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Politics : Should God be replaced? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Solon who wrote (17319)	4/29/2004 11:32:33 AM
From: Greg or e	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 28931

T h a n k y o u "You stated that All humans have an innate sense of right and wrong." Righto I did not say it was proof so there goes your premise. "You made it clear that millions of Germans were being immoral." No actually I was pointing out that if your system was true then there was nothing wrong with what they did to the Jews. I would like you to show me why you would impose your values on a sovereign nation that decided to kill a certain portion of their population for whatever reason they decided. "the State which grants those rights and it is the State that provides police and military to safeguard those rights." What the State grants the State can take away. What's your objection to the Nazi State doing just that? "<<<<Trying to make a document that explicitly grounds "inherent rights" in God into some sort of atheist manifesto is.... well; you can't be serious?>>>>" "Get real! The Constitution does not mention God, and as I said...it is not written by God. It is written by humans." Did I say Constitution? I was talking about the "Declaration of Independence" being Canadian I may have used the wrong title. Anywho.. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." "whether Jefferson inserted it in the Declaration for conscientious or for pragmatic reasons is irrelevant." Come on be serious. The premise of the very rights we are talking about is explicitly based on a self evident truth. If you want to deny the premise then the conclusion cannot be validated. Therefore rights cannot be unalienable, they are just the opinion of those people at that time and have no authority over us.

To: Solon who wrote (17319)	4/29/2004 10:16:39 PM
From: average joe	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 28931

Man found insane, not guilty Witness says killer believed he was slaying a chicken; sister of victim calls story a 'fairy tale' BY ALAN COOPER TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER Apr 27, 2004 Harvey Derrick Glanton's statement that he thought he was killing a chicken when he crushed Daniel Bruce Balbaugh's skull was too much for Balbaugh's family. "He is a murderer," said Balbaugh's sister, Linda Balbaugh-Delahoyde. "He did not murder a chicken - he murdered" a man who was a brother, father, grandfather and uncle, she told Judge Herbert C. Gill Jr. in Chesterfield County Circuit Court just after Gill had found Glanton not guilty by reason of insanity. Glanton, 45, was working in Atlanta as a forklift operator when he began to unravel, according to testimony. He had lost an eye in a fight about 25 years earlier and developed the delusion that the eye had magical powers that protected him from aliens who were taking over the world by converting people to chickens, psychologist Evan S. Nelson testified. Convinced that he had to get to Washington to warn the government of the plan, he took a taxicab from Atlanta to Augusta, where he caught a bus. However, the bus driver put him off the bus in Rocky Mount, N.C., because he was awakening passengers and talking gibberish. Glanton hitchhiked and walked to Petersburg, where police put him in a cab to the Richmond bus station on North Boulevard. He called a sister in Atlanta about 2 a.m. April 23, 2003, and told her that he felt as if everyone was in a conspiracy against him and that he was afraid to get on a bus. She told him to come home, but Glanton saw someone who looked like him get off a bus, and he believed the aliens had already replaced him with a duplicate, Nelson testified. So he apparently walked south 11.3 miles along Interstate 95 until he arrived at a mobile home at the James River Marina at Chippenham Parkway near where Falling Creek spills into the James. Balbaugh worked at the marina and lived in the trailer, which doubled as an office. Glanton could see the trailer and Balbaugh's pickup truck just over the guardrail. Apparently, Glanton tried to take the truck, and Balbaugh confronted him. A medical examiner testified that Balbaugh was hit at least 20 times in the head. Near his body, police recovered a cast-iron pot lid with bloodstains on it. Glanton was arrested later that morning when police responded to a complaint that he was trying to steal a truck near the Shops at Willow Lawn. Nelson testified that Glanton believed that Balbaugh was a chicken, an animal who could be killed so he could take the truck and try to save the world from the aliens. The psychologist said Glanton provided a tremendous amount of detail in describing his delusional thinking and behavior, much of it supported by co-workers in Atlanta, his landlord and family members. For example, the landlord recalled that he saw Glanton walking on a sidewalk, flapping his arms and standing on one leg periodically. Glanton told Nelson that was so the aliens would think he had already been converted to a chicken. Nelson and another psychologist, Mariah A. Travis, agreed that Glanton was insane when he killed Balbaugh because he did not understand "the character, nature and consequences of his actions." Balbaugh-Delahoyde, the victim's sister, said his family "has no compassion for this convenient psychotic episode." She contended that enough time had elapsed between his arrest and the psychological evaluations for Glanton "to calm himself and compose this fairy tale." Glanton will be placed in the custody of the Department of Mental Health, Mental Retardation and Substance Abuse Services and undergo evaluation there. A report of the evaluation is due within 45 days of his commitment to the department. He can be held only as long as the evaluators and Gill conclude that he is a danger to himself or others. timesdispatch.com