Moral issues and the Justice system or something like that

It drags some, at least in my experience, because it's so detailed. By the time I got through Part I I was worn out, but also sick with the horror of how the system can convict two innocent men all from "the best of intentions." I cried about the boy in the first part of this thread, now I'm crying about this horrific miscarriage of justice. It can make you pretty disgusted with humanity. At least it did me. I'm about to start on Part II, which wasn't in the works at the end of the first part. I'm hoping for a happy ending but I hoped all through Part I for a happy ending and it never came so who knows.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Faith writes: I understand choosing sin over God and being willing to take the consequences, stupid though that is, but I don't understand how you could let your flawed moral standards judge God and reject Him on that flimsy basis. I resent your trying to pin your puny idea of morality on me as if that is the standard we should all adhere to. Others here do the same thing. I don't judge God because He's God and He made it all and He knows what He is doing. The report of His judgments should teach us about the terrors of the Moral Law. It's the height of foolishness to apply a self-centered human standard to God. "I am not like you" He has said. His judgments are hard for us to accept, and we wouldn't accept them if human beings came up with them, but …. God's judgments are omniscient. And really they should teach us just how terrible are the operations of the Moral Law. We should learn that and learn from it the fear of God that is the beginning of wisdom, but instead fallen humanity has the effrontery to judge God by our ignorant vague and foggy standards. That's all you've done and it's all others here do. God isn't a human being, He's a terrifying Judge and yet a Judge who offers mercy to us fallen creatures. Oh well, there's no point.

I probably shouldn't enter into this but I guess I will anyway.

The thing is Faith is that Aussie isn't judging God. Aussie and others are judging your view of God. In actuality they are judging your understanding of how the Scriptures are meant to be understood.

I think that you would agree that the Bible from Genesis to Jesus tells us that we are made in God's image. I don't have any idea what God looks like but as a Christian I believe that in order to try and image God, (and failing), I should look at the one who imaged Him perfectly.

Jesus as the embodied Word of God in Jesus, is not compatible with an inerrant Bible, for the myriad of reasons such as commanding genocide and public stoning, which we have gone over numerous times before.

Y'all remind me of the cadre of authorities who "proved" the quilt of the two men in the series I mention above. They made it up out of whole cloth but they believed it themselves. You think it's *MY* view of God you are judging, rather than God himself, without caring for half a second whether maybe *MY* view of God is true. You don't care because you are so absolutely convinced of your own view. In fact you could say that for everyone forever. Could say it about your view and everyone else's forever. No such thing as actual objective truth so why do we bother at all? Oh it's *THEIR* view of God, THEREFORE it's not the true God. What kind of reasoning is that? Utterly self-indulgent self-satisfied nonsense, that's all, just like all the men who convicted the two hapless absolutely innocent men in the Netflex series "Making a Murderer."

This happens all the time at EvC. In fact I kept thinking that as I watched this series. There is no point in arguing anything here from my point of view, because everyone here already *knows* the truth -- about absolutely everything I say too. Not one thing I say in defense of my own political or religious opinions could ever be true although you all think all I I have to do is produce the evidence. Ha Ha. You don't understand the logic or the psychology of what you are all doing here.

Sorry, what I said about God is what God said about Himself, I didn't make it up, yes I know how you can all make a case against me, I know oh so well how you can all make a case against me, and really there is nothing I could ever say to persuade you otherwise. There is no debate here at all, debate is impossible because of the entrenched mental set. I keep reading Tangle and you on the other thread and although I am more persuaded of your point of view than his in that context I know you don't stand a chance of convincing him of it. I don't stand a chance of convincing you of the absolute truth here either. Yes the truth of who God really is. So there's no point in trying.

Another thought is that it's very similar to what is done to Trump every single day by the Democrats and the media. I am allowing that they all believe their own crap but perhaps that is too big an allowance. In any case they create a fictional view of everything he says to convince others. Ugh, it turns my stomach.

