It seems to me that you're saying your value system, exactly as it is, should be applied to your entire view of history; that if it is wrong now, it was necessarily wrong then, too; and that anyone who didn't live by your (as yet undeveloped) value system was guilty of evil, or sin, or however you want to define that particular quality of wrongness. (Please, correct me if I got any part of that wrong.)
For someone whose opinion of the Bible doesn't seem to be that high, you're actually sounding more right-wing Christian than I do.
As for your last example - I know women who hate, positively abhor, the idea that their bodies could produce babies. Does that make the motherhood aspect of womanhood evil?
Last point - I don't remember ever saying that slavery was moral. It wasn't. It's repugnant to me. What I started out saying was that, in a society where slavery was legal and unquestioned in popular dialogue, the ownership of slaves did not in and of itself make someone a bad person. It was part of the way people lived. In other words, judge the societal aspect of slavery all you want, but be aware that most of the people involved in that society a) had no choice about their place in it; b) had little influence over whatever public dialogue existed that might change it; c) did not have a mental framework for creating such a discussion even if they didn have access to one, because the framework of rights had not yet been articulated; and d) were just living, as best they could, using the resources at hand to survive.
It could be compared to the poor families in my neighbourhood whose response to my one-family boycott of Walmart on moral grounds is, "I can't afford to pay more for my goods than this, so I have to shop there."
Re: Part 1
For someone whose opinion of the Bible doesn't seem to be that high, you're actually sounding more right-wing Christian than I do.
As for your last example - I know women who hate, positively abhor, the idea that their bodies could produce babies. Does that make the motherhood aspect of womanhood evil?
Last point - I don't remember ever saying that slavery was moral. It wasn't. It's repugnant to me. What I started out saying was that, in a society where slavery was legal and unquestioned in popular dialogue, the ownership of slaves did not in and of itself make someone a bad person. It was part of the way people lived. In other words, judge the societal aspect of slavery all you want, but be aware that most of the people involved in that society a) had no choice about their place in it; b) had little influence over whatever public dialogue existed that might change it; c) did not have a mental framework for creating such a discussion even if they didn have access to one, because the framework of rights had not yet been articulated; and d) were just living, as best they could, using the resources at hand to survive.
It could be compared to the poor families in my neighbourhood whose response to my one-family boycott of Walmart on moral grounds is, "I can't afford to pay more for my goods than this, so I have to shop there."