That would seem to be his position except for where he said "God is the very standard of morality... " From this, I assume he means that stoning is the appropriate response to adulterers because God said so, although he admits it seems weird to his corrupted modern mind.

Yeah, the problem of evil has been dealt with so many times already. You can head to the sources which deal with it. — Agustino

Most everything we talk about on this site has been dealt with for 1000s of years, so this response could be a universal response to most every post.

The Right To Free Speech is the Right To Lie
The Right To Bear Arms is the Right To Kill
The Right To Freedom is the Right To Oppress Others
The Right To Property is the Right To Theft
The Right To Freedom of Worship is the Right To Idolatry — Agustino

The commandment isn't specifically against lying, but is in the prohibition against bearing false witness against one's neighbor (i.e. perjury).

The proscription against killing is actually against murder, not self-defense.

I'm not sure what commandment you reference when you say there is a proscription against oppressing others.

The Western right to property does not include the right to theft. The biblical proscription against theft assumes a right to own property, else there'd be nothing to steal.

The Western right to freedom of worship is a restriction against state enforced religion. It provides no commentary on the righteousness of idolatry.

The Decalogue has no positive content but is merely negative. — Agustino

This isn't true. The first commandment states you should believe in God. You are also told to keep the Sabbath holy and to honor your parents. Those commandments are not in the negative.

Take the right to free speech for instance. This right sets the truth and the lie on equal footing. It gives one authority to lie and be protected for lying - indeed, lying itself becomes a virtue, as the necessary result of the exertion of one's inalienable rights. — Agustino

That's not what the right to free speech is. The right to freedom of speech relates to the limitations on the government in regulating speech, although the crime of perjury and the torts of libel and slander continue to exist.

I'm almost at a native level of speaking English. It took me a while to realise you actually need a smaller vocabulary. Ugh... I meant "less words". — Benkei

Almost. Realize, not realise. Who's been teaching you antiquated (look it up) English?

What is the point of this thread? Is it simply to inform us of the authentic way to be Christian or is it to suggest that one must adhere to Christianity as you've described it in order to be an authentic social conservative?

It just seems the simple response here is to accept that I'm neither Christian nor a social conservative in the way you define those terms. I certainly wouldn't want to be.

I think adultery, unlike fornication, should be illegal, and not just immoral. — Agustino

I think lying ought be illegal. If everyone always told the truth, so much pain, fraud, and trickery would be avoided. One year for every lie.

You condemn all war, even against those whose central goal is more war. You oppose all killing, even against those whose central goal is more killing.

Even if the net result of your strategy would be to create more of what you condemn, you still advocate it.

Since you don't judge your decisions by their results, are you just reciting to us your religion?

The death penalty, for example, is absolutely wrong, in my opinion, because for the simply fact that empirical observations are always, on principle, about to be doubted. Guilt is never proven absolutely - it is only proven within reasonable doubt - yet death is an absolute punishment with no way of going back if it turns out the justice system failed in its operation. — darthbarracuda

Suppose the person is seen by dozens committing the crime, it is videotaped, there is physical evidence linking the person to the crime, and we have an admission? Epistimilogically, wouldn't we have the same level of certainty that the person committed the crime as we would that the criminal died at the hands of the executioner?

I mean, if you're right that we can't know who killed the victim, then we can't know who killed the murderer, and I suppose we can't even know if anyone really died at all.

Add a few homosexuals to the mix, they can still fall in love and continue that ever vital social bonding cycle while still providing a strong back to help with the labors of the tribe — Jeremiah

Evolution becomes a useless truism if you insist upon providing explanations that support it. That is, is evolution falsifiable? Is there any occurence that disproves it?

Do sociopaths purge us of the weak and gullible? Do those born with severe handicaps teach us unconditional love and the value of life? Maybe schizophrenics teach us about the subjective quality of reality. This seems more an exercise in creativity than a scientific exercise.

