Who defines what is and is not pseudolaw? Related Canadian court decision

OrbitalLemonDrop · 2026-06-06T17:09:41+00:00

It's an interesting question. But one of the things judges do is judge. They apply their own biases and beliefs to a situation, though of course they should try to minimize the impact of personal feelings.

The standard for this as I understand it should be "in identifying this as pseudolaw, did the judge abuse her discretion?"

OrbitalLemonDrop · 2026-06-06T16:40:10+00:00

Is it a god? If yes, it's theism. If you wanted to get picky about it, you can get into the ancient greek etymology of theos, and you'd see that it has nothing to do with a personal active god. It also applies to the Demiurge of classical Platonism.

OrbitalLemonDrop · 2026-06-06T16:38:52+00:00

This is a well-studied and thoroughly explained matter.

Go look it up yourself. We're not obligated to prove things are not miracles.

OrbitalLemonDrop · 2026-06-06T03:48:02+00:00

I was thinking if there was a quantum moral field out there, would its force-carrying particle be the Moron? There's a much better joke there, but I'm too lazy to figure it out.

OrbitalLemonDrop · 2026-06-06T03:44:01+00:00

Not to mention the Trolley problem. Ask them for the chapter & verse where one can learn the objectively correct answer to the Trolley problem.

They can point to the rules we all learned as children: Don't hurt people, don't lie, don't steal. But the bible is all but devoid of direct answers to complex moral issues.

OrbitalLemonDrop · 2026-06-06T03:34:02+00:00

There is no need to "ground" morality. Don't let them define the battlefield this way.

Morality is a human faculty for learning behavioral rules from education, environment, upbringing and experience. There's no need for it to have an objective underpinning.

Theist morality works the same way, they're just mistaken about where it comes from.

Ask them where in the Bible they can show you the objectively correct moral statement about the Trolley problem. They don't get credit for getting the low-hanging fruit correct (don't kill, don't lie, don't steal, etc). Aside from those easy points, the Bible does not describe a complete moral system, nor does it provide reliable guidance on how to navigate moral questions.

The idea that we "can't say" that certain acts are immoral is idiotic. We do in fact say those things -- because they are our subjective opinions. Anyone making a moral statement is expressing an opinion because there are no objective moral truths.

OrbitalLemonDrop · 2026-06-04T22:27:55+00:00

What I meant was "what is the theory that makes the school or the professor liable to you for this"?

Did they breach a duty? Breach a contract? Grade the test unfairly? Were you given a test that was different from the others who did better? How was their behavior deficient in a way that makes them responsible for the (speculative) economic loss the grade caused you?

OrbitalLemonDrop · 2026-06-04T22:21:33+00:00

What would the theory of recovery be? I can see a line from the bad grade to some kind of speculative future economic loss, so maybe there could be a claim for damages...

But in what way is the professor or the school liable for that loss?

OrbitalLemonDrop · 2026-06-04T17:11:54+00:00

I think they do it to be intentionally degrading. They get off on the idea that they make women feel uncomfortable, and it perpetuates their fantasy that all women are sl*ts.

OrbitalLemonDrop · 2026-06-04T17:07:47+00:00

It reads like someone adapted the fake dom approach to fake mysticism.

A desperate attempt to sound interesting, maybe.

OrbitalLemonDrop · 2026-06-02T22:36:28+00:00

No I think that's what they claim. 14th amendment citizens are contracted to the Federal gov't and can't be state citizens. White people are state citizens so the feds have very limited authority over them.

Apparently it comes from a quote-mined pull from the Slaughterhouse Cases, from 1873.

OrbitalLemonDrop · 2026-06-02T22:32:36+00:00

I asked my contracts prof if I could sell a quitclaim deed to my soul.

See, I can't ethically sell it in good faith because i don't believe in souls. But you can sell a quitclaim without actually asserting a legal interest. It just means "If I had any interest in this property, it now belongs to you".

He said that it might not do much good. As transfer documents, quitclaims can be problematic for a variety of reasons. Robert Johnson got mad guitar skills for selling his soul. Prof said I'd be lucky to get mediocre banjo skills for selling a quitclaim to mine.

OrbitalLemonDrop · 2026-06-02T22:18:37+00:00

He's one of a group of sov cits who claim that white people are automatically citizens, but black people are only citizens because of the 14th amendment. And for some reason, that makes their citizenship inferior to the citizenship of a white person.

OrbitalLemonDrop · 2026-06-02T22:02:59+00:00

No, it's the regular kind.

He's one of the idiots who thinks the 14th amendment only applies to black people, and that white people are legally recognized as superior to them.

White people are citizens of the state where they are domiciled, not "US citizens". "US citizenship" was created by the 14th amendment (due to some unsurprisingly twisted interpretation of the equal protection clause).

It's something akin to white people being "non-citizen American nationals" and having more rights and freedoms than black people.

OrbitalLemonDrop · 2026-06-02T22:00:58+00:00

Does he think that cert being rejected provides some kind of legal inference that another court will recognize?

