The Bible And Slavery

[Rhea]

Wait.

He didn't comment on the atrocity of slavery because that was "too political"??

Is this satire?

I'm pointing out that he never commented on politics, yeah. He told people what they themselves needed to do to live a righteous life.

. And he didn’t think to tell them that not owning slaves was a righteous way to live?

He didn't tell them what kind of govenrment to have or what laws to enact;

Red herring.

I don't think he believed governments were capable of forcing people to live rightly.

Red herring

He wasn't a political leader, or even a religious one when he was alive. Just a wandering rabbi with a few disciples. Yes, I know, that isn't what your fundamentalist buddies say.

And he just couldn’t bring himself to say, “People; don’t own slaves. Don’t rape. Don’t beat your children.”

That’s what makes the whole claim that this is a holy book of any kind into a complete farce. It just isn’t beievable. That dog just don’t hunt.

 

[Rhea]

So, in the end, it isn't the slaves that you care about, at all.

Straw man. Yes I care about the slaves, and the motivations that people have to continue having them. I see them saying that the bible says they can do it, so they pass laws and use the bibe as their argument.

Yes, I do understand the argument you're making. The Bible wholeheartedly endorses slavery, so "get rid of" the Bible somehow.

If all of the Christians who actually eschewed the nasty parts of the bible stood up and said so, they could make a difference. But they will not ever, and so those passages are all still there. Still “canon”.

It's not like it's a particularly complicated or nuanced argument. Just because I disagree with you doesn't mean I don't understand you.

It’s hard to tell, because you keep misrepresenting the argument, arguing something different and trying to lay out red herrings to get off the trail of it.

I haven't pretended that your passages aren't there, they just do not and cannot supersede the law of love which is both more clearly stated and obviously more important in any case.

Perhaps not so obviously, given the efforts to put this stuff into law.

Are you suggesting that I, personally, have any power over whether the Bible does or does not exist?

To the same extent that any one voter has power over the choice of president.
If they band together as a sect, they can have significant influence.

So what we're arguing about is whether to hold Christians accountable to the best virtues of their faith, or whether to encourage them in the very worst.

Letting “the worst” continue to fester without condemnation hasn’t helped.

Atheists backing them up

Straw man. It does not back them up to point out their book is inconsistent and not believable and therefore unreliable for the basis of laws.

isn't going to make slavers deconvert, why would they? They like their faith, and they believe it gives them cause to do whatever they like. You're asking them to give up their religion and their property at a go. In exchange for what?

For their humanity. But more pragmatically, for the priviledge of living in society.

But when I talk to them, not with the intent of destroying their faith, but of destroying the weeds that have grown up among the grass, I can and have changed people's minds on this very issue.

That’s good.but it can pop right back up again, because it is still right there in their bible, and you let them think their bible is reliable.

Incidentally, if there's a Christian fundamentalist who would consider me a "Bible-believing Christian", I'd be interested to meet them.

They all count you. If you talk about Jesus, they use you to call their mob a majority. They’ll disown you later, but then count you again as soon as they want to make the argument that they have a mandate.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

He doesn't. This is not unusual, he was not a poltiical leader, and didn't comment on political affairs. What he did teach was how a person ought to live. and that way of life had as its core love of God and love of neighbor. I'm not choosing those elements arbitraily, they're the unifying theme of the gospels and Jesus himself, uncommonly for him, outright called them the most important commandments. He rarely taught anything by direct statement, let alone cited "commandments", but that he made explicit. Why?

They had a very good case; if you only look at the proof texts they favored, and fail to ask any critical questions about the morality of their actions and the ethic prescribed by their supposed master. Then you hit questions that neither you nor they are willing to answer.

It's funny how you bounce back and forth so glibly between "They ought to be condemned, as their actions are so bad I don't even have to explain why they should be considered bad" and "boy those Nazis sure had some great points!" It's not that I think you are taking a consciously pro-slavery position. It's that I don't think you are thinking through the implications of the shit you say, the people you are supporting and those who you are dismissing.

Am I the only one reading this as a complaint about cherry picking certain sections of the Bible to reinforce a position while simultaneously bragging about cherry picking certain sections of the Bible to reinforce a position?

