Text 21915, 88 rader
Skriven 2008-10-15 07:51:33 av Roy Witt (1:397/22)
  Kommentar till text 21842 av Robert Bashe (2:2448/44)
Ärende: Legal Strictions
========================
14 Oct 08 11:25, Robert Bashe wrote to Roy Witt:

 RB>>> So some life is holy and some is not?

 RW>> Back to God again, where he said you shouldn't kill aka murder.
 RW>> God's punishment for that was a life for a life.

 RB> "God"?

First example; Cain slew Abel. Cain was banished, by God, to the
wilderness.

 RB> Or people who take it upon themselves to proclaim what they
 RB> consider his word?

Many have done so, but that is blasphemy in the eyes of you know who.

 RB> And use that as a power basis for themselves?

Catholic church, Spanish inquisition, to name merely one example.

 RB> That particular quote, incidently, was taken from the Hammurabi Code,
 RB> later ported into the Bible. It has nothing to do with any "god".

No Bob, that was one of the original ten commandments given to Moses.

 RB> Some of the most vicious atrocities perpetrated in this world over
 RB> time have been in the name of some god or another.

The Hebrew God is a god of love. It isn't their god's fault that man
cannot control himself according to their god's wishes and commands. Of
course, that's what they call sin.

 RB> That doesn't make them right, at least not in my eyes. But some
 RB> people think any atrocity is just fine as long as a Bible or Koran or
 RB> whatever can be interpreted to justify it. Sickening!

A lot of evil is done in the name of God by people claiming to serve the
deity. That is the ultimate betrayal, the top of the evil pyramid. God
does not sanction murder, child abuse, or any other kind of destructive
behavior.

 RB>>> That's the kind of thinking I object to, particularly from people
 RB>>> who call themselves "believers".

 RW>> They're just following orders from above.

 RB> That's what the accused Nazis at the Nuremberg trials said too, and
 RB> they were hung despite that.

The difference was; their above was Der Fuhrer, not any god. Life is a
constant struggle between good and evil and each person has a free will
and must choose a side. Refusing to choose puts one on the side of evil
by default, because bad things will go unchallenged. The German people
during the Nazi era demonstrated this better than anyone else down through
history. Most Germans weren't Nazi, but most stood by and allowed what
happened to happen because they were afraid or apathetic.

 RB> Unfortunately, a certain Corporal Calley who used the same defence
 RB> for atrocities committed in Vietnam, was not similarly punished. But
 RB> of course, he was not on the losing side.

Errr, Lt William Calley was convicted of premeditated murder of 22
Vietnamese civilians at My Lai. If convicted, Calley faced the death
penalty. Consequently, he was sentenced to a life sentence in prison. And
that's where the story should have ended, but for the interference of
President Nixon having him put under house arrest at Fort Benning and then
the 'commandant' comuting his sentence to 20 years. Ultimately, Calley
served only 3 1/2 years in his barracks at Fort Benning. He was released
only to be returned by court order to Fort Leavenworth, a federal prison.

In the end, Calley was released to a Georgia Congressman in 1974.

 RB> If there is a God, he gave people a brain and the power to use it.
 RB> Which they should do more often - and use him much less as a cheap
 RB> excuse for their own misdeeds.

As I recall the Calley case from those days, there was never any mention
of 'doing' those Vietnamese in the name of God. It all boiled down to his
fear of the Viet Cong infiltrating every aspect of his life, including
every villager he came across.

                R\%/itt



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