The Pursuit of Happiness

[Stargazer]

On 6/2/2026 at 5:02 AM, The Nehor said:

The Bible is a pro-slavery book. There isn’t really a contradiction there sadly.

It would more accurate to say it's not an anti-slavery book. It's also not an anti-capitalism book.

[The Nehor]

44 minutes ago, Stargazer said:

It would more accurate to say it's not an anti-slavery book. It's also not an anti-capitalism book.

No, it is pro-slavery. It endorses it and prescribes it. The only objections to slavery are in the context of slavery is bad when it is done to our people by other people or when it is done in ways that violate our laws.

That is a simplification since the Bible isn’t a unified text speaking with one voice but you can find passages that endorse slavery and none that declare it to be an evil unless it is talking about Israelites being enslaved by other people where it is wrong.

It is also not an anti-slavery book so agree there. Parts of the Bible can be read as being opposed to capitalism, particularly some of the prophets lambasting the wealthy who were acquiring all the land. The Torah has a kind of economic reset every seven years that is semi anti-capitalist but it is doubtful this law was ever put in practice. In the New Testament you do get passages that suggest capitalism is pointless but those are usually from people who expect some kind of divine intervention to be imminent in which the whole world order will be overthrown and put right by God so difficult to make much of them when said divine intervention hasn’t happened.

[Teancum]

On 5/31/2026 at 9:57 PM, Emily said:

I could post the 60 some odd minutes of discussion that I had with the AI, with my questions, my requests for further information, my flagging of parts I thought would be most interesting to share, and my queries for further lines of inquiry I can follow later. But I suspect you would be equally reluctant to read that as well as it certainly too much text to post on the forum without creating multiple posts.

I realize there's an anti-AI movement that's terribly popular right now and lots of people feel compelled to jump on that particular bandwagon. But I've lived through plenty of anti-tech movements in the last 60+ years and have learned not to turn down useful tools simply because they are new, poorly understood and some people are misusing them.

It's really too bad the marketers chose to call the large language models (LLM) "artificial intelligence" -- the models are not that and the name creates both unreasonable expectations and fears.

LLMs are EXTREMELY useful time savers if you take the time to learn how to use them properly and understand how they work. They are here and they aren't going away. For which I'm grateful because the LLM was able to summarize an hour of typing and reading in under ten seconds.

I have been using an AI tool for tax work and research and it is amazing. Like you said, you have to know how to use it and what to ask, and even challenge it. But the end product is great. And it write a tax memo better than I can and I think I can write a good tax memorandum. I can do what used to take ten hours of work in about and hour to and hour and a half.

[Stargazer]

1 hour ago, The Nehor said:

No, it is pro-slavery. It endorses it and prescribes it. The only objections to slavery are in the context of slavery is bad when it is done to our people by other people or when it is done in ways that violate our laws.

That is a simplification since the Bible isn’t a unified text speaking with one voice but you can find passages that endorse slavery and none that declare it to be an evil unless it is talking about Israelites being enslaved by other people where it is wrong.

Yeah, I guess you have a point about that. 

One could possibly argue that our own formerly slave-holding society still holds slaves, except that the slavery is used as a punishment for law-breaking. A person sentenced to serve, say, ten years at hard labor (or even not so hard labor), is a slave in a certain technical sense. It's lawful under the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution. It abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime.

1 hour ago, The Nehor said:

It is also not an anti-slavery book so agree there. Parts of the Bible can be read as being opposed to capitalism, particularly some of the prophets lambasting the wealthy who were acquiring all the land. The Torah has a kind of economic reset every seven years that is semi anti-capitalist but it is doubtful this law was ever put in practice. In the New Testament you do get passages that suggest capitalism is pointless but those are usually from people who expect some kind of divine intervention to be imminent in which the whole world order will be overthrown and put right by God so difficult to make much of them when said divine intervention hasn’t happened.

Then we have the Parable of the Talents. A definite parable approving capitalism. Sort of.