It's hypocritical to claim that you are following every word of the Bible, or speaking for the whole Bible, and then to "cherry pick" (ie critically evaluate) what you are reading. If you believe, as I do, that it is an ancient text and needs to be read with a measure of nuance to begin with, like you would literally any other book, then there is no contradiction. I don't see why this is hard to understand, as your command of the English language suggests you have in fact read other books than the Bible. Presumably you don't approach them all in cock-eyed, bizarre way that people read the Bible.

I feel like the hermeneutics argument is a derail though. Even a literally-interpreted Bible does not support or allow for slavery. Or can you answer my question, unlike these other cowards who dismiss my argument but are afraid to actually state out loud the absurd argument they are making?

Right, this is what I'm saying. You're reading parts of the Bible, running them through the filter of what you want to hear and then saying that you have Biblical support for your position. It's not somehow different from the preachers who shouted out Bible verses from their podiums to justify how slavery was the natural state of the law given to us by God, aside from the arbitrarily subjective filters that you decided to use in order to have the Bible agree with the position you decided it had before reading it.

 

[Politesse]

It's hypocritical to claim that you are following every word of the Bible, or speaking for the whole Bible, and then to "cherry pick" (ie critically evaluate) what you are reading. If you believe, as I do, that it is an ancient text and needs to be read with a measure of nuance to begin with, like you would literally any other book, then there is no contradiction. I don't see why this is hard to understand, as your command of the English language suggests you have in fact read other books than the Bible. Presumably you don't approach them all in cock-eyed, bizarre way that people read the Bible.

I feel like the hermeneutics argument is a derail though. Even a literally-interpreted Bible does not support or allow for slavery. Or can you answer my question, unlike these other cowards who dismiss my argument but are afraid to actually state out loud the absurd argument they are making?

Right, this is what I'm saying. You're reading parts of the Bible, running them through the filter of what you want to hear and then saying that you have Biblical support for your position. It's not somehow different from the preachers who shouted out Bible verses from their podiums to justify how slavery was the natural state of the law given to us by God, aside from the arbitrarily subjective filters that you decided to use in order to have the Bible agree with the position you decided it had before reading it.

Whereas slave owners, in your view, approach the Bible in an unbiased fashion, and simply read it as it is without being shaped by personal interest? I do not remember what position I had on slavery before I ever read the Bible, childhood memories are slightly hazy, but everyone has a bias. I'd rather be biased by compassion for others than compromised by greed and a lust for controlling others. And do you know what other famous ancient philosopher taught that love is a better guide for your actions than greed?

Well, actually, nearly all of them. But Jesus was certainly among their number. So I do not see my bias as an equivalent sin to reading the Bible with the intent to accumulate wealth from it, no. If I had to choose between being a good human and "following the Bible", the book would be the first thing to go. But that's not necessary in this case, nor do I think it is wise or ethical to tell slavers and slavery apologists that the Bible says slavery is okay, when the most one can say is that the message is ambiguous.

I'm still waiting for anyone to make a logical case against my position. You're trying to make this all about my personal beliefs in motivations, because you know you have no actual argument against my primary point, that whatever people may have deluded themselves into believing over the millennia, enslaving another human being is not loving them as oneself. In fact, the two commandments Jesus called the most important, love of God and love of neighbor, are both very obviously violated by the practice. And that, you have no argument against.

Yet, you are happy to parrot a pro-slavery argument you know to be wrong, and that you know is championed by cruel and wicked men. Have you ever wondered about your own biases, and and how they might influence the way you "read" the Bible?

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Yet, you are happy to parrot a pro-slavery argument you know to be wrong, and that you know is championed by cruel and wicked men. Have you ever wondered about your own biases, and and how they might influence the way you "read" the Bible?

Yes. This is literally ALL that I am saying. People find the parts in the Bible which support their positions and then they work backwards to say that they got those positions from the Bible. You take the parts where God is being nice and use that to reinforce your position that people should be nice to each other and don't give too much weight to the levelling cities and encouraging rape parts. Slavers take the parts supporting slavery and use that to reinforce the position that slavery is good and anti-slavery people say that those are historical artifacts or whatever and shouldn't be taken literally. Anti-gay Christians find the parts condemning homosexuality and call them important while pro-gay Christians ignore those parts and say they don't matter.

There is no difference at all between your interpretations of the Bible and all these other people's interpretations of the Bible. You are not somehow more of a "real" or "correct" Christian than they are. You are all just reinforcing your own positions with Biblical references and then saying that the Bible is why you came to those positions, despite the Bible not being relevant for your positions on all these other issues.