Besides, all this is really off topic. So was the whole discussion with Aussie. The only thing I'd want to discuss IF anything is to be discussed here at all, is either of the two films I mentioned, both about egregious and extremely sad miscarriages of justice.

Cheers.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

You want to think the justice system works, that where it makes mistakes they follow principles that will lead them to correct them and in the end it will all work out. Isn't that how the Founders envisioned the American government? It was to be a government for a "moral people" as John Adams put it, saying it would be "inadequate for any other," but it was also realistic, designed so that one influence would function as a corrective to others, which is a way of dealing with the fallen human nature, the knowledge that we are all selfish, subject to bias, full of self-seeking inclinations that should first of all be checked by internal standards -- that's the "moral people" thing, but when that isn't enough, by the influence of others.

When the whole system breaks down, when we are no longer a moral people, when the whole system allows for ths kind of corruption that railroaded these two men for crimes they did not commit, what then?

Well, I'm into Part 2 of this series and another investigator has finally become involved and she is a determined systematic investigator and I hope for the best. But she might not have taken his case. She almost didn't. People who could have helped him, procedures that could have helped him, offices and agencies that would have helped him, failed him over and over. It's easy to suppose that he might never have received any help at all and perhaps there are many who never do.

The film itself is the biggest help but for the most part all it does is record the horrible miscarriage of justice which just seems endless. Even with that huge help he might never have received any really useful help. I still don't know where this is going to go, again I'm optimistic that it will have a good outcome, especially since he finally has someone who has both the expertise and the motivation to help him, but that good outcome should have come many times in the preceding years and didn't.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Faith writes: This happens all the time at EvC. In fact I kept thinking that as I watched this series. There is no point in arguing anything here from my point of view, because everyone here already *knows* the truth -- about absolutely everything I say too. Not one thing I say in defense of my own political or religious opinions could ever be true although you all think all I I have to do is produce the evidence. Ha Ha. You don't understand the logic or the psychology of what you are all doing here.

Hi Faith
Let me say this. I don't "know" that what I believe about God is correct. I believe it on faith. I have no doubt that at least some of what I believe is wrong, with the problem being I don't what part of what I believe is wrong. I just muddle along like everyone else.

Also you have your beliefs about the nature of God, what He has done and what He is doing. I'd suggest though that you actually worship a quite different god than what you believe in.

I'll give you a hypothetical. Let's say you had a fundamentalist Christian and Biblical inerrantist as president. You would of course say that would be wonderful. Now your president decrees that anyone caught in adultery should be publicly executed in a cruel manner as a lesson to others. Also, your president decrees that as Muslims are coming into the US and influencing Americans, and causing some to question their Christianity and maybe even converting to Islam, that the US should start a genocidal war on Islamic nations. God has told him that this must be done.

I contend, at least I'd hope, that you would be properly horrified, and would argue that you had no idea that he/she would do this when you voted for him/her. I would also contend that if it was you that had been elected president that you would have no thought of doing such a thing yourself. However, in this thread and others you argue that God is beyond our human understanding of justice and so you accept and believe that when He commanded genocide and public stoning He was exercising justice as only God understands it.

So again, I am suggesting that you don't actually worship the god that you believe in, and thankfully so.

That is so annoying I have to keep this short or I'll blow a gasket. Any "functamentalist" or biblical Christian who proposed stoning people for adultery or for anything at all would not be a fundamentalist or biblical Christian. It takes a biblical/theological illiterate to think such a thing. The source of any violent punishment of any kind of sin at all, and most particularly disbelief in Allah, would be Islam. Go take a flying leap.. iknto a bown of marshmallows or something.

So what you’re saying is, that when it comes to your religion, it’s your interpretation of your holy book which counts - but that when it comes to other folks’ religions, it’s your interpretation which counts ?

