The phrases "it shall be no defense" and "it shall be a defence" are actually quite common in laws. They are intended to clearly define the acts or ommissions which constitute the crime. Most of the Google hits for "it shall be no defense" are in laws defining indecent assault on a child. They state that the consent of the child is "no defense". The presense of this phrase does not by itself make a law unreasonable.

You seem to be refering to this passage from New Zealand's law which as quoted at http://markmail.org/message/ughwxerisy5kgwh4 says:

This paragraph creates a responsibility to aquaint oneself with the law and remove from one's library any publications that are "objectionable". This may or may not be reasonable, but it is still talking about a situation in which the accused knows that the publication exists and is in his possession. So the claim (on the same page) that it makes a person guilty of possession even if he does not know that a publication of any kind is lying on his lawn seems fanciful, even if it is attributed to a lawyer.

This is a matter of properly parsing the text of the law. The "no knowledge or reasonable cause to believe" refers to knowledge of the fact that the publication is considered objectionable, not of the fact that it is in the accussed's possession (let alone lying abandoned on his property).

A legislature could in theory pass a law requiring citizens to keep their property free of child pornography. Citizens could then be punished if they failed. But their crime would not be possession, even if some chose to call it that. I would be interested to have a reference to this law.

A law which criminalized the landowner's non-conduct would be a no-fault liability law. Such laws have traditionally create a responsibility to deal with some hazard. For example, the law may require a driver to prevent his automobile from exceeding a posted speed limit. The law provides that he can be punished even if he did not make a deliberate decision to accelarate beyond a limit of which he was aware. He is punished for being careless. This is probably reasonable.

Obviously, creating no-fault liability for a situation over which a citizen has little or no control is grossly unfair. The lawyer in this case believed that the law as written made non-possessors (such as the landowner in his example) liable.

I stepped into this discussion because several posters seem to assume that having child pornography on one's property _must_ be an offense because possession is an offense and if it is on your property it is in your possession. This reasoning is based on a faulty understanding of the legal concept of possession.

I think you are saying that they told you to report any child porn found to authorities no matter what the circumstances. They want you to do that so that someone with the proper qualifications can investigate to see whether a crime has been committed.

There is a common mistaken belief that legal posession begins when the supposedly possessed object comes to be on the person or property of the possessor. In reality, possession referes to the control which the possessor excercises over an object. In other words, to possess something, you have to act like you own it.

Some examples:

If someone abandons a car on your front lawn, you do not possess of it unless you take start treating it as your own, such as by using it to drive to work.

A prosecutor who is holding a piece of child pornography in court does not possess it. It is simply in his custody.

If the prosecutor hands the child pornograph to a member of the jury, the juryman is not in possession because he knows that he has to give it back.

If the juryman later steals it, he is now in possession.

If you are a farmer and someone plants a drug crop on your property without your permission, you do not possess it.

If while walking through your field you notice it, you still not not possess it.

If you go out and harvest the same drug crop and hang it in your barn to dry, you now possess it.

A pickpocket panics and dumps a stolen walet into your overcoat pocket. You are not in possession of stolen properly because you do not know it is on your person.

If when you get home you find it, take the money out, and put it in your wallet, you now possess stolen money.

The expression "posession without intent" is an oxymoron. Intent is part of the definition of posession.

In a case recently discussed on Slashdot, the judges devoted considerable time to the question of whether the accused possessed the pornography found on his hard drive. They looked for evidence that he had excercised control over it either by deliberately saving it or by actively browsing the web site.

I think I misunderstood your point and made an unhelpful reply yesterday. Let me try again.

I believe my position is consistent. The fact that millions of persons with absurd religious beliefs believe in Creation does not make it false. Nor does the the fact that atheists believe in Evolution make it false.

However, what a person believes does affect how he views ambiguous evidence. When a person known for his public advocacy of atheism says that there is "overwhelming evidence for Evolution" we should ask whether that is really the opinion of a dispationate scientist.

