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User	solemnpen | 2006-06-21 |
Subject	untitled
Message	the person who made this forum does have a good point, it’s a shame they are on the death penalty that long. To me, the wait should be no more than 30 days and we wouldn’t have to worry about it costing more on deathrow than in a cell, now would we? I live close to a state penitatary where a murderer has escaped. His name was Richard Mcnair. They have no idea where this guy was. I live in LA and he was last seen in Canada. He is on the Us marshalls top 10 list. If you don’t believe me, research it.... Do you think he would have escaped from death row in Angola??? I don’t think so So now we have another murderer on the loose, prowling the streets and we have an anti-death liberal happy...

User	solemnpen | 2006-06-21 |
Subject	Checks and balances
Message	Some people question the theory of eye for an eye until it is themselves on the recieving end of that exchange.. Some people uphold the death penalty until one of their close friends or a relative is awating that dreadful day... Some people despise the death penalty until one of their close friends was murdered in cold blood in such a brutal way that it brings ache to your heart to talk about..... So its not a question of is it right or is it wrong? The question should be when to use it and when not to use it... If someone is guilty, BEYOND RESONABLE DOUBT, of such a heinous crime that deems such a penalty then why not... For example: Richard Ramirez.. Some of you have probably heard of him, some of you probably haven’t. He was a guy in the mid to late 70’s (I think) that broke into peoples homes and malicously murdered them. I read articles of this guy removing breasts from 80 year old women. Somebodys grandmother. I have also read where he broke into a home of a family of 4. A father, A mother, A 12 yr old son, and a 10 yr old daughter. At gun point he tied the latter 3 up raped the daughter and then tied her up. He then raped the son and tied him back up. Then in fron of both kids butchered their parents. After that he then sadistically tortured and killed the little boy and left the daughter for last. The autopsy revealed that her death lasted approx six hours.......... Now those are just 2 cases of his.. he was convicted for like 13 murders. Things like this happen everyday.. SO DO YOU THINK I WOULD WANT SOMEBODY LIKE HIM SITTING IN PRISON FOR LIFE, WRITING BOOKS AND DOING DOCUMENTARYS SO HIS FAMILY CAN REEP THE PROFITS. NO! IN FACT HIS ASS IS STILL SITTING ON DEATH ROW IN THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA. So you make your own conclusions on the death penalty. I know it’s not right to kill. But there has got to be some kind of balance. SERIOUSLY!

User	mae | 2006-06-21 |
Subject	untitled
Message	dismentled - As far as the saints it had been my experience that most religious leader, though knowledgable are close minded. Which limits(to me anyways) their credability. How can you listen to someone who refuses even to consider the notion just for a moment that their beliefs may be fallable? mae - dismentled, back centuries (or less) ago, physicians believed that diseases were caused by bad ’humours’ or bad blood. They believed that to heal their patient, they must make cuts in the person’s skin and let them bleed to release the ’bad blood.’ Now, doctors give antibiotics, vaccinations and other treatments, but they wouldn’t dream of cutting their patients and just letting them bleed. Do you consider a doctor close-minded because he has studied and no longer accepts the idea of ’blood-letting’, instead insisting that antibiotics are the answer? Wisdom is gained through life experience and a knowledge of how those experiences work together. If a person, having had a variety of life experiences and exhibiting the wisdom that comes from learning from those experiences (and note, I said ’exhibiting’ - their wisdom is evident) has full confidence that their beliefs are right, based on their experience as well as study, why do you give them less credibility than the doctor who doesn’t accept blood-letting? mae

User	kanu | 2006-06-17 |
Subject	untitled
Message	If a person is based on a higher level of knowledge they are not as fallible as a person lesser situated Take for instance a parent and a child - households function because the parent has a superior knowledge than the child - otherwise the pay cheques would be blown on barbie dolls and m&m’s I understand what you are saying though dismentled - your case is that you don’t have faith in the credibility of people who are authorised in a field - I think we are just coming to the tail end of discussing that in some other thread - if you don’t have faith in car mechanics and have no knowledge of automotive mechanics where does that leave you? Similarly if you have no faith in saintly persons and are conditioned by inferior nature where does that leave you? That is why one’s primary responsibilities in spiritual life is to locate bona fide examples of what is explained in scripture

User	dismentled | 2006-06-17 |
Subject	untitled
Message	Damn Toxic, Kanu you 2 both have very good points. I fall somwhere in between, my beliefs are my own, and though I don’t think i am I am as liable to be correct or wrong as anyone else. However Kanu the majority of the population has beliefs that do extend their personal experience. How may people have actually witnessed a miracle, yet so many people are convinced they happen. As far as the saints it had been my experience that most religious leader, though knowledgable are close minded. Which limits(to me anyways) their credability. How can you listen to someone who refuses even to consider the notion just for a moment that their beliefs may be fallable?

