Just because someone claims something is “based on science” doesn’t mean there is an actual scientific reality behind it. I’m not trying to absolve anyone of their actions. I’m just pointing out that racist eugenics was not based on actual demonstrable science. It was an ideology.
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The answer, is no, my friend. God is the same, yesterday, today and forever. The bible has in no way supported, justified or condoned the sin of (kunta kente) slavery 
That “someone” were known as well respected scientists of their day worldwide, and regardless if you think it was an ideology today. It was known as science back then, my friend
I give a strongly recommend anyone to read The Civil War as a Theological Crisis by Mark Noll, the foremost historian on North American Protestant Christian history. Noll’s historiography shows that biblical interpretation is not a simple matter at all. Many people at the time believed that the Bible’s position on slavery is obvious, but they all had different ideas on what that position is.
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The idea that all sicknesses were caused by an imbalance in the four bodily humors was known as “science” at one point. Who cares? You can’t call it a scientific assertion now.
Of course they did. Some people were not Christian, others were misguided Christians, others were Christians with hidden agendas etc… No different than today’s Christians 
Which brings us back to the point. If people’s “plain reading” of Scripture could make them so wrong about slavery, how can you be so confident that your “plain reading” has not led you to be equally wrong about young earth/literal six day creation? Why doesn’t the testimony of history push you to more humility when it comes to insisting your interpretation is the only obvious and right one?
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That is why we have systematic theology. I just showed you a verse where it explicitly calls (kunta kente) slavery a sin and is punishable by death. No where in the NT does it refute that verse in Exodus. It is not good practice to take a verse out of context so as to make it in opposition to another verse. Those NT verses on slavery when read plainly is not talking about supporting nor condoning slavery, but teaching how slaves (employees) and masters (employers) should treat one another. Furthermore, I am humble, if I wasn’t I wouldn’t accept what the bible states; therefore I am not interpreting anything. I merely repeated what the bible states. You are the one who is interpreting and even adding. What you are doing here, is creating intellectual suicide. Borrowing your logic, I can make the same case against Jesus being God, or for that matter, Jesus dying on the cross since there are 4 “different” gospel accounts. Where will it stop? You call it ‘a lack of humility’. I call it ‘not compromising’, my friend
Furthermore, I am humble, if I wasn’t I wouldn’t accept what the bible states; therefore I am not interpreting anything. I merely repeated what the bible states; therefore I am not interpreting anything.
I think a person who is truly humble don’t have to describe one’s self as humble, it would only be evident to other people through that person’s actions. I don’t mean to take a jab at anyone’s character because I know I’m not humble. I remembered my cousin was so certain that biological evolution did not happen, and he stood against all of his science teachers. Many years later, my cousin changed, and he showed more humility admitting that he was wrong. Also, I think it is impossible for anyone to not interpret what they’re reading in the Bible, a collection of ancient documents written in foreign culture. Plain reading is literal interpretation, one of the four types of interpretation I mentioned earlier: allegorical, anagogical, tropological, and literal.
Oftentimes, Martin Luther’s geocentric mistake comes to mind. When the Roman Catholic Church was running too wild with allegorical interpretations, many Protestant reformers pushed back with “plain reading” because they recognized that too much allegorical thinking may stray people from the message of the Bible, but sometimes literal interpretations run into their own problems as well.
I don’t think Luther directly mentioned Copernicus, but he did mentioned “talk of a new astrologer” who claimed that Earth revolves around the sun. Luther disagreed with this idea and said this:
“There is talk of a new astrologer who wants to prove that the earth moves and goes around instead of the sky, the sun, the moon, just as if somebody were moving in a carriage or ship might hold that he was sitting still and at rest while the earth and the trees walked and moved. But that is how things are nowadays: when a man wishes to be clever he must needs invent something special, and the way he does it must needs be the best! The fool wants to turn the whole art of astronomy upside-down. However, as Holy Scripture tells us, so did Joshua bid the sun to stand still and not the earth.”