 

[Politesse]

Yet, you are happy to parrot a pro-slavery argument you know to be wrong, and that you know is championed by cruel and wicked men. Have you ever wondered about your own biases, and and how they might influence the way you "read" the Bible?

Yes. This is literally ALL that I am saying. People find the parts in the Bible which support their positions and then they work backwards to say that they got those positions from the Bible. You take the parts where God is being nice and use that to reinforce your position that people should be nice to each other and don't give too much weight to the levelling cities and encouraging rape parts. Slavers take the parts supporting slavery and use that to reinforce the position that slavery is good and anti-slavery people say that those are historical artifacts or whatever and shouldn't be taken literally. Anti-gay Christians find the parts condemning homosexuality and call them important while pro-gay Christians ignore those parts and say they don't matter.

There is no difference at all between your interpretations of the Bible and all these other people's interpretations of the Bible. You are not somehow more of a "real" or "correct" Christian than they are. You are all just reinforcing your own positions with Biblical references and then saying that the Bible is why you came to those positions, despite the Bible not being relevant for your positions on all these other issues.

You say that as thought the positions are somehow equivalent. They are not. And you are choosing the wrong side.



When I say that slavery is wrong, I am not just making a theological argument. People's lives are at stake, and I value them more than any book or Book.

But it is also true that you are trying to step around the central issue of discussion. If you can't make a coherent logical argument for your position, equivocating by saying "there are two opinions, therefore both must be equally valid" is a Fox News level and style of inane argumentation.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Yet, you are happy to parrot a pro-slavery argument you know to be wrong, and that you know is championed by cruel and wicked men. Have you ever wondered about your own biases, and and how they might influence the way you "read" the Bible?

Yes. This is literally ALL that I am saying. People find the parts in the Bible which support their positions and then they work backwards to say that they got those positions from the Bible. You take the parts where God is being nice and use that to reinforce your position that people should be nice to each other and don't give too much weight to the levelling cities and encouraging rape parts. Slavers take the parts supporting slavery and use that to reinforce the position that slavery is good and anti-slavery people say that those are historical artifacts or whatever and shouldn't be taken literally. Anti-gay Christians find the parts condemning homosexuality and call them important while pro-gay Christians ignore those parts and say they don't matter.

There is no difference at all between your interpretations of the Bible and all these other people's interpretations of the Bible. You are not somehow more of a "real" or "correct" Christian than they are. You are all just reinforcing your own positions with Biblical references and then saying that the Bible is why you came to those positions, despite the Bible not being relevant for your positions on all these other issues.

You say that as thought the positions are somehow equivalent. They are not. And you are choosing the wrong side.

View attachment 30458

When I say that slavery is wrong, I am not just making a theological argument. People's lives are at stake, and I value them more than any book or Book.

But it is also true that you are trying to step around the central issue of discussion. If you can't make a coherent logical argument for your position, equivocating by saying "there are two opinions, therefore both must be equally valid" is a Fox News level and style of inane argumentation.

I don't who you think you're talking to or why you're quoting my posts when speaking to that guy, but nothing you're saying is a counter to anything that I'm saying.

 

[Politesse]

You say that as thought the positions are somehow equivalent. They are not. And you are choosing the wrong side.

View attachment 30458

When I say that slavery is wrong, I am not just making a theological argument. People's lives are at stake, and I value them more than any book or Book.

But it is also true that you are trying to step around the central issue of discussion. If you can't make a coherent logical argument for your position, equivocating by saying "there are two opinions, therefore both must be equally valid" is a Fox News level and style of inane argumentation.

I don't who you think you're talking to or why you're quoting my posts when speaking to that guy, but nothing you're saying is a counter to anything that I'm saying.

You say that my position is just like that of a slaver, despite the fact that my argument is both more logically and morally justifiable.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

You say that as thought the positions are somehow equivalent. They are not. And you are choosing the wrong side.

View attachment 30458

When I say that slavery is wrong, I am not just making a theological argument. People's lives are at stake, and I value them more than any book or Book.

But it is also true that you are trying to step around the central issue of discussion. If you can't make a coherent logical argument for your position, equivocating by saying "there are two opinions, therefore both must be equally valid" is a Fox News level and style of inane argumentation.