Apparently neither of you know what a homosexual is, or if you do you elected for some reason to not provide that knowledge. — tim wood

You missed my point. The ambiguity and vagueness of "homosexual" is no greater than any other term. Your objection is universal and invalid, as it would assume an inability to communicate, yet we do. To say I don't see a difference in your calling me a homosexual or a carrot makes the point we must know what the terms mean, even if the boundaries of both terms are ultimately uncertain and determined by context.

Freedom of religion becomes a religion worth killing for?

There are many things I enjoy. I wouldn't sanction killing to get them — frank

The question isn't whether there are many things you wouldn't kill for. The question is whether there is anything you would kill for. If the answer is no, and that you'd allow yourself and your entire family to be enslaved and oppressed, then you strike me as immoral, caring for nothing other than the ability to breath.

Everyone seems to know what "homosexual" means or what a homosexual is. I do not. On the not-very-often occasions I asked those that seemed to know, big surprise, they didn't. I worked with a very smart very gay social worker; when I asked him he quickly admitted there is no good definition — tim wood

I think the term "homosexual" is as well defined as any term. The term conveys meaning, and it's no more confusing to talk about the homosexual in the room as it is to talk about the chair in the room, despite both chairs and homosexuals having enough variations that we can't determine their essences.

Inevitably innocents suffer in a bloody revolution. Life has no price. My interest in NK emancipation doesn't change that. — frank

Yeah, well, this post just seems so poorly thought out as you sit wherever you are in your freedom, reaping the benefits others provided you, at the cost of countless lives.

But if one is fighting for liberty, is it really moral to kill another for the sake of your own freedom? — frank

Yes, both yours and your own.

Are you suggesting that it would be more moral for the North Koreans to live for the next thousand years under an oppressive, murderous regime than to rebel today and live the next thousand years in freedom?

It's also immoral to value a city or cultural center over human life. So the moral response to invasion is to flee. During flight, immediate self defense is moral. — frank

It's not the city you're fighting for. It's the principles it stands for. Liberty, for instance, is worth fighting for, and that would mean defending the state that provides that freedom as opposed to clinging to your life at all costs, even should it involve being enslaved.

Homosexuality is contrary to evolution since it does not reproduce itself biologically. This is not to say that many homosexuals are not fine individuals with many features that would be favorable to evolution. Rather, without the ability to pass on genes biologically, by definition, homosexuality should not persist unless it is based on willpower and choice; epigenetic. — wellwisher

There are plenty of genetic conditions that result in an inability to reproduce, yet they persist, unimpeded by evolution.

If you look any drug addiction, this shows that it is possible to become obsessive with behavior that are is natural, to the point where it appears almost instinctive. One can game the brain. — wellwisher

When did you choose to be straight? Were you in the back seat with Betty Sue and you weighed the pros and the cons and then decided to become aroused? I certainly didn't decide to be straight, so I don't see how I could suggest someone else choose to be gay.

Gay behavior, for example, is not sanitary. If we did not have artificial things like condoms and medications to act as prosthesis, nature would run it course and create a disease to correct this behavior. — wellwisher

Sanitary sex doesn't sound real interesting. Were you aware that the same sex acts performed by gay people are also performed by straight people and that sodomy isn't just a gay thing? Were you also aware that woman on woman sex does not involve nearly the fluid exchange as say, man on woman sex does? That being the case, perhaps you're an advocate for lesbianism.

If we did not have artificial things like condoms and medications to act as prosthesis, nature would run it course and create a disease to correct this behavior. — wellwisher

And yet homosexuality has persisted throughout the millennia without any medical assistance. I also don't follow your artificial/natural distinction, as it seems to take medical science out of evolution. I think evolution is all encompassing and that part of the evolution of humanity includes advancements in control over their environment.

There's also the who cares part of this as well. As in who cares why homosexuality is now safe. If it is, it is, regardless of whether it wouldn't be safe if we lived in a primitive society.

Even if some gay individuals could develop a natural resistance, this is not passed forward biologically since this progressive change is not part of evolution — wellwisher

Except that gay people do reproduce sometimes, straight people have anal sex, and some bisexual people have sex with straight people, which means the resistance does enter the gene pool. The world isn't divided so neatly into gays, straights, sodomites, and missionary only positioners.