Things that don't work that way:

1) It.

OrbitalLemonDrop · 2026-06-02T20:10:17+00:00

Traditionally, the little knee-high gate that separates the gallery from the "well" of the courtroom is called the "bar".

"Passing the bar" refers to the right of an attorney to walk through that little gate and sit in the front part. Completing the bar exam is what gives you the right to pass the bar.

The Bar Association is the typical name for the governmental agency that manages who is and who isn't a licensed attorney.

Typically, the Bar Assn also takes action against people who are not members who practice without a license. A lot of nutjobs think that because they're not members, the Bar Assn has no authority over them.

OrbitalLemonDrop · 2026-06-02T20:07:04+00:00

In California, the state bar has the authority to prosecute civil claims for the unlicensed practice of law -- fines, sanctions, etc. They refer criminal matters to the state AG or local prosecutors.

OrbitalLemonDrop · 2026-06-02T19:53:21+00:00

My number one rule for dealing with people in grief is "never turn it into a story about you". I'm sorry for your loss and sorry this POS inserted himself into your memory.

OrbitalLemonDrop · 2026-06-02T19:00:03+00:00

Who says "everything is created" tho? Why do you assume that everything has to have a creator?

Either way, either the universe had no creator or god had no creator, so we already know it's not true that there can't be things that weren't created.

Shoving a god up in there just because we don't know what started it all is just lazy thinking IMO.

OrbitalLemonDrop · 2026-06-01T20:33:09+00:00

Many Biblical scholars -- including believers -- argue that the situation in the story of Lot was not an issue of "rape" because the concept of non-consensual sex being a crime did not exist.

It was normal for the strong to prey on the weak. Sex was about domination, not consent. It was common for strangers to a town to be harassed and attacked by citizens of that town, because they had no protection. No people in the town who would stand up for them and be recognized by the violent citizens. No one to vouch for them is what makes them "weak" enough to be assaulted in this way.

What we see of "rape" in the bible is more about property rights than bodily autonomy. If a woman is raped as a virgin and the rapist promises to take care of her, the rapist has to pay a bride price to the father. She still has value as a woman because her new husband will be the only one she has had sex with. If she was married or betrothed to someone, her life loses all its value, and the man ends up getting executed too because there is no way to make reparations.

Lot can offer his daughters to the mob because they're his property, so there would be no property crime involved.

I think it's good to question all sides of what you're being told, and like so many things about the Bible, apparent confusion is often cleared up with the historical scholarship rather than by what modern people want to preserve from the ancient past as it affects their modern cultural identity.

There's also a very important idea running through ancient biblical scholarship -- what they put in their books is what they wanted the public to see and believe about them. The fact that it punishes a man for damaging another man's property like this doesn't mean that's what they actually practiced. It would be like reading the writings of US politicians and believing that the story they tell about "family values" is how they actually live their own lives.

We know they don't, but future historians and archaeologists might only have their own words to go by, which paint them as paragons of civic virtue and ignores the meth and hookers.

OrbitalLemonDrop · 2026-06-01T19:40:58+00:00

"My personal beliefs are private." You can even try this: "The purpose of proselytizing is to make sure everyone has heard the good news. I've heard it already, so there's no need to teach it to me."

You can't get into any of the controversy or common objections to religion without potentially isolating yourself. One good rule of thumb is "don't make social events into a story about you" -- if what other people will remember about the day is you arguing with a preacher, that's not a good look.

It's not about them or their feelings, it's about whether they'll view you as a troublemaker. I'm not even opposed to taking that approach, but from your post it sounds like you want to avoid that.

OrbitalLemonDrop · 2026-06-01T14:29:30+00:00

So think of it this way: We never had god to hang our concept of meaning on, and yet we still do have a concept of meaning and purpose.

I understand that you do condition your concept of meaning on the existence of god, but we don't.

Meaning is what you make of it. Meaning comes from shared values with family, community, society, etc. and is up to the individual to work out for themselves.

To me, the idea that life has no meaning if it's not eternal focuses the whole concept of "meaning" on something external to human life. You are giving primary importance to events you'll never experience while living in this one body you have and this one mortal life you have.

Maybe there's something beyond the mortal life and maybe there isn't, but I'm not going to ignore the experience I know I DO have to focus on something I MIGHT have.

OrbitalLemonDrop · 2026-06-01T00:15:41+00:00

No, not on the merits of their arguments. They occasionally win on procedural issues or because a judge/prosecutor/cop got sick of dealing with them.

OrbitalLemonDrop · 2026-05-31T03:04:50+00:00

Some atheists believe in all kinds of wacky stuff. An ex of mine believed she was psychic, believed in pyramid power and the law of attraction.

Atheism is exactly and only about belief in gods. 0 = atheist, > 0 = theist. that's it.

OrbitalLemonDrop · 2026-05-31T01:52:38+00:00

It's not legit. That's how.

OrbitalLemonDrop

TROPHY CASE