User	kanu | 2006-06-17 |
Subject	untitled
Message	I guess its just a question when one has beliefs that are beyond the realm of one’s personal experience to formulate - like if you have never directly perceived god, and in fact exhibit the qualities of one who is conditioned ( ie subject to lust, greed, anger, etc), on what grounds do you over ride the direct perceptions of saintly persons who are not conditioned (or at least not as conditioned as oneself)?

User	Toxic_Rayne | 2006-06-17 |
Subject	untitled
Message	"I can’t understand you Chell - you cling to chrsitianity yet you can neither renounce it nor take up the teachings in proper faith" Okay, i’m not Chell, but I’m the same way...only I don’t cling to Christianity, I have a few, very few beliefs of my actual religion, then I make my own beliefs by what I see and experience throughout my life-time. I don’t think anyone can live strictly by a religion and simply adopt every single one of its beliefs as their own....A person needs to have some of their own beleifs and not be sickly dependent on their church to feed them some more. *tox*

User	kanu | 2006-06-17 |
Subject	untitled
Message	Its not clear to me how satan profits by people who don’t kill animals - on the contrary it would easier to conceive of how he does profit when people do.

User	Blue Monk | 2006-06-17 |
Subject	untitled
Message	Loaves and fishes, man what a feast! Jesus multiplied them so thousands of listeners would not go hungry while listening to him. Don’t forget to pass around a few locusts too, that’s John the Baptist’s favorite munchie. As mentioned in other posts here, Christians have seldom agreed upon everything once you get past Christ’s divinity. Many ignore much of what the Bible says are the teaching of Jesus and St. Paul, etc. The Bible also warns of "false teachers". What better place for Satan to place his demons than where they can do the most harm?

User	kanu | 2006-06-15 |
Subject	untitled
Message	I can’t understand you Chell - you cling to chrsitianity yet you can neither renounce it nor take up the teachings in proper faith- you are sitting on the fence and I am surprised that you haven’t damaged your backside from the barbed wire yet

User	Chell | 2006-06-15 |
Subject	untitled
Message	The difference, Kanu, is that there were different kinds of Christians before the counsel of Nicea. It wasn’t until the universal (Catholic) Church solidified the New Testament and changed many of the teachings of Christ that Christians lost the concept of being vegitarians. Of course, that was about the time that Christians forgot they were told not to uphold any death penalty, but turn the cheek again and again. The Christians of today are much different than the Christians of 100 and 200 A.D.

User	kanu | 2006-06-15 |
Subject	untitled
Message	Then why are there records by heathens and romans describing the unusual activities of the early christians (we are talking 100-200 years after christ) that declare them as partaking of vegetarian foodstuffs? What misconception were the early christians operating under that the later ones of present day have cleared up? I don’t see it said explicitly where god said it was ok to eat flesh in the bible unless you want to juggle words.

User	Blue Monk | 2006-06-15 |
Subject	untitled
Message	"Thou shall not kill" refers only to killing people, not animals. Genesis 9 says it’s ok (after the flood) to kill and eat animals. Before the great flood and Noah’s ark, etc., according to the Bible man did not eat meat. It was only afterwards that God gave us permission. Chapter 9 also then prescribes the death penalty for someone who kills a person (the topic of this debate) and gives the reason for doing so. The same chapter immediately follows with the Noahatic covenant, made by God to ALL LIVING FLESH (read it for yourself, lazy). Now I ask you, why would God even bother to make a covenant inclusive of all creatures, not just man? But that’s off the subject. The New Testament may have changed things somewhat, considering that Jesus saved an adulteress from her prescribed death penalty. (A death penalty is a death penalty, who’s splitting hairs?) The message of Jesus is that EVERYONE stands in danger of an untimate penalty beyond and worse than death. He saved that woman physically. Whether or not she then became a Christian after being told by Him to "sin no more", we are not told. What do you think? In "Christian" countries, even those who are condemned to die are offered salvation of their souls by (truly) repenting of their sins and accepting Jesus as Lord, regardless of their earthly deeds. Whether they die the next hour, or after many years in prison, what is that relative to eternity? If a criminal is killed prior to his or her real contemplation of salvation, who then is also at fault for his lost soul? I think that would be an arguement against the death penalty.

