IIRC each of the three major monotheistic religions is fairly clear about the wrongs of lending money and charging interest -- except Judaism, which says it's okay so long as the borrower is not Jewish.
Perversely, from a regulatory perspective they'd have been in trouble if they'd vetted their customers based on their faith.
I've read quite enough about my religion and it does provide a moral framework. I also believe in the principles in the US Constitution, but I see the section on slavery and realize it concept best banished to the dustbin of history[1]. The Bible was not only a religious text, but a historical and instructional. It had sections on how to treat slaves, which I ignore. I also have no need to go outside the city and bury my poop[2]. Inspired words are sadly not perfect words.
1) although given some stats, it might be more prevalent now in number (not %) than when that document was written
2) Deuteronomy 23:13
If you're selecting which bits of a text to adopt, and interpreting other bits, why do you need the text (which contains things you obviously disagree with) as a 'basis of a moral framework'?
Is there anything in your particular preferred version of the text that unambiguously allows the reader flexibility to pick and choose which bits they will agree with (my understanding is that this isn't the case - but my knowledge is not deep in this area).
Its not so much selecting, as knowing that the context has changed in thousands of years. Burying your poop and what hand to use eating were important things back then, but only really practical on a survival show now. I have plumbing and good soap. How to treat slaves is not something the modern world should care about. Its not about disagreeing with the text, its understanding that whole free will and gaining dominion over it all sometimes discards the old conditions by freeing people. Its was a survival manual after all too.
"Thou shalt not murder" and "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor" are not something that loses their context. They speak to how to treat others and don't lose any meaning with era. Our changes to the world have not changed such fundamental truths. We are still humans and some things are eternal. The parables are still good lessons.
At the risk of sounding churlish, however, I think you dodged my question : )
I know that I should not murder, and that I should not buy / keep slaves. Yet I don't need to refer to a text that agrees with my position on the former, but is (at best) ambiguous on the latter. (The precise mechanism by which I've come to know both things are bad is not something I can conveniently answer, before you ask. Quoting K-Pax may be necessary.)
My question was if you have the necessary innate / internal / nascent / instinctive understanding to know slavery is bad (as one example) then what's the point of using a text that advocates slavery as the basis of a moral framework?
> I've come to know both things are bad is not something I can conveniently answer, before you ask
Yet, you ask me the reason I use a text that is the basis of my church's beliefs that were taught to me to show those are bad.
I don't think its instinctive to know its bad or else it would have not been such an institution in the first place.
To be fair to the Bible, it doesn't advocate slavery, but it does have commands on how to treat slaves including freeing them. I guess there is a pragmatism in lessening the horror when its not ingrained to end it outright.
My own woefully incomplete study materials occupies 12 cubits of shelf space - That's 5.4 meters for you modern types. :)
The body of knowledge is so vast for example that at one point economics was considered a small subset of theology.
The whole idea of the New Testament which is what Christians follow, is supposed to be an amendment to the Old Testament. The only issue is that there is no copy of the Old Testament with the repealed parts striked out. One could argue that the Old Testament is the book of law but the New Testament is the guidebook on how to follow the law, whats ok to break and whats not.
Very rarely do we have situations in life where we have absolute laws and absolute consequences. Marijuana is federally illegal but legal in certain states. Speeding can get you anywhere from a warning to a hefty ticket depending on how the cop feels about you. You can hem and haw about how Christians don't follow the Bible to the letter but it really doesn't matter. Everything progresses (and regresses) over time, changing from the original intended meaning to the new interpreted meaning and maybe back again.
Although perhaps comparably cop-outedly I get most of my information on such topics from the writings of John Ralston Saul (who coincidentally popped up a few weeks ago on HN's front page).
Quoting from the his book The Doubter's Companion:
"Bankers -- Pillars of society who are going to hell if there is a God and He has been accurately quoted.
"All three Western religions have always forbidden the collection of interest on loans. When Samuel Johnson defined the banker in the eighteenth century his status was clear: "One that trafficks in money." Their venal sin of usury continues to sit high on lists of scriptural wrongdoing, which raises the question of why bankers -- the money-market sort excluded -- tend to be frequent church-goers.
" ...
"The clearest situation for bankers would be if God didn't exist. They would then be morally home-free and could go to church in a more relaxed frame of mind."
Anyway, I return to my earlier point that dwelling upon these chaps' alleged, or at least erstwhile, belief in a deity is at best an annoying irrelevancy.
That said, one way I measure various religions is the extent to which their followers perform the inductive reasoning that takes them from the individual bits of the moral code to a well-developed moral sense.
For instance, my biggest issue with the scheme you mentioned is that, why would a third party come and buy the property and resell it back to you if they did not have an incentive (i.e. they have a buyer already lined up)? And can the contract be conditional that you have to agree that they sell it to you after they buy it? How is the profit rate set? Etc.
There are other schemes which seem permissible (e.g. a group of people agree to buy a house, then they find a renter and split up the rent between them. This way, the risk is spread across everyone, not just the one who owes the loan. The renter can then decide to buy shares of the house along the way). Of course, there need to be scholars who review this since there are small things that can render the agreement non-Shariah compliant.
From the Quran:
From the Hadith:
* The Prophet, Peace be upon him, said: "There will certainly come a time for mankind when everyone will take riba and if he does not do so, its dust will reach him."
* The Prophet, Peace be upon him, cursed the receiver and the payer of interest, the one who records it and the two witnesses to the transaction and said: "They are all alike [in guilt]."
Likewise, sabbath keeping rules make perfect sense in such an economy. No, you can't work a lot of extra hours more than we're all willing to work and amass extra wealth for yourself. The net result of that is you taking a bigger piece of the economic pie. The longer work really doesn't grow the pie, which was essentially limited by the agricultural productivity of the land.
A big point of banning interest is that one can just sit on his money, while making more money; without really incurring any risk. One can get wealth from other means, which contribute to the society, while incurring risk on the money owners part. This is key.
IIRC, during The French Revolution, they tried a 10 day work week just to try to distance themselves from the old ways. It did not work. People need a day off about once every 7 days when they are working physically hard and for long hours at their jobs. They suffer burn out and collapse when they don't take time off to recover.