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Most Americans in Abraham Lincoln's day were Christians. (Christians who didnt own slaves.) Prove me wrong.

pood said:
I will amend a bit what I wrote in post 101 above. Some Northern liberal Christians were certainly vociferous in opposing slavery and advocating its abolition, so it’s really not correct to say Christianity had “nothing” to do with it.
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Finally!
 
Lion IRC said:
laughing dog said:
Lion IRC said:
DBT said:
There is nothing written in the bible that condemns slavery, but there are verses that support it.
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Slavery is wage theft.
The bible says thou shalt not steal.
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Wage theft requires an explicit wage to be unpaid. Slaves were not promised wages, so wage theft was impossible.
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Why would you promise to pay the person whose rightful wage you were stealing?
The act of theft is the NON payment.
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Slaves have no rightful wage, so what are you babbling about?
 
Lion IRC said:
DBT said:
Lion IRC said:
DBT said:
There is nothing written in the bible that condemns slavery, but there are verses that support it.
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Slavery is wage theft.
The bible says thou shalt not steal.
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Deprivation of a persons liberty....no?
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This is central to the Old Testament slavery polemic argument.

Slavery is bad but what if it's the lesser of two evils?

...yes, yes. I understand you lost your house and your job and all your possessions during that war. But I can't afford to pay you a wage.

...and I'd love to feed you and let you live here on the farm.

...but I can't because people would accuse me of being a slave owner!
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One won't generally find me agreeing with you, but here I do.

The slavery back when Scripture was being created was very different from the horrors committed here in the past.

It was often, even usually, more like modern "wage slavery". People stuck doing things that they don't want to do, but they have no better options.
Not always, the fate of prisoners of war sold into slavery was horrible. But it was not like the importation of human chattel, marked for life by African skin, forced into plantation work, as happened in the Christian Americas for centuries.
Tom
 
Lion IRC said:
I've read every post in this thread.
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Sure, but what proportion have you understood, or even attempted to understand?

I would wager that for many of them, you barely even finished reading before you said to yourself "nope!", which was the beginning and end of your contemplation of their content.
 

Lion IRC said:
pood said:
This has already been explained to you...
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Attempted explanations dont work if they are unconvincing.
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That they are unconvincing to you, is of little moment to me.
Lion IRC said:
pood said:
and you have duly ignored the explanation.
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Um. No.
I've read every post in this thread.
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Except you have not responded to many, including many of my own, that demolish your arguments.
Lion IRC said:
pood said:
It is because of the force of arms of the Union and the political sagacity of Lincoln.
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This is like saying the hammer and the nail are the reason why the house was built.
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No it isn’t. There are people and forces behind the Union victory, including, as mentioned, Lincoln, who was obviously not a hammer or a nail. What you hope to show is that the force behind the Union victory was Christianity, but your hope is forlorn, since it’s not true, though it is true, as noted above, that there were plenty of Northern Christian abolitionists. But they were outnumbered by Christian slaveholders and their Christian supporters north and south.

Lion IRC said:
pood said:
Christianity had nothing to do with it.
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I say it did. Specifically, by virtue of the fact that America was overwhelmingly Christian, most Christians did NOT own slaves, and the democratic (majority) conviction to end slavery drove the political and miilitary actions taken to end it.
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We’ve been over this, and again, in your slippery slimy way, you ignore the points that I and others make. The majority of PEOPLE did not own slaves, including no one in the north, where slavery was outlawed. In the south, a minority of plantation owners owned slaves, because they were wealthy and could afford to do so. You are trying, in your slippery slimy way, to imply that most people did not own slaves because they were Christians. You have zero evidence for this. Most people could not afford slaves, whether they wanted to own them or not.
Lion IRC said:
pood said:
Nor did democracy, because slavery was abolished by the institutions of a Republic.
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You dont get to hand-wave away democracy in a space littered with terms like Political, Presidential election, Constitutional Amendment, Congressional....
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Oh, but see how, in your slippery slimy way, you ignore my explanation of the distinction between a Republic and a pure democracy? You cited the passage of the amendment abolishing slavery as a rebuttal of my claim that there was no democratic vote of the public to end it. I showed you that your claim actually proved my point. Response from you to my refutation of your claim? Crickets.
Lion IRC said:
pood said:
Your slaveholders were all Christians and a majority of all Americans, who were mostly Christian, did not support abolition,
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The majority of Christians opposed slavery.
...because its not biblical.
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Oh, they did? Prove it!
Lion IRC said:
pood said:
...though many came grudgingly to support it as a way to win the war.
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No. They already supported abolition.
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Prove it. This is contrary to all historical research and documentation. It is a bare assertion on your part, to sustain your fantasy that Christianity ended slavery in America, the same Christianity whose adherents believe a bible in which slaves are advised to obey their masters.
Lion IRC said:
What was grudgingly supported was the apparent unavoidable need for military action.

I would have been reluctant about that too.
The fact that the opponents of slavery were willing to fight and die for a cause shows how much they supported the abolition of slavery. Quite the opposite of your assertion that they grudgingly, reluctantly came to change their view.
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You really are astonishingly ignorant. The vast majority of Union soldiers fought to PRESERVE THE UNION. And that was exactly how Lincoln sold the war to them — Lincoln, who in his first inaugural address, advocated a constitutional amendment guaranteeing slavery in perpetuity in the south. Lincoln knew full well, as abundant scholarship shows, that if he tried to sell the war as a campaign to abolish slavery, he would have been able to raise few if any soldiers.

Anyway, this is enough of responding to your idiocy for now. I’ll get to the rest tomorrow.
 