Conversely, when a person (such as myself) who believes the Bible is a historical document claims that there is overwhelming evidence of creation, we should understand his conclusion in the context of his beliefs.

To accept the evidence which favours one's position and to label the contradictory evidence as "areas which will no doubt be clarified by new evidence and furthur research" is not a valid basis for telling others what they must believe. Nor is it how science is supposed to work.

The difference is that in one case there is a causal relationship, in the other a causal relationship is impossible because the supposed effect proceeds the cause chronologically. A particular scientist is an atheist. This causes him to reach the conclusion that Evolution explains the origin of specials. A religionist has irrational beliefs about the creator and the process of creation. This cannot cause Creation not to have occured millions of years before he was born.

And your evidence?

It seems to me that at this point reasonable persons can interpret the physical evidence either way. The historical documents are contained in the Bible. There have been numberous arguments advanced to discredit it, but I find them about as convincing as conspiracy theories about the destruction of the World Trade Center. They are structured along the same lines of "questioning the official story" and "I don't understand this, therefor something sneeky is going on".

If you cannot respect such a point of view, discussion is pointless.

Again, this is a question about which reasonable persons can disagree. Is the branching really due to common descent, or is it the inevitable result of any attempt to classify a large body of work? After all, we can classify computers in much the same way, but they don't even reproduce.

Nor is the progression clear. First of all, there are aknowledged gaps. Entire careers are devoted to trying to figure out why the intermediate forms 'didn't find their way into the fossile record'. Second, trees derived from the fossile record often fail to match trees derived from genetic analysis.

With the tree in doubt, it is hard to assert that features were not mixed and matched. In fact, I seem to recall that there are seeming examples of mixing and matching. These are cases where identical or highly similiar features seem to have evolved more than once. (There are of course theories to explain this this away. But, there always are.)

It is the Evolutionists who are calling these questions "little difficulties". In reality we are talking here about holes you could drive a truck through. We are talking about the fact that new kinds appear in the fossil record suddenly and remain for millions of years virtual unchanged before becoming extinct. We are talking about the way it seems that complex structures would have to evolve through multiple steps before becoming useful. Then there is the way that the same features would have to evolve more than once in different species. Perhaps furthur research will produce persuasive answers in the favour of Evolution. But until it does, the evidence fails to overwhelm any but the atheist and the uninformed.

And yes, I agree with you that young-earth Creationists are walking around with beams in their eyes and offering the extract motes from the eyes of Evolutionists. So what? They are just a distraction. It is almost like their purpose in being is to make intelligent and well informed persons believe in Evolution.

This is unfortunately true. I believe that religion should be based upon reason.

Very effectively. Many if not most religions are heavily polluted with mysticism. Rational thinking cleanses religion.

But the core question here is: did the species evolve or were they created in much their present form by one or more superhuman extraterestials of extrordinary skill and posessed of immense resources. To argue about whether this idea is part of a mystical belief system is to miss the point. The point is that it either is or is not an historic fact. What religionists do, say, or believe is totally irrelevent.

It is not irrational to believe that superhumans created the world if there is evidence which tends to support such a view. It is not irrational to believe that these same superhumans communicated with man in the past if there are historical documents which attest to this. This does not mean that everyone has to believe that these evidences are reliable, but to say that those who do are behaving irrationally is dishonest.

That is what they assert. Now you have repeated this assertion. What is that worth to me?

I disbelieve them because when they are backed into a corner they make statements which sound like expresions of faith in Rationalism and argue on a philisophical rather than an evidentary basis. What little evidence they do cite is compatible with Evolutionary theory, but is also compatible with belief in a creator.

Then there is the fact that in incautious moments Evolutionists have frequently admitted that some line of evidence (frequently the fosile record) is more in accord with Creation than Evolution. They have lately taken to claiming that they have been misquoted. But, what they deny is not the substance of their remarks but their seeming lack of faith in Evolution. They assert (likely truthfully) that they do not believe in creation and are certain that furthur research will clear up these little difficulties.

So, I have to conclude that the evidence is against you. Their science is informed by their atheism.