Standard Protestant theology says what I said, and high profile Muslim leaders say what I said about Islam. Which is what I already said anyway.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I reread this and since I didn't blow a gasket yet there's still one to blow and why waste it? . GDR, your ignorance of Christianity is appalling, and I know it's futile to try to change your mind, everything I say at EvC is futile, nothing new there, but I'll take one more swipe at this absurdity:

I'll give you a hypothetical. Let's say you had a fundamentalist Christian and Biblical inerrantist as president. You would of course say that would be wonderful. Now your president decrees that anyone caught in adultery should be publicly executed in a cruel manner as a lesson to others...

First of all a President of the United States can't decree any such thing, even if he were the complete idiot you make him out to be who wanted to do it. And again, this is no "fundamentalist Christian and Biblical inerrantist," this is the understanding of a total moron who could even imagine such an act or such an American President. Or maybe the President you have in mind is really from some other planet? Or maybe YOU are from some other planet.

Also, your president decrees that as Muslims are coming into the US and influencing Americans, and causing some to question their Christianity and maybe even converting to Islam, that the US should start a genocidal war on Islamic nations. God has told him that this must be done.

"Straw man" is too mild a term for this idiocy. Your understanding of both Christianity and Islam is dismally ridiculous and dangerous. I'll keep it simple because I've spelled out the theology before and all anyone says is how that's just *my* interpretation which contributes to the ridiculous and dangerous nature of the discussion. Christianity prescribes no violence whatever. Islam is built on violence.

I contend, at least I'd hope, that you would be properly horrified, and would argue that you had no idea that he/she would do this when you voted for him/her. I would also contend that if it was you that had been elected president that you would have no thought of doing such a thing yourself.

You make it a personal thing when it's an ideological thing. I would be "horrified" at the thought that anyone took such a President to be a Christian. As a Christian I couldn't recommend any such action myself BECAUSE IT'S NOT CHRISTIAN, nob becauase of some personal reaction against it, which is how *YOU* think, not I. Your entire theology, such as it is, comes out of your own PERSONAL distaste for some events in biblical history, you have no real theology, you have no real THOUGHT about any of it for that matter, you just have your feelings. So much of modern thought comes out of mere feelings without even a tinge of rational thought I'm not surprised but I am certainly appalled.

However, in this thread and others you argue that God is beyond our human understanding of justice and so you accept and believe that when He commanded genocide and public stoning He was exercising justice as only God understands it.

I argue for the inerrancy of the Bible and the sovereignty of God. You impose your own emotional misreadings on both. It doesn't matter to you that Christians know that what you are denouncing from your emotional stand has historical reasons that no longer apply, BECAUSE THEY ONLY APPLIED TO THE THEOCRACY OF ANCIENT ISRAEL WHICH AS A MATTER OF PRACTICAL FACT WERE PRETTY MUCH RESTRICTED TO STONING AS THE METHOD OF EXECURION. You continue with your emotional stand against the entire history of Christian theology. You can get away with that here in a little collection of nonexperts like EvC, I just hope you couldn't get away with it to any extent in the real world.

So again, I am suggesting that you don't actually worship the god that you believe in, and thankfully so.

The true God I worship can be a fearsome God who teaches us the dire consequences of sin, which you deny, but since He gives mercy to those who believe in Him and know He has given us a reprieve from those dire consequences, we can love and worship Him without fear. The Moral Law is a fearsome thing. Nobody escapes it. The Bible reveals its true horrific consequences so that we might understand the reality of them. It is extreme foolishness to try to an invent a God who does not judge by such fearsome consequences. That is what you are doing. You simply eliminate from your portrait of God everything that is fearsome, so you can have a nice God who isn't concerned about punishing sin. Reality on the other hand which is what the inerract Bible teaches is that the Moral Law judges all of us and if God had not provided the costly sacrifice of His Son in our place we'd all be in Hell. If you eliminate the judgment, if you eliminate Hell, if you eliminate the Moral Law, there is no need for the sacrifice of Christ in our place. And of coruse you've done all of that. Me, I'm grateful that God's love provides a way out of the horrific consequences of the Moral Law which decrees death for adultery as well as all other sins to one degree or another. I'm sorry you don't get it, but you can't get away with imposing your ridiculous fairytale god on the true God. You may for a while, sadly.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

None of that belongs on this thread but it's too late now. But back to the topic, speaking of being appalled by human stupidity, the way the "justice" system acted against two absolutely innocent men they convicted of murder out of their own fantasies and their own planting of evidence in support of their fantasies, is beyond appalling. It certainly makes me wish for a world in which people didn't judge by their feelings as these officers of the justice system did.

