Nathan, slavery is immoral; so is animal cruelty.

Do not feel compelled to click on my ad above. – BUM

 

“Now come on, surely if, as you say, it should be obvious to a non-religious person that slavery is immoral, you can say why.” – Nathan

 

Of course it is.

 

I have an innate moral sense that lets me know what is moral and what is immoral. I can internally and empirically detect moral/immoral statements in much the same way that I can detect the difference between colors, or flavors.

 

What is moral is not arbitrary, and I cannot choose what is moral and what is immoral…

 

It’s a sense that can be cultivated as well – a person can learn to crave healthy food for example.

 

It’s innate in people, although some people can be physiologically broken, like people who are colorblind – sociopaths for example. It can also take on cultural flavors – what a Thai person is craving for dinner tonight is probably different than what an Ethiopian is craving for dinner tonight – that doesn’t mean that there aren’t objective claims about what constitutes a food and what constitutes a poison.

 

Now, you made a few mistakes when talking about why you think slavery is wrong. First of all, as you agreed earlier, you cannot say such a blanket statement. Remember? Genocide is only sometimes wrong, as you say.

 

You should have said, “slavery is only sometimes wrong” – or at best, “slavery is wrong in all the times that God is against it” – which may be every time you’ve ever heard, but that hardly extrapolates.

 

Further, as my entry on slavery details, God many times does not have an issue with slavery at all.

 

Finally, I think you have this same internal moral sense.

 

I would guess that if you were walking down the street and saw a person torturing a dog to death on his front lawn that you would feel that this man is doing something wrong.

 

The unfortunate thing about a person who thinks that what is moral and immoral comes via divine fiat alone (rather than some innate moral sense), is that you wouldn’t be able to say that what the man is doing is wrong, unless you have access to what God has decided on the manner of animal torture.

 

Care to look for a Bible verse that condemns torturing a dog to death?

Or do you want to admit that you don’t think that animal cruelty is a moral issue?

Perhaps you have a direct line to God and He answers your questions about whether animal cruelty is wrong in this case?