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To: IronJack
God's laws, not the state's, should govern morality.

Most felonies, as defined by the states, are morality laws. Stealing, murder, perjury: those all come out of that list of top 10 that God wrote in stone and gave to Moses.

In this article, the neighbor was arrested and given 15 days for bearing false witness.
47 posted on 05/11/2003 9:09:19 AM PDT by gitmo ("The course of this conflict is not known, yet its outcome is certain." GWB)
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To: gitmo
Stealing, murder, perjury: those all come out of that list of top 10 that God wrote in stone and gave to Moses.

Then how do you explain that those same laws exist in cultures that don't recognize (or even know of) the Judeo-Christian ethic?

Theft, rape, murder -- all are illegal out of pure utilitarian considerations. If you are legally free to murder me, then I am legally free to murder you. Likewise with stealing, rape, etc.. In the absence of such communal constraints, civilization is impossible. It is to preserve civilization -- not a religious morality -- that such laws are passed. In fact, such constraints exist in cultures where written (statutory) law does not even exist.

56 posted on 05/11/2003 9:22:31 AM PDT by IronJack
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To: gitmo
Most felonies, as defined by the states, are morality laws. Stealing, murder, perjury: those all come out of that list of top 10 that God wrote in stone and gave to Moses.

But in the specific cases you mentioned, in addition to acts being moral offenses, they also cause specific and demonstrable harm to the victim. If we were to look at the Ten Commandments as a whole, they can be broken down into two types of commandments: One where you are violating "the Law" with G-d, and another where in addition to that, you're causing harm to others. Theft, envy, bearing false witness, murder are all cases where you are harming others. However, what crime are you commiting by violating the First Commandment? And with an exception to the Menendez brothers case, what crime is committed when you fail to honor your parents?

Mark

59 posted on 05/11/2003 9:37:05 AM PDT by MarkL
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To: gitmo
Stealing, murder, perjury: those all come out of that list of top 10 that God wrote in stone and gave to Moses.

What about the rest? Why aren't they against the law?

253 posted on 05/12/2003 8:56:05 AM PDT by Protagoras (Putting government in charge of morality is like putting pedophiles in charge of children)
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