I repect a well-thought-out answer which addresses the points raised. I agree with much of what you say here.

I am interested in the question of why each side in this debate sees the other as composed of arrogant fools blinded by prejudice. I suspect the answer is that many of the most vocal are.

The examples of observable evolution in nature which you cite certainly do exist. The question about which reasonable and well-informed persons disagreed is: what is their significance? The Evolutionist believes he is looking at a little piece of a process similiar to that described by Charles Darwin, a process which will in time produces truly radical changes. But, one who suspects the existence of an inteligent creator may see designed-in adaptive mechanisms and feedback loops. As far as I have been able to determine, there is not sufficient scientific evidence to answer this question.

Unfortunately, way the most vocal public advocates of Evolution understand the meaning of the evidence is so shaped by their atheism that they are unable to even parse expressions of doubt. They are so sure that a naturalistic creative mechanism much exist that that naturalistic theory which best fits the evidence is the best theory of all. When some demure, they become angry, make bombastic statements, and launch into wholly ineffective appeals to be rational. This is ineffective because rationality is not the problem, differing assumptions are.

Of course, Creationism has even worse nuts who play right into the hands of the Evolutionist demigogs. Could God have created the fossil record and the light from distant stars? No doubt, if it were absolutely necessary. But since it wasn't necessary, to assert that he did is silly. They should just admit that they misunderstood Genesis.

It seems that for you the word "believe" has some kind of baggage. I assume this is connected with Rationalist rhetoric which contrasts "belief based systems" with "evidence based systems". When I said that I "sincerly believe" I meant that I had come to a conclusion after giving the matter serious attention.

I agree that the real change that occured during the Enlightenment was not that most thinkers were no longer religious. Rather, thinkers began to understand that the world is a machine. This was contrary to the assumptions of many who had supposed that God commanded the flowers to bloom and the lightening to strike.

But, rationalist philosphers liked to tell a different story, suggesting that the universe-is-a-machine view is incompatible with the idea that God interacts with the natural world in any way at any time. I suppose on the background of that culture they may have seemed like opposits, but today, when even the uneducated know that the universe is a machine, such arguments simply puzzle the believer. It is amusing that these worn-out arguments keep getting brought up on Slashdot. ("Please, no devine intervention! I want my universe to stay rational!")

Your remarks on the difference between Creationism and Intelligent Design are insightful. I would expand on them by calling Intelligent Design the bastard child of Rationalism. Rationalist thought places the idea of a creator into a compartment called "faith" or "belief" which exists alongside another compartment called "reason". It is frequently claimed that these compartments represent "different kinds of truth".

The problem with this kind of reasoning is that if the word really was created by an inteligent being, that is an historic fact which nothing can alter. It does not matter what we believe or do not believe about the identity and motivations of that being. It does not matter if we surround belief in this historical fact with the most absurd superstitions imaginable. It does not matter if we believe that it never happened. Our mental state cannot alter history.

Intelligent Design is an attempt to meet Evolutionists on terms which the Evolutionists have themselves chosen. All peripheral assertions which could possibly be superstition or known only by devine revelation are shorn away leaving only the basic premis: the world was created by a superhuman being or beings of extrordinary skill and possessed of extrordinary resources. We then ask, is the question really forever beyond the reach of scientific investigation?

I don't know if you are serious or not. Just in case you are, let me explain:

In my illustration, the computer is the universe. The person pressing the key is God. My point is that applying an outside force to some part of the universe does not cause it to suddenly cease to behave in a predictable way. If I thow a stone on Earth, the world remains rational. If God throws a stone on Earth, it still remains rational.

I wouldn't trust the Catholic Church's opinion on the plausibility of scientific theories. Look at the whole thing with Galileo. In fact I think the Church's support of Evolution says more about its enbarassement over that than about the compatibility of Evolution with belief in God.