Lion IRC said:
DBT said:
Lion IRC said:
DBT said:
There is nothing written in the bible that condemns slavery, but there are verses that support it.
Click to expand...

Slavery is wage theft.
The bible says thou shalt not steal.
Click to expand...

Deprivation of a persons liberty....no?
Click to expand...

This is central to the Old Testament slavery polemic argument.

Slavery is bad but what if it's the lesser of two evils?

...yes, yes. I understand you lost your house and your job and all your possessions during that war. But I can't afford to pay you a wage.

...and I'd love to feed you and let you live here on the farm.

...but I can't because people would accuse me of being a slave owner!
Click to expand...
Oddly, I have never previously come across anyone who can't tell the difference between a houseguest who helps out the homeowner in exchange for his board and lodgings, and a slave.

Nor, for that matter, have I ever come across any instructions for how severely it is acceptable to beat a houseguest. Or on who owns any children those guests might have. Or on which ethnic groups can be required to be your houseguests for life, or under what circumstances houseguests must be freed.

What colour is the sky on your planet??
 
Lion IRC said:
pood said:
I will amend a bit what I wrote in post 101 above. Some Northern liberal Christians were certainly vociferous in opposing slavery and advocating its abolition, so it’s really not correct to say Christianity had “nothing” to do with it.
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Finally!
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I’ve never said otherwise. Because it’s obviously true that a tiny minority of northern abolitions were Christians proves nothing. Most Christians supported slavery or didn’t care one way or another, which destroys your whole argument.
 
There were Christian leaders who opposed Hitler and suffered for it. But Christian leaders in general jumped on the Nazi platform for power.

There were Christians who opposed slavery but the North was not decidedly anti slavery. Lincoln;s political skill was walking a fine political line in the North while prosecuting the war.

There were factions in the North who wanted to negotiate a peace and allow slavery.
 
The majority of people north and south did not give a fuck about the slaves and most of them agreed that blacks were mentally and morally inferior to whites. And of course, people back then were mostly Christians. So, do the math.

The fact that there was a tiny minority of Christian abolitionists, almost entirely in the north, obviously destroys Lion’s entire argument, which of course is the stupid claim that Christianity destroyed American slavery.
 
All this, as has been pointed out, goes back to the slimy sleight of hand of the title of the OP. Bilby noted the goalpost-moving upthread.
 
Lion IRC said:
pood said:
The majority of people north and south did not give a fuck about the slaves...
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...making the Civil War a bit of a waste of time. ???
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No.
It just wasn't fought for the reasons the victors gave.

Any more than the US invasion of Iraq was to rescue Iraqis from Baathist tyranny. That's just a reason that sounds better than "To get control of Iraqi oil reserves and a place to put military installations to attack Iran from." That doesn't sound good to most folks.
Tom
 
I would just like to point out that slavery and (something worse than slavery) are NEVER the only options.

That particular false dichotomy is not only logically fallacious and deeply immoral, it is also counter to the allegedly Christian ideal of giving whatever you have to those who need it, without expectation of earthly reward.

You can always help somebody without enslaving them, no matter how dire their circumstances; Indeed, even the most dire circumstance is made worse by becoming enslaved.
 
TomC said:
Lion IRC said:
pood said:
The majority of people north and south did not give a fuck about the slaves...
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...making the Civil War a bit of a waste of time. ???
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No.
It just wasn't fought for the reasons the victors gave....
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If they didn't care about slavery, if nobody cared about slavery, why did the Confederacy want to secede?

And WTF was Abraham Lincoln going on and on and on about?
 
Lion IRC said:
TomC said:
Lion IRC said:
pood said:
The majority of people north and south did not give a fuck about the slaves...
Click to expand...

...making the Civil War a bit of a waste of time. ???
Click to expand...
No.
It just wasn't fought for the reasons the victors gave....
Click to expand...

If they didn't care about slavery, if nobody cared about slavery, why did the Confederacy want to secede?

And WTF was Abraham Lincoln going on and on and on about?
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Since no one is claiming nobody cared about slavery, your response is based on a silly straw man.
 
Lion IRC said:
If they didn't care about slavery, if nobody cared about slavery, why did the Confederacy want to secede?
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Neither pood nor I said that nobody cared about slavery. Only that not many people cared enough to go to war over it.
Lion IRC said:
And WTF was Abraham Lincoln going on and on and on about?
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Rescuing the Union by allowing slavery, at least at one point.
But Lincoln was mainly playing a political game, like politicians tend to do. Do you remember the explanation about Lincoln not being a Christian, or have you forgotten about that?
Tom
 
laughing dog said:
Lion IRC said:
TomC said:
Lion IRC said:
pood said:
The majority of people north and south did not give a fuck about the slaves...
Click to expand...

...making the Civil War a bit of a waste of time. ???
Click to expand...
No.
It just wasn't fought for the reasons the victors gave....
Click to expand...

If they didn't care about slavery, if nobody cared about slavery, why did the Confederacy want to secede?

And WTF was Abraham Lincoln going on and on and on about?
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Since no one is claiming nobody cared about slavery, your response is based on a silly straw man.
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Well, more of a(nother) spectacular goalpost shift.

From "The majority of people north and south did not give a fuck about the slaves..." to "If they didn't care about slavery, if nobody cared about slavery..."

I am left wondering whether Lion really cannot order his thoughts well enough to notice the massive difference between these two things, or whether he is just so insultingly dismissive of his audience as to imagine that they won't see the difference.

For the hard of thinking:-

It is perfectly compatible for the Confederates to care deeply about slavery, and the maintaining of that institution, while not giving a fuck about the slaves. Indeed, the latter makes the former considerably easier.
 
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