The last sentence showed Luther’s plain reading of Joshua 10:10-15 (and perhaps a little hubris). I got this quote from A Brief Note on Religious Objections to Copernicus. I also found this quote from several Christian history books.
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indeed slavery as practiced lately was under the death penalty as those were free men that were robbed of their freedom. Slaves were so either servants or bond servants or those enslaved following the loss of a war. Paul Copan has written a good assay on slavery in the bible. However the translators all missed out on the essential translation of leviticus about dying under the hand (in the protection of) their masters incurred the death penalty. Looking at the previous paragraph is is clear that you also faced the death penalty when killing a free man. However you had to pay him out for lost work until he could walk without a stick, e.g. was fully fit again. The servant- if he could not stand in for two days - (not “survive”) was expected to limb back into work and 2 days off was probably seen as luxury, did not need paying for lost earnings as the lost earnings were a loss of his master, e.g. your own silver.
Seriously??!! I was responding to a question of humility
Humble to me, is when you bow your knees, repentant-in desperate need of grace and mercy knowing I am a despicable sinner, denying self, realizing that I am undone, deserving of an an eternal hell, but yours is an example of humility too, admitting he was wrong. I admit that to my wife, everyday
hope you do not teach biology with that attitude. you might as well claim gender is a social construct anyway, not a biological reality.
Race is okay, there is nothing wrong with it, it is just the social constructs people make about race that are problematic.
There are actually instructions to free slaves as well as you should know.
Regarding race we have to face reality https://youtu.be/MOnQPXuU81Q, but that does not allow us to think arrogant about it. IQ is a biased measure as the races show optimum survival for the condition / challenges they face where they live. But then even the ones with the highest IQ can do stupid things.
I would claim gender is a social construct! (Though unlike race, it is generally tied to biological realities, namely X and Y chromosomes) That is why what counts as feminine in one culture can count as masculine in another.
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Gender is a biological reality as is race. They are expression of biological difference but would we say a dachshound is a better dog than a beagle or a setter? No as we love them for what they are. Racism is not the observation of race and their diffrences but to judge them by their IQ and not their innate ability to care for each other, or their ability to live in respect of creation. Our judgement of “better” is the problem that is in conflict with reality.
I could be wrong and please correct me if I am, but It seems to me that a central theme in your Christian life has become the need to prove that Genesis 1 is literal truth, presumably because many have left the faith when finding out that evolution is true. But people leave Jesus everyday for all kinds of reasons, only a small percentage because of evolution. And that number is made smaller from the fact that, at least IMO probably more refuse to take Jesus seriously because they think they would have to, “give up science” to do so.
I don’t think that most people here object to your views as much as they making belief in YEC a condition to be saved (again, correct me if I’m wrong here). Why can’t you accept that many intelligent, sincere, well-meaning and productive Christians can disagree on how to interpret Genesis 1?
Allow me to share my life a little bit of my life with you. I do spend a fair amount of time here (about an hour a day, not on weekends usually) but the bulk of my (and of most in my faith community’s) spiritual life is spent on devotional time (reading the bible and praying), confessing and praying with people in our church, counseling some including our kids, studying the bible with people who are interested in becoming Christians (we have a core set of foundational studies and more for particular circumstances), outreach events, etc. I also study apologetics. I’m not trying to say that I’m a better Christian than you and/or that my church is better than yours, but in my experience as living as a disciple of Christ these are the types of things (not necessarily apologetics studies) that I think are most important, not one’s stance on evolution or Genesis. I can say this, in my 28 years studying the bible with people, evolution has literally never come up. When someone is open to developing a personal relationship with God it usually just isn’t something that is important to them (though I agree is some areas of the country it may be). In my church some believe in evolution and others don’t. It’s not relevant to the life and core beliefs of our faith and it rarely comes up on conversation. Yet we all saw the need to believe in Jesus, the bible and have our sins forgiven and live in unity as followers of Christ. Evolution ultimately doesn’t affect our day to day lives. For myself I’ll even go so far as to state that I now God’s glory even more powerfully now that I’ve accepted evolution as I see His genius in its plan.
