Hate Mail

Jonathan Boyd, Page 5

August 29, 2001:

Hi Mike, I've got a few more slavery quotes from the Bible for you. 1 Peter 2:18-25 talks more about slaves submitting to their masters. Makes the reasons why clearer than the other passage you were using. Also describes slavery as 'unjust suffering.'

There is no reason why slaves should submit to their masters. Slavery is an abomination. Your support for Biblical slavery is morally repugnant.

[Editor's note: Notice how he mentions a Bible passage but he doesn't bother to quote it. Hmmmm ... could it be that he doesn't want you to see it? Here's 1 Peter 2:18-19:

Slaves, submit yourselves to your masters with all respect, not only to those who are good and considerate, but also to those who are harsh. For it is commendable if a man bears up under the pain of unjust suffering because he is conscious of God. But how is it to your credit if you receive a beating for doing wrong and endure it? But if you suffer for doing good and you endure it, this is commendable before God.

Did you catch that? 1 Peter 2:18-19 instructs slaves to respect their masters even if they inflict "unjust suffering" on them! It's even worse than I thought! Perhaps I should thank Mr. Boyd for bringing this to my attention, since it strengthens my point. It was possible, depending on the circumstances, for Biblical-era slave owners to beat their slaves without being considered "unjust", which gives you an idea of how low the bar was set for slave owner behaviour. You may also note that Mr. Boyd is lying when he says that the passage in question describes slavery as "unjust suffering." In context, it is obvious that the "unjust suffering" to which the passage refers is the behaviour of a harsh slave owner, as opposed to a "considerate" slave owner]

Isaiah 61:1 talks about Isaiah being anointed by God to, among other things, 'proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners.' Slaves are, in a sense, captives.

"In a sense?" I love the way you weasel around, trying to wring semantic victories out of defeat by taking quotes out of context and twisting their meaning beyond all recognition. God does not say which "captives" and "prisoners" are to be freed, so you assume he means all of them? [Editor's note: and in every conceivable sense of the word "captive"?] What a crock.

The Bible explicitly condones slavery, and the best you can come up with is this? There is no reason whatsoever to believe that God was talking about releasing slaves in Isaiah 61:1, particularly when he had repeatedly condoned slavery!

[Editor's note: A clear sign of an irrational mind or a desperate position is the use of arguments that contradict one another. Here, he notes that slaves are not free, and he concludes that any use of the word "captive" must therefore include slaves (apparently not recognizing the fallacy; the fact that slaves are captives does not mean that captives must be slaves, any more than mammals must be human because humans are mammals). His self-contradiction is almost as bad as his fallacy; he had previously claimed that slaves were allowed to go free at will (they just had to run), and that they were not really held captive at all! Moreover, in the paragraph immediately preceding this one, he claimed (incorrectly) that the Bible characterized slavery as "unjust suffering", even though he continues to maintain that there was nothing unjust about Israelite slavery practices! He's here, he's there, he's everywhere]

Continue to Jonathan Boyd, Page 6

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