A gay friend suggested I be a gay Catholic -- he thought that would be fairly outré. Maybe, but I don't want to be a Catholic unless I can be the pope. — Bitter Crank

Start wearing a MAGA hat. Communist, gay Trump supporter. You'd be unique, the one and only.

Forget Norway if it makes you happy — Baden

Alright, I'll forget about it, but now I'm confused because there's a land mass without a name.

How do you think you can reduce your sky-high recidivism rates? — Baden

It's sort of like how do we get the inner city schools to perform as well as the suburban schools. If we swapped all the students and put the inner city kids in the suburban schools and sent all the suburban kids down to the city, the dropout rates and performance results would stay the same among the students. What this means is that the differing schools, each with all their wonderful ideas and teachers, don't really amount to squat. It's the students as formed by their parents, their upbringing, their values, and their families. The same holds true to the amazing results of non-recidivism achieved in that now nameless place with the breathtaking fjords. They were going to get those results regardless of what they did. It's like asking how do I coach a team in the World Cup with all the greatest players of all time. I just show up and the wins happen.

The way I fix the crime problem is by fixing the societal problems. The prisons can't fix them once they show up at the door. If your kid is a hellion in high school, the time to have fixed him done came and went as they say not where I'm from.

You need to lay off the Guinness. You sound like you just emerged from a bog caked in mud never having spoken to another human being in your life. So, the problem does (partly) lie in prisons. Higher recidivism rates = more crime, and crime is the major problem here, right? You are at about 70% and Norway at about 20%. So, don't you think this might go some way to explaining why their hardest streets are only partially aroused (to use your amusingly implicative Freudian lingo :100: )? Because they know how to reduce crime rates and they use their prison system to do it? Your reason then for not using changes in prison policy to reduce crime rates boils down to "because crime rates are high". See the problem. — Baden

You accuse me of being hopelessly sheltered, yet you wish to compare Norway to the US, as if it offers the US some direction, yet the US has never thought to consider it. A largely homogenous, educated society comprised of those with generally shared values is likely to get along quite well with or without any great innovation or leadership in the criminal justice context. I live in a relatively crime free area myself, and I'd suspect that the city jail is largely empty in a given week except for the occasional drunk. Perhaps I should call the folks in downtown Atlanta and have them tour my little town so that they can figure out how to bring their crime rate down just like mine. If only they would leave their four walls and venture out to the burbs, they'd see how to do it better.

You keep telling us how great America is, so why do you accept failure so easily? I'm starting to feel I'm more American than you and you really do belong in that quiet corner of the Irish bog you've just emerged from with only potatoes and sheep and some various works by Sigmund Freud for company. — Baden

America is a great big place, so it's not like every state does things the same. There have been plenty of innovations. I'm not just throwing my hands up and giving up, but I'm more just rejecting your claims that the answers are just sitting there before us in a Scandinavian ice field, but we're all just too stubborn to see it.

I propose a multi-layer approach, much like an onion. As you might be aware, the Georgia town of Vidalia grows a particularly sweet onion due to the soil content that is coincidentally called a Vidalia onion. Even my father, rest his soul, enjoyed the Vidalia onion, despite his sensitive digestive constitution that otherwise limited his onion intake (garlic as well, and, did you know, they are of the same family. Botanical facts can be such fun!).

And so the multi-layer approach I propose is that the first post one posts will be almost incomprehensible, filled with typographical errors, grammatical stupidities, and maybe even meandering diversions. Did you know that the word "divert" is from the same root as "Baden," meaning "to have sex with your mother on the toilet while your little brother is taking a bubble bath and using the bubbles to make a beard while he cries out 'Ho ho ho, I'm Santa Claus.'" That word is super specific and gets little use these days. It's a term of art.

Alright, so the first suck ass post will be a Level I post and then with each passing day the subsequent posts will be improved, and just like a little leaguer who's one day called up to the pros ("Hey kid, pack your bags, you've been called up to the big show"), one day the post that began as an early first trimester and still abortable post (see, e.g., Roe v. Wade) can now be on the Main Board for all to debate.

