Since you are both lawyers, you realize of course, that punishment has to do with societal values. The more we value something, like property or life, the higher the penalty for taking it.

The highest price anyone can pay is to give their own life. The highest crimes exacts the highest cost.

A baby has committed no crime, but is forced to pay the highest penalty for the convenience of the mother.

To oppose the death penalty cheapens life. To support abortion also cheapens it.

Those who place a premium on life generally oppose abortion while simultaneously placing the highest penalty on heinous murder. Those who don’t value life so highly are willing to let murderers off easy and don’t care as much about ripping children limb from limb. To them life is cheap.

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Victoria

The explication on Pocahantas was meant to demonstrate a metaphysical belief that is quite different from western thinking, including Christianity. So where you would say grace of God, Mom would likely agree with you and add, the Creator makes opportunities for us to make the most of. Her way of thinking is different, very different, from any of the religions derived from the near east and it is non-linear. The Joseph Smith comment was a bit of snarkiness as the connection I implied there was that he (Smith) may have had an awareness of native prophecy and used that to interpret the Bible and the Book of Mormon.

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“Her hypothesis is that there was something I needed to learn and so I chose to be where I am. American Indian spiritual belief (note, mileage varies on that not all native peoples have the same traditional beliefs but a great many are similar in their metaphysical thinking) is that all life touches itself beyond the time and space continuum. So when Pocahantas dreamed about the end of the Powhattan and how to maybe stop it well before John Smith arrived……..”

Whatever this is supposed to mean, “Her hypothesis is that there was something I needed to learn and so I chose to be where I am.” Pocahantas ? You aren’t here because you chose to be born, you are here by the Grace of God –

You mix up Joseph Smith in the latter part of your post 86 as being relevant to your being born? Pocahantas, John Smith, Joseph Smith . . . . none of this makes any sense at all -

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CB:

Many years ago (in the days before the IBM PC had been developed), my wife and I ran a “typesetting” business where we prepared camera-ready copy.

A printer we knew had his own typesetting department. Each year, he prepared a little booklet for a group of Masons, with a transcript of their previous year’s proceedings. It was a work of stupefying dullness and boredom.

His typesetting operator was typing it up one hot summer day. The owner of the print shop noticed the sound of typing had stopped, so he stopped into the room where the operator was working.

He literally found him face down on the keyboard, fast asleep. The next year, he farmed the job out to my wife and I. It was the most boring document I’ve ever typed up in my life, but I stayed awake to the very end, though someone reading my message may be face down on their keyboard at this very moment.

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

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The quotes from the Bible may have no impact on you, they may fall on deaf ears, but the Word of God, is what I believe. Whatever I have become, whatever the world calls success, is NOTHING, compared to what God has done for me, what HE as promised.

So…. as far as those quotes from Scripture, they are all I have, if they aren’t enough, if they don’t fill the void in your life, if they have no impact, then I can only say “I have done my best, it is your responsibility to know HIM, the only TRUE GOD, the LORD who died for you, who loved you” -

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And now I really do need to sleep as keyboard impressions in the forehead are unattractive, I’m told.

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You haven’t enough quotes or bolding to even start on the last few posts. But I look forward to seeing what you make of it when I awake.

In the meantime, Merry Christmas and Peace.

And for Pete’s sake call me CB, really saves on the typing and diminishes the possibility of typos. Something I am unequivocally for. Ending sentences in prepositions will have to wait for another day.

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