I don't who you think you're talking to or why you're quoting my posts when speaking to that guy, but nothing you're saying is a counter to anything that I'm saying.

You say that my position is just like that of a slaver, despite the fact that my argument is both more logically and morally justifiable.

Oh my fucking god. That has no relation at all to anything that I said.

 

[Politesse]

You say that my position is just like that of a slaver, despite the fact that my argument is both more logically and morally justifiable.

Oh my fucking god. That has no relation at all to anything that I said.

Then you must not have expressed it very well. Do you, in fact, admit that slavery is wrong, and agree with me that no one who claims to love their neighbor as their self can possibly enslave another human being without contradiction?

 

[Tom Sawyer]

You say that my position is just like that of a slaver, despite the fact that my argument is both more logically and morally justifiable.

Oh my fucking god. That has no relation at all to anything that I said.

Then you must not have expressed it very well. Do you, in fact, admit that slavery is wrong, and agree with me that no one who claims to love their neighbor as their self can possibly enslave another h/uman being without contradiction?

Of course I agree with you that slavery is wrong. My opinions on the matter have never entered into this discussion in any way, shape or form.

Are you saying that of all the Christian people who've owned slaves in history, NONE of them would have referred to themselves as someone who loved their neighbours as them themselves? They were ALL wrong about that? They weren't REAL Christians or something like that?

 

[Jarhyn]

It's hypocritical to claim that you are following every word of the Bible, or speaking for the whole Bible, and then to "cherry pick" (ie critically evaluate) what you are reading. If you believe, as I do, that it is an ancient text and needs to be read with a measure of nuance to begin with, like you would literally any other book, then there is no contradiction. I don't see why this is hard to understand, as your command of the English language suggests you have in fact read other books than the Bible. Presumably you don't approach them all in cock-eyed, bizarre way that people read the Bible.

I feel like the hermeneutics argument is a derail though. Even a literally-interpreted Bible does not support or allow for slavery. Or can you answer my question, unlike these other cowards who dismiss my argument but are afraid to actually state out loud the absurd argument they are making?

Right, this is what I'm saying. You're reading parts of the Bible, running them through the filter of what you want to hear and then saying that you have Biblical support for your position. It's not somehow different from the preachers who shouted out Bible verses from their podiums to justify how slavery was the natural state of the law given to us by God, aside from the arbitrarily subjective filters that you decided to use in order to have the Bible agree with the position you decided it had before reading it.

Whereas slave owners, in your view, approach the Bible in an unbiased fashion, and simply read it as it is without being shaped by personal interest? I do not remember what position I had on slavery before I ever read the Bible, childhood memories are slightly hazy, but everyone has a bias. I'd rather be biased by compassion for others than compromised by greed and a lust for controlling others. And do you know what other famous ancient philosopher taught that love is a better guide for your actions than greed?

Well, actually, nearly all of them. But Jesus was certainly among their number. So I do not see my bias as an equivalent sin to reading the Bible with the intent to accumulate wealth from it, no. If I had to choose between being a good human and "following the Bible", the book would be the first thing to go. But that's not necessary in this case, nor do I think it is wise or ethical to tell slavers and slavery apologists that the Bible says slavery is okay, when the most one can say is that the message is ambiguous.

I'm still waiting for anyone to make a logical case against my position. You're trying to make this all about my personal beliefs in motivations, because you know you have no actual argument against my primary point, that whatever people may have deluded themselves into believing over the millennia, enslaving another human being is not loving them as oneself. In fact, the two commandments Jesus called the most important, love of God and love of neighbor, are both very obviously violated by the practice. And that, you have no argument against.

Yet, you are happy to parrot a pro-slavery argument you know to be wrong, and that you know is championed by cruel and wicked men. Have you ever wondered about your own biases, and and how they might influence the way you "read" the Bible?

In this case, yes. Slavery was the order of the world for most of it. The bible has an ambiguous relationship with that. It's OK to recognize that the bible doesn't say what they want either: they manufacture the insistence as much as the insistence against "onanism" is manufactured.

But they don't manufacture the license the bible gives to slavery, only the obligation; it is a half-truth.

We already here know the "Bible says it!" Argument is wrong twofold: the bible saying shit doesn't mean shit, and the bible doesn't actually say that shit.