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The jumbled timeline that festoons the Old Testament achieves it’s most distinct anachronistic glory with the Exodus.
Let’s check them off:
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Genesis introduces us to Days even before there is a Sun to mark days; the sun is created on day 4.
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Cain, the presumed ancestor of the Kenites, appears in the story as a holder of some important immunity … but is impugned with story arc that he has the immunities BECAUSE he is a murderer. He flees his parents so that he can marry some unknown hominids.
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Genesis 10, Table of Nations, lists all sorts of towns that don’t seem to exist until around the late 600’s or early 500’s BCE, while not knowing anything about the Chinese, Koreans or Japanese … or about the indigenous peoples of North and South America.
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God decides to flood so much of the Earth that Noah’s birds have real trouble finding land. Does this Flood extend to Egypt? Apparently not – because Egypt knows nothing about such a global or mega-regional disaster. So which part of the Flood story shall we reject? That it was global? That it was mega-regional? That anything like it happened at all?
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Then Abraham comes out of Mesopotamia to the southern Levant… Who does he find? Not the Egyptians, who archaeologists tell us held a fairly consistent hegemony over the future Palestine ever since they ejected the Hyksos out of Egypt. Instead, Abraham finds the Philistines… some 800 years before their actual arrival… in the same cities that the future Philistines will settle after waging war on Egypt.
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The story line is so garbled, Abraham is said to lie to the Philistines about being the husband of the incredibly good looking 65 year old woman (Sarah); this is ridiculous on its face.
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When we finally get to the story of Exodus, it TELLS US that the Hebrew avoid the road up the coast of the Levant because the warring Philistines are in the way … which tells us that Exodus occurs sometime AFTER the Philistines settle the Levant around 1130 BCE.
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But at least this helps make sense out of the stories from Numbers to Judges to Samuel … where there are virtually no Egyptians running through Palestine until the time of Solomon. So any attempt to make Exodus EARLIER than the Philistines creates a DOUBLE problem: firstly, that they haven’t arrived yet; and secondly, that prior to the Philistine settlement on the coast, the Egyptians have sway over Palestine, which is a reality completely unknown to the writers of the Old Testament.
if you do not interpret information presented to your brain you have to switch of your brain. The whole thing with words is, that they are a materialisation of thought into the physical world.
If you would only understand the bible in a literal way, e.g. as a piece of great literature including historic as well as emotional information you would do well. to convey emotional information in scientific textbooks is difficult, particularly if you imagine writing them for people who cannot read or write.
Look at gbrooks struggle with the timeline of the bible. Its a classic to assume day and night to be governed by the sun and the moon as we live under clear skies. Under diffuse illumination you would experience cycles of brightness and darkness without knowing of the sun and the moon. similarly you would expect a taxonomy not based on genetic traits but by features, thus animals that fly, such as bats, are not necessarily birds and a unicorn in the bible is more likely to refer to the rhinoceros unicornis than a one horned horse which it turned into thanks to the illustrators that could not paint one by lack of reference to the word. So without trying to put things in context of your experienced reality and trying to imagine the reality and language of the writers you do not stand a chance to make sense out of any information conveyed to you over time. Similar to expect the meaning of other classifiers to make sense with their later association as in the example of the Philistines is to be taken with healthy skepticism, especially is you look at records coming from different languages as a language is after all the description of reality based on common denominators/experiences thus based on different interpretations. It’s a bit like shouting liar liar at someone expressing his/her beliefs by being to stupid to realise that you cannot lie about your beliefs as you believe them to be true.
Wookin, is there absolutely zero possibility that you are wrong about Genesis? Such that you cannot even entertain @Casper_Hesp’s hypothetical? Or are you actually saying that you might be wrong, and in the case that you are wrong you would indeed call God a liar?
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