Do you think that a minimum wage worker who works for Microsoft is not a slave?

People who have slaves, don't have them just for the fun of owning people. They own their slaves so that the slaves produce some kind of product/service for them. They feed their slaves because they know slaves die without food. They give their slaves water, because they know slaves die without water to drink. They take care of their slaves in whatever ways make the slaves produce more.

Your slave master where you work pays you the way he does because he hopes that his pay will make you slave for him better.

If a person doesn't have any method for getting food, and he sells himself to a master so he won't die, that's voluntary slavery by the slave. Would you rather have a dead person than a slave working to build his value up so he can free himself?

But the USA won't let starving people do this... sell themselves to a master. Instead, they make the slaves their slaves... work for an income and pay taxes.

Wake up. It's all slavery. The only difference is the quality of life for some slaves over other slaves.



EDIT: Btw. St. Paul writing to the Corinthians, 1 Corinthians 7:21:

The Christians were the ones driving the abolitionist movement. Your attempt to argue that they were somehow acting against their faith are foolish hand waving. I am certain that those individuals were they alive today would be deeply insulted by your smear.

It is true that there have always been and always will be men who do evil in the name of God but the message of the Bible is one of freedom.

If you want proof of that just look at what those "religious slaveholders" felt they had to do to the Bible to make it safe for their slaves to learn about it. They chopped it up and left removed huge parts of it. They did so because they were concerned about the message of freedom it carries.

The Shocking 'Slave Bible'
https://www1.cbn.com/cbnnews/us/2018/february/freedom-in-christ-how-this-bible-was-used-to-manipulate

Sigh... open your eyes af_newbie the abolitionist movement was a Christian movement.
 
Christian Abolitionism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Abolitionism

Maybe this will help you understand

Freedom and Moral Self-Control

Read the bolded portion again.

Then watch this video.

How Do We Make Society Better?

If you still don't understand then I am sorry but its not that complicated.

Democracy and liberty are not synonyms. Liberty is individual human freedom, a freedom that is maximized by increasing human virtue. Democracy is a flawed form of human government that is nevertheless in most circumstances superior to monarchy or despotism.

Religious people oppose most progressive changes because most progressive changes lead to moral degeneration and decay. Western society is currently in a fairly severe state of decay largely thanks to the progressive secularists and their "improvements". Time will tell if the structure can be renewed or if it will collapse. It is certainly possible to have elections and "democracy" without liberty. Even the Soviet Union had that. 

Elections in the Soviet Union
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_the_Soviet_Union

In the words of Winston Churchill:

"Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."

Why would you expect the Bible to talk about the preservation of a flawed system of government?

The quality of government is dependent on the virtue of the individuals within it. The freedom that is possible is directly proportional to the virtue of the population and inversely proportional to the capacity of individuals within that population to do harm.

The Bible is directed towards individuals with a focus on redemption, salvation and moral improvement. That process on a large enough scale will shift the foundation of a society allowing mankind to do away with despotism and monarchy without reverting to the state of nature where life was accurately described by Hobbs as solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. Democracy is an incremental improvement not a final state. The Bible outlines the process that leads to the incremental improvement.

You quoted it: Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. If the government is set up as a democracy, then it is: Let every person be subject to the democracy.

The point is, whatever government you choose, be subject to the governing authorities of that government. After all, how does a government become your government if not by your choosing of it? And how do you choose it: by accident by being born there; by formal acceptance; by force in a hostile takeover; etc.

God is the head of all government. But for you, government is what you choose. Since you don't accept God as your government, and since God is for freedom, He will give you over to the government you choose. What is that government? You don't really know, do you?

None of that stuff you say is wrong regarding your government, if it is part of your government.

How does a government get to be your government? By your acceptance of it... a contract or agreement between you and your government.

For example, consider Stockholm Syndrome. You are a hostage in a hostage situation. Your captor says, "Submit or die." What are you going to do? You have the choice of maintaining your prior government and dying, or of making a deal with your captor that he is your new government through the force he is exerting.

The example of this is King Zedekiah of Judah, when he made a deal with Nebuchadnezzar. Zedekiah accepted Babylon as his government. Then he broke the agreement that he had made with Nebuchadnezzar, and God was against him for this.

God talks about the preservation of your government - even Democracy - right in Romans 13. Obey your government. But before you can obey your government, you have to choose your government. If you choose Democracy, then obey, just like Romans 13 says.

