Dvergar wrote:
So many opinions based on incomplete understanding and a desire to see the world as only black and white
Pedantic jabs like this diminish your credibility. Like I said, this isn't an indoctrination.
Dvergar wrote:
Completely relevant. You're talking about what the court should do but, but the court system and loopholes in law are pretty much they entirety of the system you're talking about.
Not at all. Law operates in concert with the longstanding traditions of common law and human and social mores. There is more to the picture than the here and now.
If this was the world of THX1138 and the judge, jury and executioners were all robots, this might be true. But in this world of ours...judges, jurors, the electorate, the lawyers, the prosecutor...are all human beings...flawed, emotional, and ultimately driven by the mores of our society.
Subjective distinctions are inherently fraught with peril because they will ultimately be driven by individual attitudes and not material facts.
Dvergar wrote:
If you want to have a philosophical discussion you can, but just as science is differentiated into applied and theoretical, so too is justice. Attempted murder doesn't happen in a vaccuum.
All applied justice is based on the premise of the standing theory: our value system, our ideas of what justice is and how it should be carried out. Rule of law is not absolute in the sense the rules of physics are, unless the judge is Solomon or St Peter.
Given the many problems our justice system faces, the pervasive
injustice in all forms, the fact that the justice system
hasn't "won the war on crime", it's quite a reach to describe it as the product of an absolute science.
When all problems are solved, or at least immediate, objective solutions are on the table for any given predicament, perhaps this statement could be valid. But not today.
Dvergar wrote:
The very fact that you are arguing that one person killing another may or may not be murder proves that you don't see all life as equal and undermines your case that all punishments should be equal.
Contrary to what many people believe, the Sixth of the Ten Commandments does not actually say, "Thou shalt not kill." What it actually says is, "Thou shalt not
murder."
There is a difference between killing and murder, and that difference is recognized by every society in the history of the world. There's killing people in war, capital punishment, justifiable homicide, self-defense,
sacer,
hostis humani generis, etc.
Killing for reasons perceived as just does not contradict the equal value of human life because the laws in question apply equally to all such participants.
You talk about people's "incomplete understanding" but comments like this reveal the profundity of your own.
Dvergar wrote:
Go ahead and stone the next non-virgin woman who gets married in your community and get back to me on how that works for you.
It works for some societies. There are many societies that would find our gender relations laws equally abhorrent.
You talk about black and white but that seems to be a projection: you think our values are final and perfect, but you don't take a step back and analyze the mores of other societies in context.
Dvergar wrote:
The law must be able to deal with a large variety of situations, your stances don't work when put to real world tests.
How do you know that? Haven't we gotten along for thousands of years without hate crime laws? Haven't there been (and still are) many societies that don't recognize degrees of murder? '
How do you know we'll be doomed without such distinctions, or that we are guaranteed a better future with them? What's your factual basis for such an arrogant claim - that if we don't differentiate murder cases to a dramatic extent, we won't get by?