Banning stopped being fun a long time ago and will not be fun again until Hanover goes nuts and tells us all to fuck off. — Baden

Actually my insanity looks more like the above than an angry tirade. That's how my world will end, not with a bang, but with a sort of naked spinning babbling episode in the town square.

So, OK, you tell me then what is the ideal model of a prison system you would like to see in the US and how does it differ from the one you have now? — Baden

Ideally we wouldn't have prisons, but if we must have prisons, I'd propose one comprised disproportionately of inner city minorities, where rape is common, it's a rite of passage to attend, and it'd be a family tradition, passed down primarily through the male line. I suspect you advocate something in between the heaven and hell, the ideal and the reality, but I'm a man of extremes and custom, and I go with the America I know.

So for real, the problem lies not in prisons, although tinkering with reforms is always a fun thing to do, and actually Republicans are as progressive as any, considering prisons tend to bleed tax money if left to grow. The hardest streets of Norway look nothing like the semi-hard and only partially aroused streets of random city USA and the comparisons are few. It would be difficult to fail as the warden of a Norway prison and difficult to succeed as a warden of a Peoria prison. The solution must occur well before the failure sounded by the slamming of the prison door.

But you shouldn't need to wait for these kind of abuses to understand that imprisoning people for profit will inevitably result in greedy people taking advantage of the system and causing harm. — Baden

The vast majority of prisons are state run.

Judges have massive power and preside over multi-million dollar disputes and decide people's fates all the time. A judge on the take in any system can take bribes. This isn't an American or capitalistic phenomenon, but is actually seen far more in non-democratic, government controlled economies. Regardless, your finding this isolated abuse evidence of a systemic flaw is empirically unfounded and reveals a general anti-American bias, or, more generously, a poor understanding of the American criminal justice system.

Oh yes, no closer similarity of cultures, history, diversity, and ideology than Norway and the US.

Whose opinion are you mocking? Is there someone who doesn't find the situation as reprehensible as you?

I'm glad he eventually got 28 years but it should have been more and imprisoning people should not be a for-profit enterprise as it opens up opportunities for this kind of corrupt behaviour. — Baden

We should rethink the entire system because of a single sociopath?

Hard to imagine that a situation in which there is a profitable market for throwing children into prison isn't interrelated to the unrestrained ideal of Capitalism. — Maw

A communist regime with a corrupt and abusive judicial system where people are murdered and abused en masse is really hard to imagine.

It's hard to take these posts seriously.

And then last night I saw a story about a private youth detention centre (i.e. children's jail) in Pennsylvania where the owners paid judges millions of dollars to lock up kids for up to a year on the basis of minor transgressions, for example, writing an online page mocking their school principal (again, so much for American free speech). The payments were due to the fact that the more inmates there were, the more money for the prison contractor got: Viva Capitalism! On top of that, the kids were kept in beyond the length of the sentences given on the discretion of the prison employees. This is the kind of capitalist nightmare the far right want to turn the whole country into. — Baden

The judge (aka Federal inmate #15008-067 F) was sentenced to 28 years in prison. He was no more a product of capitalism than any other sociopathic kidnapper.

They hacked into Hillary's non-secured emails, which was a crime in itself.

Except it started in July 2016 at the FBI, with Mueller, a Republican, being appointment by a Trump-appointed Republican in response to Trump firing the until-recently Republican (now Independent) FBI Director. — Michael

July 2017, not 2016, right? Trump was elected November 2016.

Anyway, Clinton was making allegations about Russian involvement before Mueller's appointment.

Well, sure, we know how he thinks, which is to put himself before everything including his country — Baden

Are you suggesting that the Russian inquiry really was motivated by anyone who wanted to put their country first?

You can post whatever it is about Trump in the thread already dedicated to Trump. I don't see what is added by creating a new thread on the same subject.

I'm going to close this discussion because you now have begun to discuss Trump here, which strikes me as an effort to discuss here what you were already asked to discuss elsewhere when you previously created your duplicative Trump thread.

