Posted on 11/24/2011 11:07:08 PM PST by stevelackner
Thanks for the correction.
Should your business ever take you to Stuttgart, there's just such a dicing establishment right across a small alley from the city-center Rathaus.
Honi soit qui mal y pense...
I did give it serious thought. The judge is obviously a closet pervert who chose to live out his S&M fantasy under the cloak of a judicial sentence.
No, floggings were normally applied this way otherwise the clothing becomes all smushed up in the wounds in a general mess.
20th century perverted thinking would think of a flogging in a sexual way, 18th century judicial thinking thought of it only as a punishement for various crimes.
Everything in the world is not about sex.
That's not a testible reality it a man made definition given that wet is defined at the presentce of water. A tautology is the best you can do as an example of a secular reality? BWahahahahaha.
That has nothing to do with prostitution. My use of the phrase "in this regard" meant I was dealing with the prostitution issue. Clearly, no law, whatever the motivation in passing it - religious or secular, can violate the bill of rights.
Here’s a secular belief, spring follows winter. Try again
Not free to bind others?! You write in the very same sentence as one who still is suffering from some sort of spiritual or religious hangover yourself. Your strictures and your metaphysical constructs about freedom itself constitute a gigantic leap of irrational faith that cannot be justified or accounted for on your own terms. If on your assumptions cause and effect, chance and/or necessity of brute physical forces are all there is then there is no rational basis for any notion of "freedom" in the first place, much less any foundation for the ethical or noetic prescriptions you just propounded above. When matter in motion is all you've got then your notions of freedom and your proscriptions about what ought or ought not be bound are self-vitiating and absurd,
Cordially,
Based on what you got out of my comment you ought to dig in your back yard for platinum. My assertion that religions are all hypotheses still is unchallenged. If you’d like to address that issue, I’d be happy to participate. If you feel one or more religions are theories, perhaps you’d like to present the testable evidence. If you feel any religion is a fact, we’re done.
Cordially,
Many words have multiple connotations. “ Free” is one of them. I asserted that no one is “ free” to impose their beliefs on another and in that sense the word” free” means permitted or allowed. If you want to argue the converse, i.e. that someone is free to impose their religious beliefs on another, have at; I’ll enjoy the show.
And since you are the one who made the assertion, the burden is on you to prove it. By prove, I mean showing the foundation of your claim that no one is free to impose their beliefs on another (free in the sense of permitted or allowed) and demonstrating how your claim logically derives from your assumed premise.
Cordially,
The foundation of my claim is in the US constitution and the various stare statutes derivative thereof wherein it is plain that people cannot impose their religious beliefs on others. The same or similar laws can be found in most western countries. Should you choose to side with the islamic world on this question, you will find support for the converse of my assertion.
The foundation of my claim is in the US constitution and the various stare statutes derivative thereof wherein it is plain that people cannot impose their religious beliefs on others.
Your original premise was philosophical, not legal. You said, Since any religion and, in fact, all religions are merely hypotheses.... So I asked what the philosophical basis of the your claim is that one is not free to bind others to the rules or beliefs of a religion. Your conclusion is a legal conclusion, but how you get from your premise to the your conclusion is the interesting part.
If you are saying that the original foundation of State laws and of the Constitution was that any religion and, in fact, all religions are merely hypotheses, then I think that you will find little or no historical evidence to support that proposition.
Cordially,
If that's puzzling or confusing for you or if an innate preference for sophistry provokes you to continue to play with words, please find another playmate, it's been awhile since I've found anything of value in your end of the conversation. Thanks
Not that I really expect you to find anything of value in it, I nevertheless offer the following evidence as historical/legal rebuttal to your claim that no one is free to inflict the tenets of any faith upon another because "religions are hypotheses" - from a source that cannot simply be dismissed as foolish, irrational or devoid of common sense. Historically speaking, the foundation of the belief that no one is free to inflict the tenets of any faith upon another is actually religious or trancendent in nature, not secular:
Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution 3:§§ 1865--73 1833§ 1865. How far any government has a right to interfere in matters touching religion, has been a subject much discussed by writers upon public and political law. The right and the duty of the interference of government, in matters of religion, have been maintained by many distinguished authors, as well those, who were the warmest advocates of free government, as those, who were attached to governments of a more arbitrary character. Indeed, the right of a society or government to interfere in matters of religion will hardly be contested by any persons, who believe that piety, religion, and morality are intimately connected with the well being of the state, and indispensable to the administration of civil justice. The promulgation of the great doctrines of religion, the being, and attributes, and providence of one Almighty God; the responsibility to him for all our actions, founded upon moral freedom and accountability; a future state of rewards and punishments; the cultivation of all the personal, social, and benevolent virtues;--these never can be a matter of indifference in any well ordered community. It is, indeed, difficult to conceive, how any civilized society can well exist without them. And at all events, it is impossible for those, who believe in the truth of Christianity, as a divine revelation, to doubt, that it is the especial duty of government to foster, and encourage it among all the citizens and subjects. This is a point wholly distinct from that of the right of private judgment in matters of religion, and of the freedom of public worship according to the dictates of one's conscience.
____________________________
§ 1868. Probably at the time of the adoption of the constitution, and of the amendment to it, now under consideration, the general, if not the universal, sentiment in America was, that Christianity ought to receive encouragement from the state, so far as was not incompatible with the private rights of conscience, and the freedom of religious worship. An attempt to level all religions, and to make it a matter of state policy to hold all in utter indifference, would have created universal disapprobation, if not universal indignation.
1869. It yet remains a problem to be solved in human affairs, whether any free government can be permanent, where the public worship of God, and the support of religion, constitute no part of the policy or duty of the state in any assignable shape. The future experience of Christendom, and chiefly of the American states, must settle this problem, as yet new in the history of the world, abundant, as it has been, in experiments in the theory of government.
§ 1870. But the duty of supporting religion, and especially the Christian religion, is very different from the right to force the consciences of other men, or to punish them for worshipping God in the manner, which, they believe, their accountability to him requires. It has been truly said, that "religion, or the duty we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be dictated only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence." Mr. Locke himself, who did not doubt the right of government to interfere in matters of religion, and especially to encourage Christianity, at the same time has expressed his opinion of the right of private judgment, and liberty of conscience, in a manner becoming his character, as a sincere friend of civil and religious liberty. "No man, or society of men," says he, "have any authority to impose their opinions or interpretations on any other, the meanest Christian; since, in matters of religion, every man must know, and believe, and give an account for himself." The rights of conscience are, indeed, beyond the just reach of any human power. They are given by God, and cannot be encroached upon by human authority, without a criminal disobedience of the precepts of natural, as well as of revealed religion.
[emphasis mine]Story, Joseph. Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States. 3 vols. Boston, 1833.
© 1987 by The University of Chicago
All rights reserved. Published 2000
http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/
Cordially,
Do you posit, or is it your position that secular law in force in this country or any western country specifically allows one to force another to accept the tenets of any faith, religion or superstition (a distinction without a difference)? If that is not your position, we agree and can stop wasting bandwidth on an undergraduate-style philosophical discussion. Deconstruction of words is a clear waste of time.
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