Can slavery be justified? The simple answer is no, not really. It is horrific to enslave a human being, however, people found many ways to justify this terrible act. In 'Captains and Slaves: Aphra Behn and the Rhetoric of Republic', Warren Chernaik talks about Locke's and Hobbs' view of slavery. Both had essentially agreed that slavery was indeed okay if it was within a war content. This means that if one group of people wins a war between the other, that the winning people can hold the other captive. They become slaves to the other group. They're the looser, so why should they get to be free? They are a disgrace to their community, who would want them now? Chernaik makes references to Oroonoko to back his arguments. He makes it seem like because they're losers, they can be owned no problem. He also discusses the wrong ways of slavery. He says that the way it came about was bad. The things these people did to their captives was awe-full. Either way slavery can never truly be justified.
John Locke wrote about how human understanding works. He wrote that the search for ideas were of better delight than a hunt. He said that pursuing great ideas was just as good as hunting. You could tell that he probably liked hunting...for ideas. Get what I did there? Anyway, he thought that your own experiences lead to our own conclusions on certain things. He tells us in this writing that we should think for ourselves. Because of this, people began thinking for themselves and making their own decisions on what their life should look like. It would lead to people wanting a better government and even to independence in the United States. It does the same thing today. We read more and try to keep up with what's going on around us. We want to be made aware of what goes on in our lives and decide whether we agree or disagree with the state we're in. We think for ourselves and our own experiences and ideas help us to fight for our rights and things we want for ourselves.
How on earth can science and religion possibly be related? Well actually, they can be related in several ways. They can help each other in their topics. In a sense, science and religion need each other. Science gives us the how and religion gives us the who, when, why aspect. Science describes how something happens, whereas religion tells why it happened and who made it happen. In fact, scientists used to research science for the soul purpose of religion. They wanted to learn more about what God made and by doing that, it was glorifying Him. Now scientists believe that science and religion has nothing to do with each other. Sir Isaac Newton wrote on how prisms work and how rainbows are made. Bunyan wrote about a Christian's journey and the trials in it. At a glance, these two could never be relevant to each other. Newton is relevant to science; Bunyan is relevant to religion. But as I stated before, science and religion help each other. God made the rainbow and science shows us how we can make a rainbow using a prism. Both of these writings help us to understand the how, who, and why of a thing or situation.