So, think clearly about which government you want to obey. If you don't obey the right government, you will wind up being a slave. But God's government is a government of freedom... Galatians 5:1:

How much of the speech did you watch? The speech is 37 minutes long and you wrote your post 19 minutes after mine.

Consider watching the rest when you have time. It really is a great one and will help you understand the perspectives of those who disagree with you.

Democracy is a social structure possible as a superior alternative to despotism or monarchy only when society has attained a sufficient degree of moral virtue and social capital. God and the Bible over time create that moral foundation.

See Religion and Progress

William Barr has spent his life in the justice department where he would have seen firsthand the spectrum of human evil. Yet you question his sanity as you have on many occasions questioned mine.

You should consider the possibility that insanity is not very common and perhaps you are missing something.

Since you clearly don't want to hear it from me I recommend another source. William Barr the US attorney general recently gave an excellent talk on this exact topic. It was superb 100% on point and I highly recommend watching it.

Attorney General William Barr on Religious Liberty
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IM87WMsrCWM

His speech starts at the 9:00 minute mark of the video.

I think the most deleterious effect of atheism is depression, often correlated with anxiety and apathy. If you look at suicide rates, you will notice many low-suicide rates countries are very religious. For example, suicide rates in Morocco, Pakistan, Kuwait and even Syria are far lower than Japan, South Korea or Finland (countries with high atheism rate).

No my argument is that a society grounded in God is necessary to maintain the vital dynamism necessary to preserve liberty and that without such a foundation any given democracy is unlikely to be capable of sustaining itself. My argument is that a genuinely secular democracy once its abandons its foundation in the transcendent will become unstable. That it will in the words of Froude become:

"the blossoming of the aloe, the sudden squandering of the vital force which has accumulated in the long years when it was contented to be healthy and did not aspire after a vain display. The aloe is glorious for a single season. It progresses as it never progressed before. It admires its own excellence, looks back with pity on its own earlier and humbler condition, which it attributes only to the unjust restraints in which it was held. It conceives that it has discovered the true secret of being 'beautiful forever,' and in the midst of the discovery it dies."

We agree that a secular democratic society is the form a government most capable of rapid scientific advancement over short time periods. We also agree that a society that holds firmly to religious principles will naturally slow the rate of scientific advancement as not all avenues, methods, and implementation of research will be acceptable to said society.

We disagree on the importance of maximizing short term scientific advancement.  

As for a real life trial we only have to wait and observe. Western Europe and especially Scandinavia are pursuing the experiment now.

Why you feel women's don't have equal rights in Islam? I guess they have and when it comes to multiple marriage it is only allowed if the first or previous allows with full heart.

Men have the same punishment but its only practiced in Arab countries not everywhere.

Muslims kill children?

Every religion people eats meat!

I love God and I didn't practice any violence.

No I am saying there is no such thing as a non-religious human being. If you cut out the formal religion people will just fall into an ideology or philosophy which takes its place.

Communism and Nazism were examples of such ideologies and notable only for their relative early persuasiveness enabling them to be more destructive than the many other bad ideas floating around in the human psyche. Jordan Peterson described such ideologies as parasites living on a fractured religious superstructure which is an apt description.


If by "progress" you mean short term rapid scientific advancement then yes I agree that in short term an increasingly secular society with free-markets and democracy will likely maximize such technological developments.

In the long term, however, it is very questionable whether a genuinely secular society can sustain either free-markets or democracy.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1373864.msg52788011#msg52788011

There is no science vs religion.

There is simply the tools of science (accumulated knowledge and power) directed towards the goals of individuals and society wielding that power.

Those goals are determined by the religious makeup of said society. Stalin and his fellow Communists thought they were building utopia as they implemented a system that killed millions. Hitler and his Nazi's thought they were doing the right thing as they instigated their Darwinian attempt to conquer and eventually wipe out the cultures and races they deemed subhuman. Many evils have also been committed in the name of formal religion.

Violence, fear and intimidation is all many humans know and are inherent in humanity. No human institution religious or otherwise is entirely free of them for we are fallen creatures and our institutions reflect it.

Belief in God is not an irrational idea. Far from leading one to insane decisions it guides us toward wisdom and away from insanity. A look at the choices that result from individuals and societies that have supplanted God with some other value system is enough to see this.

Barely any in the name of science. But all of them using science. Why? Because leverage of spears, bows and arrows, sling stones, guns and bullets, and whatever other weapons, is all science. The only thing that differs is the complexity of the science behind the weapon.

Since people are religious beings, all that they are doing when they use science weapons, is making science part of their religion. All you are doing is making science part of your religion in a different way. Since your science religion doesn't have Jesus salvation, yet you promote your science religion, you are promoting eternal death.

