"And you've taken the quote very much out of context."

I cited a Bible verse, I've not 'taken' it anywhere. But if we're talking about 'context', the context is that even if slaves don't realize they're doing anything wrong, they should be beaten if they do something wrong.

The standard defense is that it's not talking about *literal* slaves, it's talking about us as God's slaves. And that Jesus might only have been referring to beating servants or bondsmen, not slaves.

Thanks for that, traditional defense, that makes it all better.

If you'd like to cite the verse in the Bible where Jesus condemns slavery, or indeed offers mild disapproval of slavery, or sympathy for those who were slaves, at a time when a third of the population of the Roman Empire were slaves, please feel free.

I think it's in the same bit he makes it clear what his policies on homosexuality and abortion are.

OK. Did Jesus mean 'slave' or 'head butler'?

This is simple enough. The Greek word used is 'doulos'. Rabbis at the time would pray 'thank you Lord for not making me a doulos'. It's the word for a man bought in a market, and elsewhere in the New Testament - three times in Revelation for example, 6:15, 13:16 and 19:18 - the word is used to distinguish people of low station who aren't 'free'.

1 Corinthian 7:22 - 23 spells it out. 'We are bought with a price'.

The nearest modern English equivalent is something like 'drone'. It means 'unfree worker'.

Yeah, most translations opt for 'servant'. That's a legitimate, but very soft choice. It's an example of where the translation of the Bible has altered the original meaning for contemporary contingency. And slavery in the Roman Empire doesn't map exactly onto slavery in nineteenth century America, but it was still slavery.

A 'doulos' is someone bought, who works for a master, who can be beaten if he expresses any dissent, who isn't free, who has an extremely low station. It's what we'd call a slave.

There were people opposed to slavery in the ancient world - Israel was founded by freed slaves, Jewish law before the Romans invaded had banned the export of Jewish slaves from Israel. Cyrus the Great abolished slavery in Persia in the sixth centuy BC.

Jesus doesn't say 'one day, the slaves will be freed', he says that we're all slaves of God. The disciples glossed this as meaning that however horrible it was down here, we'd all have a nice time in Heaven.

Yes, Jesus has a bronze age mentality with a moral framework that doesn't map at all well into the modern age. And this was my initial point - people who try to ask 'what would Jesus do?' invariably end up projecting what they'd do if they were a little bit nicer.

This is not because Comedy Central's credibility went up.

When he said he looked at the polling, the only logical result that would have motivated Specter to do what he did is that he'd win the election if he was a candidate, but he'd lose the primary.

So the interesting question is why he didn't stand as an independent.

And the answer to that has to be that the polling showed that if he stood as a third candidate, he'd split the vote and the Republicans would get in.

All this stuff about how he thinks he's got a job for life ... no, it's precisely because he knows he hasn't. He clearly feels, and thinks the polls show, that Pennsylvanians want him as their Senator, but that the Republican Party don't.

http://twitter.com/trapphic

"Galatea loved Pygmalion, but as a statue she had been at peace. After his death she bade farewell to their children and sought Medusa’s aid."

The National Review say people will die as a result of this.

That would be the same National Review that says 'guns don't kill people, *gun control* does' -

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MjI1NDIxNWQ4YjA1NDFlZDJkMzFiMDZlZWViMDgxZWY=

I think I'd prefer my opinion from the reality-based community, if it's all the same.

Yes ... let's do that. Let's accept your standard. We can now assume that every 'responsible' leader of the anti-abortion movement (nice loophole you left there, by the way), every evangelical and 'Republican leaders everywhere' condone this action unless they stand up and say, out loud and explicitly, without weasel words, that people who kill Americans who've done nothing illegal are terrorists. And let's not leave out the right wing journalists who've been inciting violence against liberals for months now.

As they're decent human beings, and not cowards seeking not to offend their base, they'll make that statement without needing to be prompted.

OK ... journalists, bloggers, everyone - let's get 'Republicans everywhere' and 'evangelists' on the record as unequivocally stating that they condemn this and that it was entirely unjustified.

OK ... I'll spell it out.

1. A person of your political viewpoint has just committed a terrorist murder.

2. Some people here of an opposing political viewpoint to yours have suggested you are banned from the comments section for defending this.

You think only the second of these is objectionable.

I don't think you should be banned. Because a lot of decent, tolerant law-abiding liberals think that there can't possibly be people like you, that 'evangelicals' don't *really* mean all that stuff they say, that O'Reilly and Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter are 'entertainment'.

Speak. Keep speaking.