Fear of Hell can excuse no one from it; only love from and for God can.
I forget which Pithy Pet Phrase that is, but I stand by it. That remains my biggest problem with fire and brimstone theology: It encourages hollow "repentance" based on self preservation rather than reverence and devotion to God.
Potayto, potahto. If perfect contrition was truly required, Heaven would be as empty as Dannymac's arguments.
As James said, "You believe that there is one God. You do well. Even the demons believe—and tremble!" Christianity is not a "get out of Hell free card," and treating it as such is horribly dangerous.
And I did not remotely argue that it was. It may surprise you to hear, but I accept those practical arguments, in principle; my solution would be to bring back things like Alcatraz and Devils Island. The Rock (and syphilis) broke Capone, and no successful escape has ever been confirmed; the only possible candidate is three guys who made it beyond the wall and, if they also made it through 20 miles of frigid shark infested water, were never seen or heard from again,
What about the two unusually large women who showed up at the funeral for the mother of two of those disappeared convicts, who stayed a considerable distance from anyone else at the service and whom no one could recognize? despite being such incorrigible criminals that they wound up at Alcatraz. Send the most violent repeat offenders to some inescapable island to live by the jungle law for which they rejected the laws of God and man, periodically airlifting them food and water, if necessary. Many would still die, but their blood would be on each others hands, not yours or mine, and the potential to free wrongfully connected prisoners would remain in most cases (though restricting such sentences to the worst repeat offenders would reasonably ensure inmates were violent criminals even if their most RECENT conviction were erroneous.)
The blood is on no one's hands when criminals are put to death by the law. And one murder should be more than sufficient to warrant execution. Solutions such as yours are moral cowardice.What such a practice would not do is continue the execution of people later discovered to be innocent with no recourse to correcting that injustice. I fail to see why killing an innocent is so great an evil in an individual that it merits death but an inevitable acceptable VIRTUE in a state.
No one is executed for an accidental murder, they are executed for the wanton or willful crimes. The execution of innocent men by the state is only after a rigorous system for trying their guilt has been applied. Such deaths are hardly comparable to the sorts of criminal behavior that warrant execution, and even if by some absurd chance the innocent slip through the cracks, that is simple human nature. To demand perfection of any human institution is absurd. I MIGHT consider these attitudes even slightly morally justifiable if the people who expressed them were not usually the exact same ones unwilling to accept the same fallibility of human investigative processes and demanding that we accept as an absolute given that there are no signs of human life at X point in a pregnancy or that global warming & human evolution are proven and indisputable facts. On THOSE, liberals are perfectly willing to plunge ahead, confident that the proof will catch up to them, but there is never sufficient proof that a shady sketchy character has committed murder, even with over 30 eyewitnesses to his guilt, like Troy Davis.
Cannoli
“Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.” GK Chesteron
Inde muagdhe Aes Sedai misain ye!
Deus Vult!
*MySmiley*
“Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.” GK Chesteron
Inde muagdhe Aes Sedai misain ye!
Deus Vult!
*MySmiley*
i'm proud to live in a country where you can be executed based on circumstantial evidence...
22/09/2011 04:06:07 PM
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And yet the Supreme Court didn't stop it. You're a lawyer right?
22/09/2011 04:19:05 PM
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Well, that right there was an ignorant thing to say.
22/09/2011 04:32:49 PM
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But they get all the media attention
22/09/2011 04:45:03 PM
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Cameron Todd Willingham is white, and his story is a national one since Perry is running for Pres
23/09/2011 03:41:52 PM
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those numbers are less schocking when you consider that blacks commet a lot more murders *NM*
22/09/2011 05:43:51 PM
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And this is a typically illogical argument.
22/09/2011 11:11:48 PM
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You're kidding, right?
23/09/2011 02:55:44 PM
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Re: You're kidding, right?
23/09/2011 07:36:38 PM
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Juror bias. *NM*
23/09/2011 08:35:10 PM
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Your evidence for that? *NM*
23/09/2011 11:33:58 PM
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Twenty-one years of life in the American South.
24/09/2011 12:40:10 AM
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Of course I'm interested
24/09/2011 04:03:51 AM
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From me being too involved with the subject material. I apologize.
24/09/2011 11:16:06 AM
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While I largely agree with your argument, I agree more with Cannoli on the NAACP.
23/09/2011 07:46:06 PM
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Huh.
22/09/2011 04:47:20 PM
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That jumped out at me too.
22/09/2011 04:50:52 PM
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What really confuses me
22/09/2011 04:58:32 PM
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That's a good question and I really wish it would be addressed.
22/09/2011 05:05:40 PM
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Re: That's a good question and I really wish it would be addressed.
22/09/2011 05:21:59 PM
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If the original trial is shown to be flawed that's supposed to require a new trial.
22/09/2011 08:25:51 PM
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Well...
22/09/2011 05:18:54 PM
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So if I understand you correctly...
22/09/2011 05:23:00 PM
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Yes, that is correct. And proving witness coercion is likely to be difficult if not impossible. *NM*
22/09/2011 05:30:37 PM
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it is only confusing because the evidence isn't really that shaky
22/09/2011 08:54:21 PM
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If I understand the Supreme Court correctly, the reason they denied the stay of execution was
22/09/2011 08:25:14 PM
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I completely support the Death Penalty without question.....
22/09/2011 08:27:54 PM
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Unreasonable doubt is impossible to eliminate.
22/09/2011 09:54:43 PM
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Doubt can be eliminated.....any question about Dalmer?
23/09/2011 01:00:52 PM
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Maybe he was framed by an enemy, government conspiracy or aliens.
23/09/2011 01:54:21 PM
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Jigga what? *NM*
23/09/2011 03:36:07 PM
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"I do not know if I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly or am now a butterfly..."
23/09/2011 06:50:34 PM
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Circumstantial evidence is not, I believe, a bar to conviction.
22/09/2011 09:43:56 PM
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Regarding the salvation thing, that is an argument FOR the death penalty, in my mind.
22/09/2011 11:37:16 PM
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That motive is seflish and thus fatal.
23/09/2011 01:17:00 AM
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Bullshit
25/09/2011 03:53:05 AM
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Where do YOU get the idea that imperfect contrition is good enough?
25/09/2011 02:29:18 PM
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Thank God you're not an evangelist.
23/09/2011 02:59:06 PM
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And I pity the souls you have ministered to. They're in for a rude shock at their judgement
25/09/2011 04:01:05 AM
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lol roman catholicism *NM*
25/09/2011 04:39:55 AM
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Not just Roman Catholics, y'know, everyone who thinks God was not BSing about judgement.
25/09/2011 09:47:12 PM
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lol hellfire and brimstone *NM*
26/09/2011 12:12:28 AM
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I suppose in a consequences free world everything is a source of amusement.
26/09/2011 12:33:14 AM
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You really don't understand irony, do you? Particularly as it applies to your post about this case.
22/09/2011 11:26:49 PM
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.
23/09/2011 08:21:38 AM
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A list of anecdotal wrongs does not prove anything. If convictions can be wrong, so can exonerations *NM*
25/09/2011 04:03:26 AM
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sorry if i don't have time to link to every thing i've read on the subject
23/09/2011 02:54:50 PM
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Well I would think you would have picked an article that offers some iota of proof of his innocence.
25/09/2011 04:14:45 AM
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Well, I wouldn't call eyewitness accounts circumstancial evidence.
23/09/2011 11:45:48 PM
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Nor would I, but I've heard that lawyers say, "an eye witness is the worst witness you can have."
25/09/2011 03:23:53 PM
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