User	kanu | 2006-06-05 |
Subject	untitled
Message	Where does it say thou shall not kill refers to animals - despite the so-called modern advancement in the meat industry you still don’t see animals volunteering their services to the barbeque I think I have mentioned else where about meat eating in spiritual life - but to recap - meat eating is a sin but it is kind of like the consumption of alcohol - if you prohibit it (like the states did in the 20’s) it will simply go underground - so just for the sake of regulating people’s sinfulness there are religious injunctions surrounding the eating of flesh - the regulations are never there to encourage it but to regulate it - like for instance its not that a jew has to eat meat - you don’t become less of a jew by being a vegetarian - its not clear to me what you have to lose by being vegetarian except maybe a few bad habits and the implication in the suffering of other living entities Looks like we have jumped threads into the vegetarian one

User	Blue Monk | 2006-06-05 |
Subject	untitled
Message	Additionally, a kosher (jewish) killing of an animal has long been by people specially trained to do so with little or no pain suffered upon the animal. That is also part of the "law". See also - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosher

User	Blue Monk | 2006-06-05 |
Subject	untitled
Message	"thou shall not kill" refers to killing people, not animals. Apparently the 180 thinking is prohibiting a meaningful debate due to cultural differences and biases being so out of phase.

User	kanu | 2006-06-04 |
Subject	untitled
Message	But its the draining of the blood that causes all the suffering - it sounds like really primitive stuff actually - god is telling you to kill something before you eat it - If life is in the blood sounds like you would also be violating "thou shall not kill" everytime you went to get something to eat. Raises the question whether animals have a soul - or even more specifically what are the symptoms of a soul - how do you recognise whether something has a soul or not?

User	Blue Monk | 2006-06-04 |
Subject	untitled
Message	The life and spirit is in the blood, not in the flesh. That is also why we say that Jesus shed his blood for us. The shedding of blood upon an altar to God or gods transcends many religions. In our Christian case, the final offering was made by Jesus for us. I don’t know how much more plain we can make, "Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you." Is that difficult to understand? Obviously, once an animal is drained of blood it is certain to be dead and cannot suffer thereafter.

User	kanu | 2006-06-03 |
Subject	untitled
Message	Monk that biblical quote gives strength to not killing animals for food 9:3 Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things. 9:4 But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat. Why shall ye not eat it? God seems to be saying you can eat it if you want but hey there is plenty of green things to eat and I don’t recommend that you eat flesh. I think on the interpretation of this verse there are some faiths that drain the blood from the flesh - which is kind of like wiping your tongue from saliva - Also there are witness accounts of early christians by heathens that describe them as peculiar because they were vegetarian - anyway its a different thread. As for the murderer going to heaven there is a distinction between the eternal spiritual world and a higher grade of material existence in a material heaven - Karma determines one’s situation in the material world but devotion to god is what determines whether one enters the eternal kingdom - the king doesn’t qualify one for the eternal - he acts as a representative of the laws that governs the material universe and exhausts the perpetrator of some bad karma by his actions Anyway the whole thing is more to give an understanding of the reasons how and why ancient yet more spiritually advanced civilizations operated. Its not by regret that one becomes free from the karma of murder or slaughter but it is by devotion to god - there are also scriptural incidents of greatly sinful persons, rather than getting executed for their bad karma, have taken to spiritual instruction and gone to the spiritual world.

User	Blue Monk | 2006-06-03 |
Subject	Interesting reading
Message	Pardon my apparently narrow minded, western/Christian way of thinking but Kanu’s last message about "saving" a murderer and "promoting" an animal by killing them both seem 180 degrees opposite theologically to my way of thinking just as much as North America and India are on the globe. In the first case, the murderer may or may not ever regret his act, however cruel it may have been (where’s karma?) and it is in broad opinion that no earthly "king" has ever had any power over what happens in any afterlife. Jesus has that power, but his kingdom is still a heavenly one. In the second case dealing with animals, some humans have presumed that humankind is a promotion in the eyes of God from any other life form. Dare I suggest that perhaps this is wrong thinking? Fortunatley, mankind has been given permission to eat animals: Genesis 9:2 And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, upon all that moveth upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea; into your hand are they delivered. 9:3 Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things. 9:4 But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat. I’ll not argue with that. We are fortunate to have such a generous God.