We have wonderful rules of evidence and the presumption of innocence and much else to protect a person from wrongful accusation, but this story shows that none of that matters when people are so consumed by their personal feelings they ignore every bit of it and think they are acting justly because they FEEL these men are guilty. Over and over as I watch this story unfold I cry for the wrongfully convicted men and their families, and for the horrifically misled family of the murdered woman whose own bias is so against these men they can't even consider that the real murderer is still on the loose, but also for the system in which something like this could happen. I'm still hoping for a good outcome as a new lawyer who really cares about all these things is collecting exculpatory evidence, but even with this hope I can see how the very best of rational procedures could be undone by mere human prejudice.

AbE: Just one little incident comes to mind. There is a videotaped "confession" of the young man which makes it painfully obvious that he was influenced step by step by his interrogators into inventing the entire scenario he confessed to but the interrogation seemed to follow accepted procedure so his "confession" is taken for valid over and over again. Perhaps as a viewer of the film one has an objectivity they couldbn't have in the circumstances, but even after viewing the film a judge on a panel of judges convened for the purpose of deciding whether to vacate the prosecution of that young man says he sees no coercion in that interrogation. The coercion screams from the video and he doesn't see it and we are required to respect such a judgment as his. THE ENTIRE SCENARIO was invented by the interrogators. The kid was just going along with them out of a sort of obedience, a kid who had never had any sexual experience, and probably not even much sexual imagination given the kind of family he lived in and his low IQ, accepted the idea that he raped a woman and slit her throat, none of which had happened. That such a completely fabricated story could have been believed is scary.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Hi Faith

I only have a minute but I can respond more fully later. I apologize if I made this sound personal because it certainly wasn't meant that way. The point was not that a fundamentalist Christian president could, or ever would do such a thing. The point was, that they wouldn't. I was saying that you, or any other sane fundamentalist Christian, would consider never even for a second doing such an abhorrent thing.

The problem is that an inerrant reading of the Bible does say that God commanded a very close parallel to the hypothetical I spelled out.

So even though you agree that doing such a thing would be reprehensible, you are ok with accepting the idea that God did just that.

I believe I understood you, GDR, and I believe I answered you. Sorry if it wasn't sufficient.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Judging by your feelings versus by the facts/evidence. How often that happens and how often people who THINK they are judging by the facts and evidence are not. How is this proved? Is it possible to prove it? Well not in a tiny little pond like EvC it isn't. And I'm beginning to wonder if it ever is really no matter how good the rules of evidence are. I don't want to believe it's impossible but I have to admit I'm coming to think it is. Ten years at EvC is enough to set that one in concrete for me I'm afraid. And this film about a miscarriage of justice does such a nice job of confirming it. Scream all you like about facts and evidence for your own side, which at EviC will get you kudos galore if you share the establishment viewpoint, but you may really just be calling your own bias by the name of evidence. And of course accusing anyone who dissents from your view of being the deluded one. So we just toss the epithet back and forth. There's no way to prove it. If I'm right and youj're calling me wrong there's certainly no way with the vast majority here against me I stand a chance of proving anything. Read your own crap. Yes it's crap.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Yeah me. Nothing new in this but the film series is bringing out things I've been through for years. Not that I care a whole lot about myself although of course that has to be part of it, I don't care that much about me despite all the snark I get along those lines, the disappointing thing is the unfairness itself, the fact that ideology prevails no matter what. And saying this, which I do from time to time, only gets more of the same snark, unfairness and ideological stupidity I'm talking about. It's tempting over and over again to try to get through such falseness and find out that people really aren't that closed in their little boxes after all, but it keeps turning out that they are. And here comes the tit for tats and all the rest of it. Retch.

This film series is in its last episode and things are continuing to go against the truth. The powers that be are a brick wall against the truth. I don't see how it could get better by the end of this episode.

Faith writes: Judging by your feelings versus by the facts/evidence. How often that happens and how often people who THINK they are judging by the facts and evidence are not.

OK Faith. Let's look at the facts and evidence.

This is from Deuteronomy 7:

quote:

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1 When the LORD your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations—the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, seven nations larger and stronger than you— 2 and when the LORD your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy.

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Contrast this from Matthew 5 and the Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount”.

quote:

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5 Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
7 Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.
8 Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

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How can you possibly contrast those two Biblical quotes and then claim that the nature of God can be seen in both quotes?

And again in Deuteronomy 20

quote:

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16 However, in the cities of the nations the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. 17 Completely destroy them—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—as the LORD your God has commanded you.

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Contrast this again with the words of Jesus in Matthew 5

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43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.

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Once again. The views of the nature of God that we sometimes, but not usually, see in the OT are completely at the opposite ends of the spectrum. In Deuteronomy we are shown a cruel vengeful deity, very similar to the deities of their pagan neighbours, as opposed to the loving merciful God in the NT.

Here are some quotes from the book of Joshua.

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Joshua 6 21 They devoted the city to the LORD and destroyed with the sword every living thing in it—men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys. 27 So the LORD was with Joshua, and his fame spread throughout the land.

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quote:

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Joshua 8 1 Then the LORD said to Joshua, “Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged. Take the whole army with you, and go up and attack Ai. For I have delivered into your hands the king of Ai, his people, his city and his land. 2 You shall do to Ai and its king as you did to Jericho and its king, except that you may carry off their plunder and livestock for yourselves. Set an ambush behind the city.”
24 When Israel had finished killing all the men of Ai in the fields and in the wilderness where they had chased them, and when every one of them had been put to the sword, all the Israelites returned to Ai and killed those who were in it.
25 Twelve thousand men and women fell that day—all the people of Ai.
26 For Joshua did not draw back the hand that held out his javelin until he had destroyed all who lived in Ai.

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Again contrast this from Luke 6

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Luke 6 27 “But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. 29 If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also. If someone takes your coat, do not withhold your shirt from them. 30 Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. 31 Do to others as you would have them do to you. 32 “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. 33 And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do that.

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This is again the words of Jesus who was a 1st century Jew living in a 1st century Jewish world under the brutal and total dominance of the Romans. They were in the promised land but still in excile.

This is from Leviticus 24

quote:

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19 Anyone who injures their neighbor is to be injured in the same manner: 20 fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. The one who has inflicted the injury must suffer the same injury.

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What does Jesus tell us in Matthew 5

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38 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ 39 But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.

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Jesus actually says, as He does in other places that the early prophets got it wrong.

This from Numbers 15

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32 While the Israelites were in the wilderness, a man was found gathering wood on the Sabbath day. 33 Those who found him gathering wood brought him to Moses and Aaron and the whole assembly, 34 and they kept him in custody, because it was not clear what should be done to him. 35 Then the LORD said to Moses, “The man must die. The whole assembly must stone him outside the camp.” 36 So the assembly took him outside the camp and stoned him to death, as the LORD commanded Moses.

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What does Jesus say in Luke 6

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37 “Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven.

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Jesus even tells us to pray to be forgiven as we forgive others.
I could go on but that is certainly enough. I am afraid Faith that I do not understand how your idea of God’s justice can be so different from one period to the next. I believe in the God as personified in Jesus who is the same yesterday today and tomorrow.
The belief that you can harmonize beliefs in an inerrant Bible with the life and teaching of Jesus is just plainly obviously wrong. I’ll go with Jesus.

Edited by GDR, : typo