Sam Harris Easily Refuted

Sam Harris Destroys the Quran & Bible in 5 minutes | w/ Jordan Peterson (live, on stage)
Pangburn | 23 Jan. 2024
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sU7Tjz5rEgg

2:59 The one thing that can be seen from both testaments taken together, about slavery, is, God cares for slaves to be treated well, and at least doesn't mind them getting their freedom back.

The old testament had a general ban on slave hunt, but there was an exception for some Canaaneans who refused to get away when Joshua crossed the Jordan.

Islam basically treats any unbeliever as that exception, Christianity is past that exception, and the OT didn't generalise the exception.

The rule is, you can't slave hunt, but you can free slaves. While you own them, you owe them some degree of respect, not as if they weren't your inferiors, but clearly as if they are not chattle.

Chris O

@GecOh77

So slavery is ethical then?

Hans Georg Lundahl

@hglundahl

@GecOh77 Under some circumstances yes.

Are you an employee, and do you get paid per hour or per item?

If you are an employee paid per hour, you are in Catholic moral theology an example of servitude, basically, you are a kind of slave, to your employer.

5:17 "where we should be having a 21st C conversation about everything"

Does the 21st C need to have a conversation on "2 + 2 = 4"? Or "all dogs are mammals, now all poodle's are dogs, therefore a poodle is a mammal"? Why the need for "discovering" a morality of our own?

Sam Harris is perhaps considering previous morality "bad" ... let's face it, if it's just about it being bad for someone, any morality is. Any way of punishing a thief is bad news for the thief, just as much as any way to punish a sodomite is bad news for the sodomite, and some might be bad news for chaste homosexuals too. Or those who wish to try being heterosexual in action. If it's about it being bad morally, he means he already has a moral standard by which to condemn previous morality -- but where did he get it? Ultimately in some roundabout way from previous morality. Which posits the question, was it reliable or not?

If not, he cut off the branch he sat on. If all previous morality was unreliable, then his 21st C morality is not likely to be reliable, even as a basis to condemn previous morality, even less to conduct our lives by. If previous morality was reliable, in some shape, the first step for reliable 21st C morality is to not leave out previous morality by limiting moral discussions to the 21st C, or assuming it trumps the iron age.

Now, if previous morality was at all reliable, how did it deal with Biblical views on slavery, or if you really want to push it, with "Biblical slavery"? Perhaps in ways showing Sam Harris wrong in comparing it to Quranic slave hunt.