[ExI] The Rationality of Belief is Relative

[Damien Broderick]

At 10:51 AM 5/21/2009 -0700, Lee wrote:

>>>Slavery seemed perfectly natural to Aristotle
>>>and Cicero. You consider this a rational lapse
>>>on their parts?

[Olga:]
>>Yes.  (And I would guess that many of the slaves probably didn't 
>>think slavery was "perfectly natural.")
>
>Au contraire. Prior to the last five or six
>hundred years, there were only a few people
>who had much sympathy at all for slaves

By "only a few people" I assume you're referring to the first 
one-word sentence you cite from Olga, but not to any of the following 
parenthetical sentence--which is also about people, many of whom 
probably did have sympathy for their fellow slaves, and at least some 
of whom might have wondered as the whips fell and their families were 
torn apart whether this were truly the "perfectly natural" order of 
the world. The Hebrews didn't seem all that fond of this natural 
order, if the Bible is to be trusted on such matters.

Damien Broderick