You are, or are attempting to be, a murderer in the name of science.

I am not trivializing anything. This opposite is the case I think the situation is very serious.

There are two issues here:

1) You view scientific advancement as an absolute good when it is not. Science is just accumulated practical experience and knowledge. Ultimately science is the grasping of power, power over ourselves, power over our fellow man, and power over the natural world. A breakthrough in science is no more good or bad than any other other concentration of power like the gathering of a large army under a general. The rapid accumulation of power can be used for good but it can just as easily be used for evil.

2) You trivialize religion as mental illness when a proper understanding of religion ensures sanity. Of course there are religious people who are mentally ill but by and large the worst human insanity manifests when you sever the bonds of religion and justify your actions with "the greater good" and "science". This guy springs to mind.

Joseph Stalin's Interview With The First American Labor Delegation in Russia
Questions Put By The Delegation and Stalin's Replies
Pravda September 15, 1927

STALIN:  The Party cannot be neutral towards religion and does conduct anti-religious propaganda against all and every religious prejudice because it stands for science, while religious prejudices run counter to science, because all religion is something opposite to science... Have we suppressed the reactionary clergy? Yes, we have. The unfortunate thing is that it has not been completely liquidated. Anti-religious propaganda is a means by which the complete liquidation of the reactionary clergy must be brought about. Cases occur when certain members of the Party hamper the complete development of anti-religious propaganda. If such members are expelled it is a good thing because there is no room for such "Communists" in the ranks of our Party.

The Amish are far wiser than is commonly understood. They understand that power is not equivalent to progress and are very cautious. If the rest of humanity had their wisdom our development would be much slower but also less likely to end in horror and disaster. I agree with you that secular education can weaken and even eradicate formal religious beliefs. The secular religion attacks others and typically teaches dependency on an all powerful government.  

 

Sounds like you envision a future world where the Marxist or a variant thereof take over. The only way to implement such "diagnosis and treatment" is via an all powerful state that forced it upon the religious. I imagine entire cities such as those of those of the Amish would need to be taken into police custody and "properly treated".

Such a future is very possible I will give you that.

It means that science cannot currently or likely ever answer the question. Whether you choose to believe randomness exists or not is ultimately not a scientific question.

Is the universe a perfect order of God or chaos?

The leaf floating in the wind was a good example. We now more or less understand the forces involved and if we really wanted to could at least in theory someday develop a computer program coupled with a way of measuring all of the wind currents in a given area and understand exactly how and why the leaf was moving the way it was maybe even predict its future movement in advance.

We cannot currently predict the exact time a particular radioactive atom will rip itself apart. Is this an example like the leaf where improved understandings of the motions of protons and neutrons and their interactions with surrounding fields and other atoms would change things or is it forever outside of our knowledge and hence "random"?

You can argue it either way but it's not a scientific argument.


Science will march forward but what it will march into will be determined by the religion of the scientists and society at large. Science is just accumulated practical experience and knowledge. Ultimately it is power, power over ourselves, our fellow man, and the natural world.

It is the way we use and deploy that power which will determine if we progress into a better future or build something nightmarish.

All that is, is scientists not knowing enough about radioactivity. You don't need radiation to think that pure random might exist. All you need is to watch the way a leaf blows in the breeze on a warm summer day. You have no idea where the molecules of air that hit the leaf are coming from, or where they are going. It seems like pure random.

The difference between the physics of the twisting, blown leaf, and atomic radiation are, we understand the principles of the physics of the leaf a whole lot more than we understand nuclear physics.

Science probably will never understand the physics of the radioactive atom until they understand that the nothingness of empty space is filled with a material that is entirely different than matter... matter which is essentially energy with complex activities going on between the parts, all held in place by the "material" of empty space.

Yes I'm suggesting these things be an entitlement.  That word also happens to be in the definition of right.

You're either being intentionally dishonest or willfully ignorant.  If you did any bit of research, you would know clearly how its going to be paid for and if you don't know, then it is you who needs to take classes or simply study almost any industrialized nation.  The readings are in the syllabi.  I cannot put the information in your head and don't even want you to just take my word for it because you don't know if I'm a credible source.  

Your bolded part is completely dishonest.  You do not feel that way and are just trying to derail the discussion with nonsense that you know is nonsense.  Hypothetically speaking, if a majority of people agreed that you have a right to rolexes and luxury vehicles, then it would be done but that is a preposterous, disingenuous notion.