As such I repeat the argument I have made elsewhere, and often here: the bible cannot be used as a measuring stick for sin today; it acts only as a single step in the philosophical journey of those seeking actual truth, as a suggestion of what right may look like that must be consummated against the shape of the universe through testing or at least observation, current or recorded faithfully. To do more is to go too far. Many people go too far. Many people don't even know better.

 

[Politesse]

Are you saying that of all the Christian people who've owned slaves in history, NONE of them would have referred to themselves as someone who loved their neighbours as them themselves?

Of course they did. I have never said anything to the contrary. But they were wrong to do so. Which is why it pisses me off to see atheists siding with them to score cheap points in a culture war. We won the battle to end slavery in Nebraska this year by just forty points. A comfortable margin in theory, but the fact that 30% of Nebraskans still favored slavery is horrifying to me, as were some of the people I met while I was campaigning. We must present a strong case against this ancient and evil institution with whatever is at our disposal.

They were ALL wrong about that?

YES.

They weren't REAL Christians or something like that?

Irrelevant. Their point was wrong no matter what they call themselves. So is yours, if you agree with them, and no one claims that you are a Christian at all.

 

[Politesse]

As such I repeat the argument I have made elsewhere, and often here: the bible cannot be used as a measuring stick for sin today; it acts only as a single step in the philosophical journey of those seeking actual truth, as a suggestion of what right may look like that must be consummated against the shape of the universe through testing or at least observation, current or recorded faithfully. To do more is to go too far. Many people go too far. Many people don't even know better.

Philosophically, I agree with you. Pragmatically, trying to convince people to become mystics will not get us any closer to ending slavery. Most have no interest in grand cosmic journeys to the truth.

 

[Jarhyn]

Of course they did. I have never said anything to the contrary. But they were wrong to do so. Which is why it pisses me off to see atheists siding with them to score cheap points in a culture war. We won the battle to end slavery in Nebraska this year by just forty points. A comfortable margin in theory, but the fact that 30% of Nebraskans still favored slavery is horrifying to me, as were some of the people I met while I was campaigning. We must present a strong case against this ancient and evil institution with whatever is at our disposal.

YES.

They weren't REAL Christians or something like that?

Irrelevant. Their point was wrong no matter what they call themselves. So is yours, if you agree with them, and no one claims that you are a Christian at all.

As I like to put it, a woman having a penis and acting like "a man" doesn't make her not a woman. It just makes her a BAD woman.

A christian who treats their neighbors badly is not a non-christian, they are just a BAD christian. This is a good comparison to make.

But we all already knew that Mammon makes a bad neighbor

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Of course they did. I have never said anything to the contrary. But they were wrong to do so. Which is why it pisses me off to see atheists siding with them to score cheap points in a culture war. We won the battle to end slavery in Nebraska this year by just forty points. A comfortable margin in theory, but the fact that 30% of Nebraskans still favored slavery is horrifying to me, as were some of the people I met while I was campaigning. We must present a strong case against this ancient and evil institution with whatever is at our disposal.

Well, I seriously doubt that any atheist ever sided with them in any conversation they've ever had with you. The point that atheists make when bringing this up is when is to point out the speciousness of the claim that Christians use the Bible as the source of their morality. You don't. You have a sense of morality and then cherry pick the parts of the Bible which agree with you and ignore the parts which don't.

 

[Politesse]

Of course they did. I have never said anything to the contrary. But they were wrong to do so. Which is why it pisses me off to see atheists siding with them to score cheap points in a culture war. We won the battle to end slavery in Nebraska this year by just forty points. A comfortable margin in theory, but the fact that 30% of Nebraskans still favored slavery is horrifying to me, as were some of the people I met while I was campaigning. We must present a strong case against this ancient and evil institution with whatever is at our disposal.

Well, I seriously doubt that any atheist ever sided with them in any conversation they've ever had with you. The point that atheists make when bringing this up is when is to point out the speciousness of the claim that Christians use the Bible as the source of their morality. You don't. You have a sense of morality and then cherry pick the parts of the Bible which agree with you and ignore the parts which don't.

That's a whole lot of goalposts you're shifting. Did you even read this thread?

Just so you know, I'm aware that any kind of critical thinking is called "cherry picking" by fundamentalists and former-fundy-type atheists, but I have never learned to accept it as an insult. I grew up in farm country, and know that you should, in fact, harvest cherries selectively. Some are good, some are not. Some are good for market, others are only good for the pigs. And you know who else said that?

