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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (73448)	8/27/2003 2:25:22 PM
From: one_less	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

"If the manifestation is rendered innocuous, for example, by contextualization..." Well in this case we aren't simply talking about historic art, or as some people say "that stone thing;" we are talking about something that was erected as a monument to give lasting evidence and as a reminder that God is present and foundational as an authority underwriting the course of human justice in that particular court. Moving it to a janitors closet might reduce it to an innocuous stone but just about any where else, (judges chambers, conference rooms, etc) would not.

To: Neocon who wrote (73448)	8/27/2003 2:38:43 PM
From: The Philosopher	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

Ran across an interesting, to me, ontological argument yesterday. Thought you might have something to offer to my thinking about it. The speaker was talking about sources of law. For the religious, it's easy -- law comes from God. But for the nonreligious, it's not so easy. If we make it up totally out of our brains, then every law is equally just, and Saddam's laws are every bit as just as US laws; since there is nothing to judge them against except personal opinion, there is no way to say that one is better than another. So comes the concept of natural law. But where does natural law come from? If it isn't just to be another name for making it up as we go along, it has to have existed before and outside of the beginning of human thought, whether or not you accept the evolutionary or creationist theory of the beginning of human thought. But then, how did it originate? The argument becomes that God is that power which created natural law. But you can't have natural law without a creator of natural law. Sort of a prime mover argument, but brought down to an area, the rule of law, in which the non-religious claim that they have legitimate beliefs.