391–400 of 472 posts
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It warms my heart that almost 20 years later, the same thread is playing out again. >All this has happened before, >and it will happen again.
I don't understand how slashdot can still troll me, I never even made an account on that site. I'll let this go, the hour is getting late.
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Yeah, I don't think the murder itself was premeditated, but he did treat the event with a sort of self-serving callousness that gave the perception that he did not care about Nina's life beyond how it affected his.
that's not what premeditated murder is though. That's trying to cover up the murder which is also a crime, but a far cry from premeditated murder which is one of the most heinous crimes recognized by the legal system.
He was able to plea to second degree in exchange for the location of the body and essentially a confession.
They convicted him of first degree because without the body, there was no evidence that he didn't plan on the murder as well. Ironic in a way. He hid the body to try and hide the evidence that she was dead, but turns out that only made things worse for him.
If he had called the authorities and copped to it as an "accident of passion", he'd probably be out by now.
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Because not being able to freely communicate with the larger society is part of the punishment? I dunno, always seemed like an obvious thing.
Why should prisons be about punishment rather than rehabilitation?
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Evil is not a religious concept.
Evil as a moral judgement isn't. Acts can be good or evil. In more secular terms we prefer to say "harmful" or "unjust" but the meaning is arguably the same. But the idea that "evil" is an attribute a person can possess is 100% a religious one. If you're not religious, there can be no evil person unless you think there is an "evil" gene or an "evil" psychosis - "sociopath" and "psychopath" are often used this way but…
I wish I was as good expressing myself like you are!
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Evil is an attribute that people may come to possess through various means (ideology is a big one), which becomes manifest through their actions when they demonstrate severe selfish disregard for the lives of others. The above does not rest on religion. Christians/etc having their own theories about evil is irrelevant. When most people say Pol Pot was evil, they're not talking about demonic possession or some silly n…
> When most people say Pol Pot was evil, they're not talking about demonic possession or some silly nonsense like that; they mean he was a mass murderer, which is evil. Well, no. Most people I've heard say something like that would mean that he was innately evil as a person. They wouldn't spell it out like that but the underlying assumption is that a "normal human being" couldn't do what he did and therefore he was a…
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> QAnon I have never heard of, seen or even got wind of a "QAnon" member, group, theory, website or whatever they say it is outside of mainstream news. According to them it's some huge group of evil people but I can't tell myself that they're a real thing. If anyone has any real world, personal experience I would love to hear it.
If you have a subscription, the HBO documentary I mentioned, Q: Into the Storm is excellent. I think that the struggle mainstream news orgs have in talking about QAnon is that it's very difficult to encapsulate all the interlocking conspiracies and figures. There's also a wide degree of variance for what various bits and pieces mean, but there are a few central tenets. The main one is that there's a mysterious high r…
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California is comically light on crime, I'm sure he'll be out within 2-3 parole hearings.
... He's spent 15 years in prison (the original sentence) and has been denied a parole already. Not sure what i'd describe as "comically light".
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Evil is an attribute that people may come to possess through various means (ideology is a big one), which becomes manifest through their actions when they demonstrate severe selfish disregard for the lives of others. The above does not rest on religion. Christians/etc having their own theories about evil is irrelevant. When most people say Pol Pot was evil, they're not talking about demonic possession or some silly n…
> When most people say Pol Pot was evil, they're not talking about demonic possession or some silly nonsense like that; they mean he was a mass murderer, which is evil. Well, no. Most people I've heard say something like that would mean that he was innately evil as a person. They wouldn't spell it out like that but the underlying assumption is that a "normal human being" couldn't do what he did and therefore he was a…
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Goodness and evilness predates Christianity by millenia. Read about Mesopotamian religions, or the Hindic ones.
It's not relevant since those religions are no longer practiced. Christianity is, and is still influencing our world, like I wrote above.
When Cristianity didn't even exist, the Chinese already had a good chunk of philosophy perfectly set and written, and even modernish rules for war and diplomacy: Tao Te King, and The Art of War.
Heck, America from Canada to the Patagonia didn't even know about Jesus until the Europeans arrived 1500 years later. 1500s damn years. For a huge continent mass spread over from almost the North Pole to the South pole.
So much for an 'Universal' God. So universal that Aquinas had to rip a good chunk of Greek philosophy to adapt (more like smash it down with nails and duct tape) ancient Middle East fairy tales into the less-desert bound Europe as the modern Christian canonical sources.
If any, the Western world is shaped by the Roman architecture and law, and the Greek worldview, mindset and math.