceptable.
There are several studies which do claim a deterrent effect from the death penalty, but as I said earlier, it wouldn't be surprising not to see a deterrent when so many murderers get off, and when there's an average 12-year gap between sentencing and actual punishment (for the ones who even get executed at all; some never do).
Yes it was different because they had different morals. Yes poor people sold themselves into slavery and they were fed but it is still slavery and is immoral today but back then it was moral.
It was also okay to capture people in battle and keep them as slaves. We don't do that today because we are much more advanced. So therefore we should not be going on the ancient texts for morality because we are far more superior to the people that wrote them.
That is today's definition of a servant. They were basically slaves in Biblical times just like in Rome.
A better definition? How is that a better definition?
Yes here is a definition of murder which you gave me urself: kill intentionally and with premeditation; "The mafia boss ordered his enemies murdered" http://wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=murder
Punishment does not prevent crimes. You seem to not care about preventing crimes because they happen...
Give me proof that the death penalty works as a deterrent.
Someone that can't even see the fallacy of his arguments after the examples I gave you isn't interested in truth; you're just interested in arguing and keeping your head stuck in the sand. The Bible says not to sink to the level of a fool in arguing with him...and I'm flirting with that.
I'll provide you one final reference before I stop wasting time here. Even with the dilution of slow and no executions, it speaks for itself (for anyone with eyes to see): link
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