*sigh* It
doesn't matter what christians believe. The bible was written by people.
A Christian would say that's utter garbage. "It is divinely inspired," he'd say, "the people writing it were merely conduits for God, no more its authors than a pen or keyboard." Before having theological discussions, why not brush up on the topic?
And that christian would be a total idiot for claiming this, because they would essentially be saying that the thousands of cultures that live on other parts of the planet who have never heard of their god, or all the humans who lives for 200,000 before their god even came along, were all immoral, despite having largely the same sets of morals. "Brush up on the topic" indeed
What are you saying? That all moral codes are identical? That save for some "weird eccentricities," stripped of "extra frills," everything's the same? Just what is the escence, and what are "extra frills"?
Yes. The "Golden Rule" of "Do unto others..." The rules against taking other's property or life are pretty much universal, regardless of the religious, legal, or philosophical book or culture, and everything else stems from that. The "frills" are just cultures of the time, often based on misunderstanding of the world, misinterpretations of history or scripture, or just stuff added for power hungry assholes to control others. This is obviously a topic you have little to no experience in, so I don't feel like venturing into it.
It is legally binding. Stop it with the silly biz 101 definitions. If you want to find out *how* legally binding it is, go and break some lawz in front of a cop. That's the truly scientific, empirical method. Come back & tell me how it went, this is getting tedious.
k?
Stop conflating crimes defined by objective morals and codified in books (laws) with contracts or oaths attempted to be passed as contracts (so-called "social contracts" and citizenship). The two are not even remotely related. If they were, had I been an illegal immigrant, then in your example the cop would have no obligation to do anything since I have no "legally binding contract" with this country.
Had you been an illegal immigrant, there would be no contract, you'd be thrown out of the country, not made to pay taxes.
Had I been an illegal immigrant and committed a crime, the cop would have still arrested and imprisoned me. You don't need to follow or break contracts to commit crimes. If that had been a prerequisite, being an illegal immigrant with no legally binding "contract" with the country I committed a crime in, the worst that would happen to me is deportation. But, as you so like to say, "that's not how the real world works." So, as I said, stop conflating contracts (social or otherwise) with crimes. The two have nothing to do with each other.
If I were to kidnap you, put an explosive collar around your neck that will blow up if you leave the house, and write down a "law" on a piece of paper that said that you are obligated to stay in the house and to clean it once a week, that would also be "legally binding" on you, enforced in much the same way as government law (threat of force, and in case of USSR/China ban on crossing borders). But no one would consider you being in a contract with me.
U should take me up on my offer, and collect some empirical data -- go and break some lawz in front of a cop. Then you can try your astute & incisive reasoning on him, and see if he's easier to convince than i am.
What reasoning? I'm not talking about breaking law. I'm talking about breaking out of the "social contract" or whatever the hell contract you think we as citizens have with this country. As I said, police have nothing to do with whether you are under any contracts in order to stop you from committing crimes. Stay on topic:
Do you think my imprisoning you in my house with an explosive collar and forcing you to clean my house, because I wrote that I'm allowed to do this on a piece of paper and called it a law, makes for a legally binding contract between us? I mean, I would be able to say, "
Go ahead and try to leave the house, and see how quickly your head blows off. Then you can try your astute and incisive reasoning on me about how it's not a legally binding contract," right? We have a body that creates and enforces laws (me and the explosive collar you're wearing), and a person being compelled by that body to do something (you cleaning my house and not being allowed to leave), same as with government (or at least a heavily armed and border-restrictive one). Are you really claiming that such a situation would still be considered a contract between us?
) But in you are wrong so often, it's almost a must unless you like feeling foolish. So then:
