beastie wrote:Perhaps I misunderstand you. I’ve already stated that I don’t believe legal consequences should be based on the desire to punish, but rather the desire to protect society. Forgiveness and reconciliation can take place within that paradigm, although it is quite a subjective and personal issue.
Yeah, ok great, I agree. So what's wrong with forgiving the guy who steals your car, instead of locking him away for three years, which achieves absolutely nothing except resentment, pain, and psychological damage, and is clearly punitive and vindictive?
While this particular conversation is obviously geared toward the LDS configuration, any theocracy that enacts the death penalty for adultery or the many other “crimes” theocracies usually attach to the death penalty ought to be condemned.
On what basis?
I interpreted your earlier remarks to me that while Jesus’ example may be nice on paper, it is unrealistic in today’s society, and the Law of Moses could be superior. Perhaps I misunderstood you.
No, I didn't say it was unrealistic in today's society. I think we should follow it. But it won't happen because most people today don't want to follow it, foremost among them the secular people. As I said, both Jesus' example
and the Law of Moses only operate best within a largely moral community, which is an environment prevailing in no 1st world nation on this entire planet. They are best suited to small close knit social communities sharing common values, social communities which contemporary Western civilization is aimed at destroying.
It is decent and civilized for people with power to refrain from abuse of that power. Death, in particular, is an irrevocable sentence. No room for error, because there is no way to compensate for error. The state has the power to take life. It is decent to err on the side of caution in exercising that power.
Ok, great, so it's decent and civilized for people with power to refrain from abuse of that power, and it's decent to err on the side of caution in exercising this power. So how does this invalidate the death penalty as a punishment? It just means we have to be careful. Incarceration is equally irrevocable - you can't give someone their 5, 10 or 20 years back if they were wrongfully incarcerated.
Fort, are you serious?
Yes.
Do you hang around, in general, with people who support the death penalty for adultery?
No, I don't know anyone who does.
Do you really have to probe to understand my objection?
Yes. It's either that or make wild guesses about what you believe, but I'd prefer not to do that.
Yes, it is disproportionate to the crime.
Ok, in what way do you justify this statement? Is that a personal view you have, or is it objectively verifiable?
It also makes no sense from a social point of view. It is not going to resolve any problems.
Well they're not going to do it again, are they?
People commit adultery for a myriad of reasons, and threatening them with death isn’t going to resolve any of them.
You seem to be saying that the punishment is invalid because it is not a successful deterrent. Is that what you're saying? You also seem to be saying that as a punishment it doesn't resolve the cause of the crime. I don't know any punishment in today's society which is actually aimed at solving the cause of the crime. That is not the function of punishment.
What is God’s purpose in killing them? In Brigham Young’s viewpoint, it was due to the necessity of spilling their own blood to atone for a sin Christ’s atonement couldn’t cover. You aren’t LDS, although I don’t quite understand your religious perspective, so I’m assuming you wouldn’t support the death penalty for adultery as an act of blood atonement. So why does God need to kill people who commit adultery? Is it just to frighten them into behaving?
No, I believe that in a community such as Israel's adultery was a social evil which had destructive effects beyond the immediate relationship of the couple concerned, and that people who indulged in adultery were a grave danger to the social cohesion of the society. Personally I don't trust anyone who commits adultery, and fail to see how I could. In a community such as Israel's, they were a dangerous liability. David's adultery with Bathsheba set of a chain of events which plunged the nation into civil war, and left thousands dead. Ironically, he was forgiven, because forgiveness was available for adultery, but only under certain conditions.
If God had communicated that with 100% clarity then there wouldn’t be people killing one another in God’s name, would there?
Yes, there would indeed.
100% clarity doesn’t mean that it’s enough to totally convince YOU. It means it’s enough to totally convince any sane person.
I'm afraid totally sane people are not immune from taking a statement made with 100% clarity and blantantly disobeying it, whilst finding personal justification to do so. I give you corporate crime as the most prominent socially acceptable instance.
See above. The mere existence of wildly contradictory beliefs, all held by quite sincere individuals, all seeking God, is evidence for this claim. God does not communicate with 100% clarity to human beings. If he did, people wouldn’t dispute over what he is saying.
This begs too many questions to be useful. You're placing the entire burden of communication on the sender, whilst completely exculpating the recipient. This is simply unrealistic.
The history of the world in general, and religion in particular, demonstrates my point.
No it doesn't, because if it did we wouldn't have the Anabaptists, the Mennonites, the Amish, the Quakers, the Christadelphians, and similar groups.
The question of God – not even the specifics of what he is trying to communicate to human beings or what he wants from us – but his mere existence – is a question that the greatest minds of our species have struggled with for thousands of years. So yes, it is arrogance and hubris for anyone to claim that, despite all the sincere and persistent attempts of the millions of other human beings who have preceded them and have grappled with this question, this one group or this set of leadership is the “real” reliable transmitter of divine information.
I think that's like saying that it was hubris of Newton to claim he had made discoveries in optics and physics which no one else had. It would be hubris if he had denied
the possibility of discovery to all other people, and it would be hubris of any religious group to deny the possibility of discovery to all other people.
I look back on my Mormon conversion at the age of nineteen as an example of the arrogance of youth. I was so certain I was right, now I “knew” the answer, I “knew” what God was saying and what he wanted… a nineteen year old kid who really knew nothing about the world and how it works. Yet I “knew” when far greater minds and faiths than mine still struggled with the issue, sometimes after spending their lifetimes dealing with it.
I think we're getting to the crux of your objection to religion - your personal reaction to Mormonism.
Yes, that is true. Anyone who wants that much power ought to be automatically disqualified from having it. But at least most societies build some sort of checks and balances into their system to try and compensate. A theocracy, like a dictatorship, does not.
But let's face it, our checks and balances don't work, and we don't care that they don't work or we would fix them. So what exactly is the issue? We end up with a secular society which performs all (and more), of the evils which you attribute to a theocracy. That's human nature, you can't get away from it.
You don’t believe in any human rights?
Goodness me no. They're simply a social fiction invented as a primitive method of crowd control. A theocracy without a personal theocrat. Voltaire said it best - 'If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him'. So the Declaration of Human Rights re-invented God. Human rights are just a way of protecting my desire to get as much as I want from society.
If you have a different translation, fine. But you stated that it could look like that, so why does it matter?
No I didn't state that it could look like that.
God gets to do whatever the heck he wants to whatever the heck he wants.
No, actually He doesn't.
If he wants the female virgin children of the culture that his people just massacred and “give” them to the males who just massacred their families and friends, God gets to do that, right?
Well no, they weren't actually 'given to the males'.
And sure, he nor you have to care about my feelings about that. But I will have my own personal integrity by refusing to worship such a god if, by some bizarre chance, he actually does happen to exist.
Absolutely. Isn't free will great?
The priests of Baal.
I'm sorry, could you show me the part where they were struck dead just for being 'mistaken'?
Why would it matter even if it did apply to every crippled person?
It couldn't possibly apply to every crippled person, that's my point.
There are no human rights, and God can do whatever he wants. If you don’t like it, too bad.
Yes there are no human rights. No, God cannot do whatever He likes.
The fact is simply this: descendants of Aaron were disqualified from performing this function due to one fact and one fact alone: they were physically “blemished”.
Well yes. What precisely is your objection to this? I note you don't object to the fact that virtually the entire population of the nation was disqualified for performing this function due to one fact and one fact alone - they didn't belong to the right family.
How could you respect a God who tells his followers to engage in mass murder of entire town...
Execution, not murder.
[quote...and then take the female virgins for themselves?[/quote]
They didn't.
If a human parent engaged in equivalent activities as God has, that parent would be in jail for child abuse. So yes, how can you love a God like that?
Easy, human parents have different responsibilities. How could I respect a man who is responsible for repeatedly incarcerating people - innocent or guilty, he never really knows - for terms from one year to the rest of their life? Isn't that grossly inhumane? How can society possibly permit such a man to exercise such authority, and even pay him to do so? It's a travesty of justice.
We agree on that.
Well that's something.
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