Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

To: Junior
Again, this is an assertion. The concept of "rights" can be accepted without recourse to the Almighty.

Irrelevant. Anything can be accepted without recourse to the Almighty, including that there are tiny people in my salt shaker.

Indeed, Scripture doesn't address rights as we see them. There was no right to life in the Bible -- God had the Israelites wipe out whole towns.

This is a purely cursory, surface analysis of what happened in ancient Israel. God did not have the Israelites wipe out towns on a whim -- there was always a compelling reason, and in fact, the Israelites were consistently shown to be far more merciful than their neighbors were in general, and especially in such cases. The history of the Old Testament shows a gradual ratcheting back of the use of violence and a steady advance of human rights that culminates with the New Testament.

An example of what I'm talking about is the "eye for an eye/tooth for a tooth" rule that moderns mistakenly see as a mindless cry of bloodlust and vengeance. Quite the opposite: This was another case of exhorting the people to let cooler heads prevail when administering punishment. In the Ancient Near East you generally lived by the code of the gangster: You put one of mine in the hospital I put seven of yours in the morgue, and so on. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth was actually: "Hey, hold on everybody, let's let the punishment be proportionate to the crime. One eye for one eye, not seven or seventy eyes for one eye, okay?"

There was no right to liberty in Scripture -- slavery was readily accepted, and anyone not toeing the party line could be, and often were, killed.

It wasn't readily accepted, and remember that the Israelites were themselves slaves in Egypt and were constantly reminded of this by God. Their slaves were actually often taken as another demonstration of mercy (rather than killing them with the rest) and God commanded that they be treated reasonably, very UNLIKE how they were treated in Egypt. As one example, the commandment to observe the Sabbath (one day off from work) applied even to the Israelites' animals, so their slaves were no exception.

There was no right to property in the Bible -- the Israelites stole an entire region from the folks living there purely on God's command.

There was always a genuinely compelling reason for taking the land beyond mere taking land for the sake of greed and expansion, so your implication that these commands were given on a mindless whim by God is incorrect.

If you study the Old Testament and the Ancient Near East in general, it becomes clear that in the context of their time and place, the Israelites were far from barbaric as you are suggesting but were instead actually on the cutting edge of human rights. (As another example, they were the only people in the region that forbade human sacrifice.)

"Rights" are a human concept derived from enlightened self interest.

Which is another way of saying that "rights" are just a meaningless illusion accidentally created by the movement of meaningless molecules in the meaningless brains of meaningless beings in a meaningless universe. You make my point for me.

164 posted on 08/22/2005 2:01:51 PM PDT by Zhangliqun (Hating Bush does not count as a strategy for defeating Islamic terrorism.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 141 | View Replies ]


To: Zhangliqun
God did not have the Israelites wipe out towns on a whim -- there was always a compelling reason...

Indeed. He wanted the Israelites to take these folks lands and property, and it wouldn't do to have any pesky survivors around to dispute the claim.

169 posted on 08/22/2005 2:06:09 PM PDT by Junior (Just because the voices in your head tell you to do things doesn't mean you have to listen to them)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 164 | View Replies ]

To: Zhangliqun
Which is another way of saying that "rights" are just a meaningless illusion accidentally created by the movement of meaningless molecules in the meaningless brains of meaningless beings in a meaningless universe. You make my point for me.

Are you incapable of logical thought? Or do you simply fall back on feel-good platitudes when you have nothing else to say. Do you have any idea of the meaning of "enlightened self-interest?" That you airily dismiss whole fields of ethics and philosophy as the "movement of meaningless molecules in a meaningless universe" does not speak well of your intellectual abilities.

176 posted on 08/22/2005 2:09:43 PM PDT by Junior (Just because the voices in your head tell you to do things doesn't mean you have to listen to them)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 164 | View Replies ]

To: Junior; Zhangliqun
"There was no right to property in the Bible"

Yes there was. The Israelites had very stern property rights laws. Read leviticus and Numbers. There is much about redemption of land and land ownership. Of course, these properties rights did not extend to those outside of Israel.

JM
182 posted on 08/22/2005 2:16:12 PM PDT by JohnnyM
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 164 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson