BS: Death penalty for disobedient children

Subject: RE: BS: Death penalty for disobedient children
From: GUEST,Alan Whittle
Date: 15 Oct 12 - 02:31 AM

Absolutely Mike. You're quite right, I am irrational. Mind you I think the execution of small children, or of anybody sort ofcalls for an emotional response.

I remember the Governor of Huntville Prison in Texas was being interviewed. he said after an execution, he stood in the shower for an hour - but he couldn't feel clean.

I think its a subject that defies rationality.

Subject: RE: BS: Death penalty for disobedient children
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 14 Oct 12 - 11:52 PM

You are a good friend, Al; and, while there is never any compulsion always to agree with friends [and indeed many friendships thrive on argument], I have no intention of seriously quarreling. You know that I do not find your arguments rational or convincing. You know that I don't. Let us leave it at that.

Best

~Michael~

Subject: RE: BS: Death penalty for disobedient children
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 14 Oct 12 - 06:23 PM

bit of thread drift there Ach, okd son, the subject under debate is capital punishment.

If we get derailed about bad behaviour we will have Morrisey fans on about Meat is Murder and every MacDonalds is Armageddon....etc.

the clue is in the title. start your own thread.

Subject: RE: BS: Death penalty for disobedient children
From: GUEST,achmelvich
Date: 14 Oct 12 - 05:44 PM

'we all know when we are acting like a shit' at the start of the more recent war against iraq british and us planes bombed baghdad for about 3 weeks as i remember. while we were forever told about the accuracy of 'our' bombs and legitimate targets etc those giving the orders and those carrying them out must have known there would be many civilian casualties, including children. and for those who press the buttons to send drones into pakistani villages.....what damage must doing these deeds do to people? how do we shut ourselves off from the consequences of our actions when they are so awful? one thing to fight back in self-defence but what if you have caused pain and misery for hundreds of people to secure cheap oil and profitable contracts for george bush and his cronies? many victims of war include the combatants on all sides - even when they don't suffer physical injuries.

Subject: RE: BS: Death penalty for disobedient children
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 14 Oct 12 - 04:46 PM

You can piffle me until you are puffled, MGM. But I don't agree.

anybody who takes part in the hanging of a child or who sanctions it, is a rotter. Henry VIII behaved abominably.

I know Matthew 6 - judge not lest ye be judged. Nevertheless I still think acting within the law does not licence you to be a stinker.

You know that bit in War and peace - where they are about to shoot Pierre, after Moscow has fallen, but Napoleon spares him. Well there's this bit where Tolstoy describes the soldiers pinioning peoples hands before execution - he says the men have a look about about them. men who are doing something they do not want to do.

You know when you're acting like a shit. We all do.

Subject: RE: BS: Death penalty for disobedient children
From: GUEST,Musket sans cookie
Date: 14 Oct 12 - 01:39 PM

Yeah but this is an Internet debate. I can ignore your inclusion or even drop one of the others off your list or even add a few on mine.

You don't think I actually counted do you? I'm not that bloody sad.

Subject: RE: BS: Death penalty for disobedient children
From: gnu
Date: 14 Oct 12 - 01:36 PM

Those who say it isn't murder if state sanctioned - 5

Subject: RE: BS: Death penalty for disobedient children
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 14 Oct 12 - 01:06 PM

Governments have their legal definitions, but that's not the only definition in town. It's commonplace for people to refer to some action of a government in terms of criminality - theft, murder. And we aren't just being metaphorical, we mean that in a just world those responsible for such acts would be in the dock, found guilty, and banged up in jail.

Subject: RE: BS: Death penalty for disobedient children
From: GUEST,Musket sans cookie
Date: 14 Oct 12 - 09:50 AM

Those who call the taking of a life murder- 6
Those who say it isn't murder if state sanctioned -4

We appear to be winning the hearts and minds.

Execution was always state allowed murder in UK law. The judge, jury, governor, hangman and staff were, under the various acts, absolved from being charged for the murder they were part of. Other countries may have different laws but UK law never deviated from the term. Manslaughter is non premeditated or accidental murder if you follow it through. I looked at this as part of a college project into interpretation of legislation many moons ago.

May have misinterpreted for all I know but I got a good mark for it....

Subject: RE: BS: Death penalty for disobedient children
From: DMcG
Date: 14 Oct 12 - 09:38 AM

But I DO take it on board, MGM. You are saying, paraphrasing, that capital punishment is by definition within the laws of the state and there cannot be murder.my point is that there may be other equally conflicting definitions of murder when you take the fact that there are multiple jurisdictions involved, which there often has been, both now and historically.

Subject: RE: BS: Death penalty for disobedient children
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 14 Oct 12 - 09:30 AM

I have long had serious reservations as to the legality of the Nuremberg judgments. Even at the time, aged 14, I asked various authority figures [parents, teachers, our doctor, my parents' solicitor who was also a friend &c] how anyone could be 'guilty' of doing something which was not illegal in the time and place, and under the jurisdiction, in which they did it. None of them ever gave a satisfactory answer, and many admitted they themselves felt a bit of discomfort regarding that aspect of it. My father had the best answer, I think: that conquerors had traditionally been suffered, faute de mieux to impose their own laws and conditions on the conquered. Another good answer was that "it felt right", which, after seeing the pix from Belsen & the Warsaw Ghetto and Babi-Yar & all that, I did not feel inclined to be too picky about. But still...

But I repeat, because none of you will take this on board, I am not concerned with the moral or ethical arguments, but with the semantic: -- When judicial cap-pun, legally in force in the time and place it is administered, is called 'murder', not rhetorically but, the asserters proudly proclaim, in sober earnest, then the things being murdered are commonsense and the English language; + any respect one might have felt for these silly people's intelligence.

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: Death penalty for disobedient children
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 14 Oct 12 - 09:26 AM

The suggestion that those in power are presumed to be always in the right in the Old Testament is just absurd. You find Kings of Isreal and Judah being repeatedly denounced by prophets as enemies of God, guilty of all kinds of crimes,including murder.

Subject: RE: BS: Death penalty for disobedient children
From: GUEST,DMcG
Date: 14 Oct 12 - 09:16 AM

Sorry, that was me cookie-less

Subject: RE: BS: Death penalty for disobedient children
From: GUEST
Date: 14 Oct 12 - 09:07 AM

I understand your point MGM that these things should be judged from the perspective of the time rather than now, but I fear that is too neat; reality is almost always messy. For example the articles that set up the remit of the Nuremberg Trials explictly included murder carried out by those on trial, yet the acts were within German law at the time. Similarly most people would think murder an accurate description of Saddam's poisoning of the Kurds, not an emotive distortion, even though state sanctioned. Life is, as a say, resistant to simple definitions

Subject: RE: BS: Death penalty for disobedient children
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 14 Oct 12 - 08:26 AM

I didn't claim a moral position, Don. I explicitly disowned it ~~ twice in that last post which please read again.

The point is that judicial capital punishment may be, and very often was/is, unjust, iniquitous, an abomination: but calling it 'murder' is nothing but a rhetorical flourish; and really meaning it seriously and thinking you have made a valid point is an absurdity unworthy of one of, e.g., Al's apparent intelligence. All of you who are seriously asserting such a thing are really making great big fools of yourselves. Of course one is free to work to change the law on conscientious grounds. But calling judicial cap-pun 'murder' before you have succeeded in doing so is nothing but childish toys-out-of-pram tantrum, not argument.

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: Death penalty for disobedient children
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 14 Oct 12 - 06:14 AM

Mike,

I think we are all in agreement that adherence to a religion is not a prerequisite for having a sense and an understanding of morals and ethics.

Neither, I would suggest is government legislation, for which reason I lean toward Al's position on this.

Whatever the Law may demand, it should still be possible for men of conscience to understand where it is wrong and try to change it.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: Death penalty for disobedient children
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 14 Oct 12 - 01:42 AM

Sorry Al ~~ but I think your views here entirely a-historic and thoroughly misguided ~~ from, let me stress, the pov of accuracy, not morality.

Come on, now. How, if cap-pun so iniquitous, do you account for the fact that there is scarcely a society in the whole of human history until very recently ~~ first major instances of abolition in any way widespread occurred in mid-C19, and abolition didn't really gather any momentum before C20 [see wiki on Capital Punishment] ~~ where it has not been practised? They obviously just all didn't conform to your most questionable assertion that "they knew they were acting badly ... sinning".

Regret saying it: not my usual mode of argument ~~ but stuff'n'nonsense, rubbish, piffle ... or any synonym, anatomical or otherwise, of your choosing.

~M~

I repeat: I am not here concerned with the morality or otherwise of the practice, but the historical facts about it ~~ a distinction I urge you to take on board before perpetrating any more such self-righteous but questionably valid posts.

Subject: RE: BS: Death penalty for disobedient children
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 14 Oct 12 - 01:02 AM

well I think those judges and juries and jailers and executioners knew damn well they were acting badly.

I can't see how you could think any otherwise - hanging a mere child.

Just cos something is a law doesn't mean, you don't know wrong from right.

Its like Henry VIII - after hacking the heads off of two young women - not many other foreign royalty were keen to have their daughters married to him.

Deep down when you do something that cruel - you must know in your heart that its utterly wrong.

Murder and capital punishment - I don't see the distinction. Don't we all turn to the section in the books on Charles I and Mary Queen of Scots about the execution. We all get off on the sensual pleasure of sadism - even tenth hand.

capital punishment is just giving into a weakness in our character - the thrill of ruining young living flesh.

As my Dad used to say - you know when you're sinning.

Subject: RE: BS: Death penalty for disobedient children
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 14 Oct 12 - 12:27 AM

If you mean, Al, that judicial execution of children for trivial offences was a gross jurisprudential injustice, most people nowadays [but not then] would unhesitatingly agree, and be glad we had moved on from such times. But to go on from that to call it 'murder', when it was legally enshrined by Act of Parliament in the judicial system of the time, is not a valid argument; it is merely an emotive and tendentious figure-of-speech.

Sorry if you perceive any sort of virtual sniff as I write that: but it happens to be the fact.

Regards

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: Death penalty for disobedient children
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 13 Oct 12 - 06:21 PM

==='Its not long since we used to hang children for relatively trivial offences in this country. So no need to get sniffy about the difference between murder and capital punishment, MGM.'===
.,,.

Eh? Sorry Al, can't make heads or tales of what your point is supposed to be here. Would you care to define "sniffy", &/or give example of where you perceive my having been so; and to clarify the purpose of your post?

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: Death penalty for disobedient children
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 13 Oct 12 - 05:41 PM

Well spell denomination correctly for a start.

Its not long since we used to hang children for relatively trivial offences in this country. So no need to get sniffy about the difference between murder and capital punishment, MGM.

Back in the degenerate 1960's, there was this book called 'The Dickens Way', by a guy called Humphrey House. House attempted to define the nature of Charles Dickens's philosophy - the contents of the head on his shoulders that enabled him to look with compassion on the gallows birds and Newgate inmates of his age - something beyond most Victorians.

House came up with the startling revelation that CD had no faith in politicians or religion - he just realised that the basis of civilisation is that we behave decently towards each other.

Subject: RE: BS: Death penalty for disobedient children
From: GUEST,achmelvich
Date: 13 Oct 12 - 05:02 PM

we had a few doorstep conversations with religious folk when up in aberdeen. we liked to ask the question if it is right that as responsible parents we should take our disobedient children to northfield (an adjoining part of town - or in OT terms a nearby village) and stone them to death. i had a sort of admiration for evangelists who tried to defend this 'policy' when it would be much easier for them to agree that the old testament (at least) is a load of irrelevant nonsense. i suppose it was a bit cruel of us to instruct one of our kids to join the conversations and ask if they were about to be stoned to death 'please don't take me to northfield, mummy!'

on a related matter i am in the process of applying for a job at a catholic school. as an atheist with an interest in buddhist philosophy (and, conversely, a celtic fan with 5 kids) any suggestions how to answer the question about my 'denomition/faith'? if i had 'taken my child to northfield' should i mention it on the form as a demonstration of my christian faith?

Subject: RE: BS: Death penalty for disobedient children
From: GUEST,Lighter
Date: 13 Oct 12 - 03:05 PM

Any religion is a self-sealing system.

If you believe, you believe no matter what, and if you find inconsistencies or unreasonable claims or demands, you overlook them and believe what everybody around you is believing, because God by definition is smarter than you are.

As soon as you stop believing, you're out of the system. You'll be treated accordingly by your still-believing former friends.

Hitler more or less claimed that Germans are the chosen people, and tens of millions of Christian Germans agreed that it had to be true, because it made them feel so good. When it started making them feel bad, most of them quit believing. The Japanese (whose Emperor descended straight from the Sun God)underwent a similar disillusionment.

Subject: RE: BS: Death penalty for disobedient children
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 13 Oct 12 - 10:43 AM

""God's Commandment forbids murder absolutely as an offense against God - but not battlefield killing or the death penalty. That's not to say that abolition of the death penalty, or the use of bean bags in war, would displease God, merely that the Commandment leaves those decisions to the state. Murder is an affront to God, but the death penalty isn't.""

The Commandment?.... The Ten Commandments?

A salient feature of a 6 millennia long game of Chinese whispers, which some misguided souls take to be literal truth.

Try it sometime! Line up fifty people fifteen feet apart and relay a reasonably complex message in normal conversational tones, then compare what comes out of the other end.

Then consider the same procedure carried out from father to son over several millennia, and while you are at it, have a brief look at the folk process and the variants it has produced.

What has been written of the Old Testament has been written by men with a social agenda, and as parable and analogy it serves its purpose.

But we have only the word of those MEN for the veracity or accuracy of the events described.

In fact, even if the story of Moses and the Ten Commandments were true, we would still only have Moses word as to how he came by them.

If anybody knocked on your door asking you to invest in a project based on that level of evidence, you would undoubtedly send him packing and probably inform the police.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: Death penalty for disobedient children
From: DMcG
Date: 13 Oct 12 - 09:53 AM

I agree, Amos. And there would be little point in the exercise if people didn't try to make wars and laws based on such ideas.

Subject: RE: BS: Death penalty for disobedient children
From: Amos
Date: 13 Oct 12 - 09:48 AM

Strikes me that a discussion predicated on an anthropomorphic vision of God, such as this one, is a bit like a sand squirrel in a rotating wheel, getting lots and lots of exercise.

Subject: RE: BS: Death penalty for disobedient children
From: DMcG
Date: 13 Oct 12 - 09:46 AM

I'll assume that God does whatever he wants, but he only wants to do things that are right and just.

In passing, I must refer you to Euthyphro and his discussion with Socrates...

Subject: RE: BS: Death penalty for disobedient children
From: DMcG
Date: 13 Oct 12 - 09:38 AM

We're using logic to answer these questions.

I hope so, because I am very much inclined to logic. And if I am not mistaken - which I may be - it was Thomas Aquinus who insisted faith must be reasonable, in the sense of being capable of reasoned about.

I'll assume that God does whatever he wants, but he only wants to do things that are right and just.

The assumption behind the Commandment seems to be that earthly laws made by God's people will be just, because God inspires his people to do justice

That use of "God's people" quite literally hides a multitude of sins! Who decides (on earth) whether a certain group merits the title of God's people and can on the one hand declare specific killings as murder or not, with their people protected by God's laws, or if a group does not merit the title and 'we' are somehow then at liberty to decide whether they are candidates for blowing to pieces. Take care how you answer, since that's exactly what religous terrorists throughout the ages and now have always claimed as their right to decide.

Subject: RE: BS: Death penalty for disobedient children
From: GUEST,Lighter
Date: 13 Oct 12 - 09:15 AM

Now I think I understand.

I'll assume that God does whatever he wants, but he only wants to do things that are right and just.

The assumption behind the Commandment seems to be that earthly laws made by God's people will be just, because God inspires his people to do justice.

Thus, any legal distinction between murder and manslaughter (or no crime at all) ultimately derives from God and is presumed just.

In that case, God is not "bound" by man's laws. His will and those laws simply run parallel. The laws reflect his will. God's idea of "murder" should thus be the same as the state's - and vice versa.

> if God is not bound to agree with the state then it cannot be the state that determines whether a killing is murder or not.

The word "determine" is confusing. The state "determines" who does and does not deserve earthly punishment. God is the supreme judge who may agree or disagree with the state's verdict on an individual and "determine" his fate in that case.

So I don't understand how either the Commandment or the state's application of it takes away God's ability either to punish or to show mercy in specific cases.

God, not the state, is thus the absolute cosmic arbiter of an individual's guilt or innocence.

While the Commandments demand behavior that is pleasing to God and fundamental to society, no specific punishment is mentioned for violating them - except the inescapable and ultimate one of incurring God's wrath, and that could be experienced in any number of ways. Specific legal punishments are left to the king and the state. Evidently not all violations were traditionally punished by death.

God's Commandment forbids murder absolutely as an offense against God - but not battlefield killing or the death penalty. That's not to say that abolition of the death penalty, or the use of bean bags in war, would displease God, merely that the Commandment leaves those decisions to the state. Murder is an affront to God, but the death penalty isn't.   

That strikes many people as odd.

Note too that there are no Commandments against either slavery or torture. While that's not the same as recommending them, it seems to be a striking oversight, except that God doesn't make oversights. I'll let others others thrash out these problems.

P.S.: We're using logic to answer these questions. That's what Darwin used, and look where it got him. Does God not want us to use logic? Or just not to use it in matters of faith? But why should logic and faith, both instilled in us by God, ever contradict one another? (Whoa! There I go using logic again!)

Subject: RE: BS: Death penalty for disobedient children
From: DMcG
Date: 13 Oct 12 - 02:51 AM

"Obviously God. I don't see your point."

I'll try to be clearer. The commandment says 'murder', and it is being interpreted that the it is the state which decides whether a specific killing is murder or not. So if the state has decided it is not, is God bound to follow that decision? If the state has decided it is mrder, is God bound to follow that decision? If the the answer to both of those is 'yes', then it is not God deciding whether the commandment is broken, it is the state. On the other hand, if God is not bound to agree with the state then it cannot be the state that determines whether a killing is murder or not.

Subject: RE: BS: Death penalty for disobedient children
From: GUEST,Lighter
Date: 12 Oct 12 - 08:16 PM

Posted to the "terrorism" thread, but apropos here as well:

http://news.yahoo.com/conversations-malala-yousafzai-girl-stood-taliban-133500248.html

Subject: RE: BS: Death penalty for disobedient children
From: GUEST,Lighter
Date: 12 Oct 12 - 08:03 PM

Obviously God. I don't see your point.

Subject: RE: BS: Death penalty for disobedient children
From: DMcG
Date: 12 Oct 12 - 06:45 PM

I said: it is the 'state' that decides and God is in effect subject to the wishes of the state.

Lighter said: He's not powerless and he's not subject to the wishes of the state.

So let's taken the the case of an individual brought before God for judgement, who killed someone. Is it God or the man's state that decides whether he has broken the commandment?

Subject: RE: BS: Death penalty for disobedient children
From: GUEST
Date: 12 Oct 12 - 05:34 PM

The Eleventh Commandment is "thou shalt not be found out". But the original proposition is answered by John 8:7, with proof beyond reasonable doubt.

Subject: RE: BS: Death penalty for disobedient children
From: GUEST,Lighter
Date: 12 Oct 12 - 04:53 PM

He's not powerless and he's not subject to the wishes of the state. In OT times, the "state" was chosen by God to worship and represent him in the world. The "divine right of kings" as it was later called meant that the king was on the throne solely through God's action, direct or indirect. The point of the Commandment is that no person has the God's permission to kill a member of God's community. Idolaters were not part of that community, and those sentenced by the community to death would have been judged guilty of breaking one or more Commandments or some other law that the king deemed fubdamental.

God can't be powerless as long as he has the ultimate authority to say what is not permitted. Murder, in this case, isn't permitted, but as a concept, "murder" in OT times only applied within the community.

If a person killed an idolater (a slave perhaps?) presumably the legal system would have determined his punishment, if any. But whatever his punishment, his crime would be more like manslaughter than "murder."

Or so I understand it.

Of course the Commandment doesn't necessarily mean that crimes like manslaughter should go unpunished. All it specifies is that "murder" is absolutely forbidden.

My point is that if killing in war and by legal capital punishment were meant to be forbidden by Commandment, it seems strange from a modern perspective that the Commandment should be worded that narrowly. If they weren't meant to be forbidden, that suggests that the secular morality that finds combat and executions abhorrent is more stringent than divine Commandment.

That idea seems very odd to me. Of course, the eleventh Commandment to love thy neighbor might trump the sixth, but trumping a Commandment sounds odd too. It would suggest that not all biblical guides to behavior are meant for all time, and that human understanding of God can "evolve." But that would be a very big problem for literalists.

By the way, Augustine and other Church fathers were very clear that killing pagan warriors wasn't sinful so long as the Christian soldier did so in the spirit of love. They agreed it was difficult, but far from impossible.

Subject: RE: BS: Death penalty for disobedient children
From: DMcG
Date: 12 Oct 12 - 01:52 PM

I've always found the idea that the commandment refers to murder rather than killng rather baffling. For all the other commandments, it is God who is the ultimate arbiter of whether the commandment is broken or not, but for this one he is powerless: it is the 'state' that decides and God is in effect subject to the wishes of the state. How this commandment is supposed to word in times of civil war when there is no clear 'state', or in situations like genocides when the state says it is ok, or before the modern concept of 'state' developed at all - it wasn't the same thing at all in biblical times - is anyone's guess.

Subject: RE: BS: Death penalty for disobedient children
From: Musket
Date: 12 Oct 12 - 11:37 AM

You may say advancing civilisation.

But if you did, you may find people who would relish the thought of you burning in their contraption called Hell for all time.

Subject: RE: BS: Death penalty for disobedient children
From: GUEST,Lighter
Date: 12 Oct 12 - 11:05 AM

Interesting that a purely literal interpretation of the Commandment might seem to allow genocide, if "legally" executed. Certainly there are mass slaughters in the Old Testament which are approved by the Almighty.

Somewhat similarly, the New Testament advises slaves to obey their masters.

By current civilized, secular, atheist, agnostic, ecumenical, or humanist standards (take your pick), passages like those would require extensive qualification.

So either the bible can't be, or shouldn't be, taken as literal for all time, or else something's wrong somewhere.

Could that something be our modern reluctance to take it literally? Or could it be something else?

Subject: RE: BS: Death penalty for disobedient children
From: GUEST,Musket sans cookie
Date: 12 Oct 12 - 07:46 AM

Oh I don't know.

My stance seems to be serving at least one purpose....

Subject: RE: BS: Death penalty for disobedient children
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 12 Oct 12 - 06:41 AM

"Fuqua" - this appears to be an example of Nominative determinism" - "the theory that a person's name can have a significant role in determining key aspects of job, profession or even character."

Subject: RE: BS: Death penalty for disobedient children
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 12 Oct 12 - 06:12 AM

What is it? Why, when and where it is done, it is a legal execution carried out in accordance with the Law currently in force under such governances. Don't be disingenuous; you know that perfectly well.

And you know equally well such recourse to have been part of the legal code of pretty-well every society since men have lived in communities, and that the last very few years during which it has fallen out of favour in some parts of the world {& ONLY some}, constitute very much the historical exception.

So go on calling it what you like "as far as you are concerned"; but do not expect thus to be taken seriously by anyone who approaches the topic with one iota of historical [or any other sort of] intelligence. Why go on persisting in being what you know to be just plain wilfully silly? It really is not worthy of you.

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: Death penalty for disobedient children
From: Musket
Date: 12 Oct 12 - 05:43 AM

True, I can. Or I think I can...

I do have an issue with the dictionary term and the common parlance term being mixed up, mainly because state sanctioned having a different term is just sweetening it to make it more socially acceptable. Hence murder is murder as far as I am concerned.

Like I said, if a state sanctioned murder is not murder, then what is it? if you do enough state murders it becomes genocide, especially if you pick out those different to the norm. (Non evangelical rational people judging by the political idiots referred to on this thread.)

If you automatically accept something as going from a bad idea to a good idea on the basis of a legislative vote, you may wonder why you bothered developing a conscience in the first place...

Subject: RE: BS: Death penalty for disobedient children
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 12 Oct 12 - 05:23 AM

Musket ~~ One of your intelligence can surely see the difference between 'murder' as a legal concept', and 'murder' as a metaphorical hyperbole for a specific legal process?

If not, then The Force save us all!

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: Death penalty for disobedient children
From: Musket
Date: 12 Oct 12 - 04:53 AM

Nice to see that murder is yet again portrayed as not murder when state sanctioned.

zzz

Mind you, kill enough by state approval and you can always work your way up to genocide.

Keep banging the rocks together....

Subject: RE: BS: Death penalty for disobedient children
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 12 Oct 12 - 04:16 AM

Flat WHAT. Sorry for the shouting, but that's what's in my head. This is sick!

Subject: RE: BS: Death penalty for disobedient children
From: gnu
Date: 11 Oct 12 - 09:54 PM

They must be happy. On accounta them ameners is igorant, like ya say.

It's apalling... the "best country in the world" has the most uneducated and the most educated (deabtale when ya consider yer China n such what invests in edgumacation and research and whatnot) and the overall lot of them can't tell the difference. Couldn't, maybe? We'll see what happens Nov 4.

I LOVE you Yanks and "Thank God for the Good Old USA!" but ya really gotta git yer shit tagether EH? The rest of us are gettin a tad nervous!

Subject: RE: BS: Death penalty for disobedient children
From: alanabit
Date: 11 Oct 12 - 02:40 PM

I think what is baffling to us Europeans is less the fact that you have a few deranged people making speeches. It is more the fact that they can always get an audience. I guess if ignorance is bliss you must have a lot of happy people over there.

Subject: RE: BS: Death penalty for disobedient children
From: KHNic
Date: 11 Oct 12 - 02:26 PM

Isn't it now time for a redfinition of the term Christian to avoid the association with the term Rabid Bigot?

Subject: RE: BS: Death penalty for disobedient children
From: Paul Reade
Date: 10 Oct 12 - 06:05 PM

If Charlie Fuqua has any children, they should immediately be taken into care, or at least placed on the "at risk" register.

Subject: RE: BS: Death penalty for disobedient children
From: GUEST,.gargoyle
Date: 10 Oct 12 - 05:39 PM

Honor thy father and thy mother...that thy days may be long upon the earth.

Only commandment with a "promise." It is connected to old Deuteronomy ...by many scholars.

Sincerely,
Gargoyle

hmmm what might the others be...that thou might not be afflicted with a pox?   ...that thou might not become depressed in thy later years? ...that thou might find peace in the darkness?