 

[Jarhyn]

Of course they did. I have never said anything to the contrary. But they were wrong to do so. Which is why it pisses me off to see atheists siding with them to score cheap points in a culture war. We won the battle to end slavery in Nebraska this year by just forty points. A comfortable margin in theory, but the fact that 30% of Nebraskans still favored slavery is horrifying to me, as were some of the people I met while I was campaigning. We must present a strong case against this ancient and evil institution with whatever is at our disposal.

Well, I seriously doubt that any atheist ever sided with them in any conversation they've ever had with you. The point that atheists make when bringing this up is when is to point out the speciousness of the claim that Christians use the Bible as the source of their morality. You don't. You have a sense of morality and then cherry pick the parts of the Bible which agree with you and ignore the parts which don't.

That's a whole lot of goalposts you're shifting. Did you even read this thread?

Just so you know, I'm aware that any kind of critical thinking is called "cherry picking" by fundamentalists and former-fundy-type atheists, but I have never learned to accept it as an insult. I grew up in farm country, and know that you should, in fact, harvest cherries selectively. Some are good, some are not. Some are good for market, others are only good for the pigs. And you know who else said that?

I think the point he is trying to make, regardless of any other conversations going on, is that the bible, no matter who you are, requires careful analysis to determine what is true, what contains truth, and what is neither of those things, and that modern Mammonism in general doesn't generally care, they just bad-faith their way through the book like republicans bad-faith their way through the government.

 

[Politesse]

That's a whole lot of goalposts you're shifting. Did you even read this thread?

Just so you know, I'm aware that any kind of critical thinking is called "cherry picking" by fundamentalists and former-fundy-type atheists, but I have never learned to accept it as an insult. I grew up in farm country, and know that you should, in fact, harvest cherries selectively. Some are good, some are not. Some are good for market, others are only good for the pigs. And you know who else said that?

I think the point he is trying to make, regardless of any other conversations going on, is that the bible, no matter who you are, requires careful analysis to determine what is true, what contains truth, and what is neither of those things, and that modern Mammonism in general doesn't generally care, they just bad-faith their way through the book like republicans bad-faith their way through the government.

Well, yes. But that is why I think they should be contradicted. Loudly, publically, and often. Not quietly endorsed.

 

[Jarhyn]

That's a whole lot of goalposts you're shifting. Did you even read this thread?

Just so you know, I'm aware that any kind of critical thinking is called "cherry picking" by fundamentalists and former-fundy-type atheists, but I have never learned to accept it as an insult. I grew up in farm country, and know that you should, in fact, harvest cherries selectively. Some are good, some are not. Some are good for market, others are only good for the pigs. And you know who else said that?

I think the point he is trying to make, regardless of any other conversations going on, is that the bible, no matter who you are, requires careful analysis to determine what is true, what contains truth, and what is neither of those things, and that modern Mammonism in general doesn't generally care, they just bad-faith their way through the book like republicans bad-faith their way through the government.

Well, yes. But that is why I think they should be contradicted. Loudly, publically, and often. Not quietly endorsed.

The thing is, you can't contradict them. They point to the ambiguity and that's all they need for a bad faith "does the bible ever say, specifically, that slavery is wrong? What about 'good owners who love their slaves and treat them well'?" And then it's over, because while John may have not been comfortable with owning people, he never wrote a word, through his own pen or to the attribution of jesus against it to prove that.

I don't accept slavery. I don't think it matches with the message of "love thy neighbor as thyself". It is the truest commandment of the universe itself, no matter what some author says, because there's just no way to logically resolve desert and rights without invoking an asymmetry otherwise; and besides, it benefits everyone to add the common force we may contribute to all that is the effort of that society, that we all benefit and thus all thrive. Some people seek to put up walls, define groups, pitch teams, and decide they are more right for some arbitrary reason. This is good too. It is a human thing. But when they decide people who are different are not people who are equal, or people they have little connection to are not to be equal, when they play God and decide who is worthy, and who is not... Hmmm. Yeah, John wrote something about that, too. But all the same, it disregards a person's rights to decide their goals for themselves. The bible is a problem here. I don't even think the works of John have this problem, the problem is the rest of it.