In a vacuum, decontextualized, you can make the argument that Trump's questioning of his own intelligence agency is shocking. You can even resort to the hyperbole of suggesting he trusts the KGB (or whatever they're called now) over the CIA, which, of course, suggests he's read reports from both, compared, contrasted, and come to some conclusion about the legitimacy of their respective conclusions. You can even suggest, once again, that he's committed a high crime and misdemeanor demanding impeachment because he said things folks think is plainly wrong and bad to say.

Contextualized, Trump is really only reiterating what he's been saying all along, which is that he is the legitimate President of these United States, having won fair and square, without meaningful interference from anyone. He sees the whole Russian inquiry as an attempt by the Democrats (which began on the eve of his election) to delegitimize and weaken his presidency. His response is fairly simple: delegitimize me, and I'll delegitimize you. He does not see the inquiry into Russian involvement as a true effort to protect the American democratic process from foreign influence. He sees it as a direct attack against him alone, and this concern about Russia is only being motivated by his detractors to damage him. I do think it's doubtful that if Clinton had won, we'd be seeing this same inquiry into Russian interference, which does suggest that the inquiry is against Trump and not just a sudden desire to clean up our process. And there is no evidence that the Russian shenanigans, whatever they might have been, did anything to actually impact the outcome.

None of this is really defensive of Trump as much as it's just an acceptance of politics being politics. Trump really is going to be President for his full term and every event that pisses off his opponents can't end with the statement "therefore we must impeach" and be taken seriously. The buffoon won, so we get buffoonery. We ordered the clown and he showed up. It's democracy in action. It's a matter of perspective whether you see this as a tragedy or as a comedy.

He might limp through until 2020. Republicans won't impeach him over this. But he's a dead clown walking now. Americans do have some self-respect. — Baden

Trump has been laid to rest a dozen or so times already. You guys know nothing.

I do like me a Guinness. It's my go to actually.

There is nothing more absurd then an american trying to tell the rest of the world that they don't know how to drink or hold their liquor. — Akanthinos

Let's see... A challenge of sorts. How about a rabbit that gives birth to a house full of people playing Trivial Pursuit where they're arguing over whether Sally already answered the pie piece Arts and Literature question but Kevin can't find his stapler to fasten his letters from back home that were unstamped.

I'd think that's more absurd than an American commenting on Irish drinking habits. So color you wrong.

@Baden And grits are dried ground corn. There's really no juice. You pour boiling water in them to make them edible, so grit juice would be hot water I guess. We use that to also make our tea that we then dump sugar in until it's semi-solid and we eat it with a fork. It's customarily served with a side of diabetes.

Your people are quite charming, what with those accents and ruddy little cheeks. Then sometimes they take to drinking and it can take a bad turn.

That Michael Higgins though. Just adorable. https://www.boredpanda.com/people-love-ireland-president-michael-higgins/

It's simple. European media is better and less biased than yours. Follow our relatively successful model instead of your relatively failed one. Same goes for health care etc. You're just slow learners over there. — Baden

You're on a quite the hate train today. I like your passion though. You're almost as brazen as an American. Almost.

America is doing something right though. We've exported our goods and culture throughout the world. You can't get away from us.

On the other hand, Ireland's biggest export is your fleeing people. I think there's probably more Irish in Boston than Dublin. If you guys hate us, why do you keep coming over here?

Go home, leave the world alone, stop messing things up for everyone else. — Baden

As you might be surprised to learn, I have little power over such decisions. Your hypothetical of what the world would be like without American international military involvement is obviously unanswerable, but it's very doubtful the West would have fared so well without US protection. But, whatever, be an ingrate. I'll still invite you over for tea.

From who though? Europe has a nuclear deterrent that's enough to keep Russia at bay and it's not in Russia's interest to attack us. Besides, I think we ought to wean ourselves off relying on America and spend more on our own defense. Let you save money and go home. Everyone wins. — Baden

Why isn't Ireland negotiating for a nuclear free North Korea?