The problem I have with the evolution-is-compatible-with-belief-in-God camp is that we have two extrodinary claims here. One is that a fantastically powerful and skilled superhuman created the world. The second is that complexity arises naturally. We pretty much have to believe in one of them. Two accept both (absent extrordinary proof) is unnecessary.

Though I don't find Evolution convincing, I do agree with you that most forms of Creationism could almost have been deliberately designed to make objections to Evolution seem irrational.

The problem is that highly inteligent and informed persons believe it is not a fact on the basis of the very same evidence. Even some Evolutionists admit that the fossil record, superficially at least, seems to support special creation. Selective breeding has limits which cast doubt on the idea that organisms can evolve indefinitely. Genetic engineering is not readily distringuishable from special creation, so citing it as support for the plausibility of Evolution seems perverse.

Some Evolutionists disagree with you and advance competing theories such as Punctuated Equilibrium, but OK, what if it does best explain the fact of Evolution. It still doesn't touch the question of whether Evolution (in the Origin of Species sense) is a historical fact. After all, we can erect highly convincing theories to explain the motivations of characters in Star Trek, but that does not remove it from the realm of fiction.

I sincerely believe that this is an illusion. Evolutionists see these evidences as persuasive because they believe they offer our best clues as to how Evolution works. But if someone seriously doubts that Evolution explains life's origin, they have no persuasive value. The Evolutionist sees enlightenment in peppered moth studies, the doubter sees wishful thinking.

My gripe is that the Darwinists are trying to hitch their unprovable atheistic views to the wagon of science. This undermines the whole idea that science involves impartial reasoning. Respect for and interest in science can only suffer as a result.

I see you are a victim of Rationalist disinformation. The whole idea of an age old struggle between faith and reason is a fiction invented by Enlightenment writers who played fast and loose with the facts. In reality, many of the founders of entire branches of science, such as Newton and Priestly believed in God, in special creation, and in miracles and wrote extensively on these subjects.

True, but that would be totaly irrational. And yes, young Earth creationists are totaly irrational.

Most any philosophy can in the wrong hands, including Darwinism. Think of all the evil that has been justified on the basis of the survival of the fitest.

The problem I have is that these are philosophical objections. To argue about whether belief in God is useful or beneficial has nothing to do with whether or not he really exists.

Note that I said these statements are true only "in a way". That means that I consider them misleading.

Your are correct, I do believe that scientists who claim that "the theory of evolution is the hypothesis best supported by the evidence" are heavily influenced by their belief systems. They are atheists. According to their belief system, there is no creator, so the world must be of natural origin. Can I conclude differently when prominant evolutionists say things like 'evolution seems imposible, but we are here, so I have to believe it occured'? I am bemused and somewhat insulted by your assumption that I reach this conclusion only because I am not sufficiently informed.

I respect and value the scientific method. But I also understand it. I know that it is a tool for exploring natural processes. If the world is of artificial origin, then those who insist on studying its orgin as a natural process will inevitably reach incorrect conclusions.

I think people like Bill Nye are doing themselves a disservice when they assume that anyone who finds the arguments for evolution unconvincing must be ignorant or worse. It creates the impression that they are hopelessly blinded by predjudice./p.

I am not sure what you mean when you describe such a universe as "irrational". Why does interfering in the operation of a machine violate the laws of physics? Surely when I press a key on the keyboard of my computer it does not cease to behave in a rational manner.

The idea that a "miracle" violates a law of nature goes back at least to David Hume. It may have made more sense then. After all, society was just coming to terms with the idea of complex machines and that the universe might be one. He could position the idea of the universe-machine as an alternative to the idea that God makes the flowers bloom in spring. But nowadays the implication that if the universe is a machine we must assume that God does not touch it seems odd.

I suppose much of the objection is related to the idea that miracles are magic. It is assumed that divine will operated without mechanism. It simply altered the way things are. For some reason the idea that God applied a sufficient outside force is not considered.

Take your examples. Modern science can certainly make a virgin pregnant and I am sure that with sufficent time and funding a weapon to turn someone into a pillar of salt could be built. If man can do these things without violating the laws of physics, then why not God?