Cracker taken hostage - Page 9

On July 11 2008 14:08 Ryot wrote:


And shouldn't this be when the cracker is placed in your mouth? If you give someone your food, can you take it out of their mouth because it's still yours? What's done with the food later is obviously irrelevant if ownership has been vanquished.

On July 11 2008 13:44 Kwark wrote:
I'm going to go to sleep so I'll recap.

Although he was in the Church he had an implied invitation. This means they could terminate it (by asking him to leave) and he would be obliged to leave. However by accepting the implied invitation he is in no way committed to not offending the beliefs of those inside.

Once inside he takes a wafer. If he is allowed to take a wafer he has been given (with the assumption he will consume it) is questionable. Whether intended purpose at the time of giving is a factor upon recieving is debated above. He does something with the wafer that the Catholics find offensive. I find this the equivalent of 'the farmer does something with the cow (like shoots it) that the Hindus find offensive'. Admittedly he's doing it to their face, in their place of worship which makes it very disrespectful but when it comes down to it there is nothing illegal in offending people. He's broken the rules of social conduct and he's acting like an asshole. But he's not acting illegally.

What the Church should have done was explain to him how important it was and requested the host back. If he continued to act like an ass then they just should have asked him to leave. His invitation to access their property terminated he would be obliged to leave and could subsequently be barred from the premises. They then could have talked among themselves about what a bastard he was.

The thing they did that was in my mind absolutely wrong was to allow their religious beliefs to be manifested in physical force, ie restraining him and attempting to force the wafer from him. It is on that ground alone that I am objecting to the Church here. If they had asked him to leave they would have been a model of tolerance and temperance. Just as a Hindu cannot forcibly disarm a farmer before he shoots a cow just because he believes the cow is sacred, so the Catholic cannot forcibly restrain this guy.

On July 11 2008 14:35 kiero wrote:
And no, there is no such law. Not to my knowledge.
I do not believe a law exists which states 'If ownership is not transferred, he can tell you what you are and are not allowed to do with it, and you must respect those restrictions or return his property.' This is why there is so much controversy in the first place. I would be very humbled if you could give an example of such a law.

What I am getting from your post is that the 'no one's ownership' time should occur when the item is 'legally destroyed'. Yet, how we define legally destroyed can be, indeed a very complicated point. When is it legally destroyed? When anything, in any way, changes its three dimensional location? When we no longer recognize the object? When we can no longer recreate the object with what we retrieve? When its molecular formula has changed? When all the atoms have been destroyed by an anti particle counterpart? For any situation, there is always a 'line of disctinctions'

On July 11 2008 15:02 Funchucks wrote:

Okay, apparently you don't even know what law is.

This is part of the common law. It isn't written down in a legal code somewhere. It is understood within the legal profession and embodied in precedent.

Here we are again with you not understanding the nature of law.

Law is always subject to reasonable interpretation. It is not a mathematical formula or a computer program.

If the supposedly consumed object is recovered and intentionally kept, then obviously it was not destroyed. There is no reasonable ambiguity in the case of the stolen wafer as to whether it was consumed: it was not consumed, it was only concealed in the mouth temporarily.

You're caviling. It's like saying, "How can I stop at a stop sign? I am actually moving very fast. The earth is spinning, and also going around the sun, and the sun is moving around the galactic center." That is not a reasonable interpretation. As for edge cases, sometimes the judge will have to... judge.

Nobody is obliged to give you a rigid set of rules to exploit and twist into something unreasonable. Law is only meant to be argued before a knowledgeable and reasonable judge.

On July 11 2008 15:13 kiero wrote:


Oh geez...
You realize that in the end, you're stating the same thing I am, just perhaps in a different way?
Anything that isn't written down is free for the judge to interpret, yes. So your 1st and 2nd paragraph, my point is basiclly the end of 6th paragraph. Unfortunately, not everyone always agrees with what the judge, judges either. There's not much to talk about if you just say, let the judge me the judge, and let us not interfare/state our opinion.

What the Church should have done was explain to him how important it was and requested the host back. If he continued to act like an ass then they just should have asked him to leave. His invitation to access their property terminated he would be obliged to leave and could subsequently be barred from the premises. They then could have talked among themselves about what a bastard he was.

On July 11 2008 16:51 L wrote:
Holy communion isn't a hundreth of a cent cracker.

On July 11 2008 09:35 L wrote:
These aren't arbitrary values. Catholics didn't just magically decide that the host was magically important. The host is a symbol, much like a flag is a symbol, or the menorah is a symbol, or the kirpan is a symbol or the cookie monster is a symbol. Stealing the host, stealing the flag, stealing someone's kirpan or stealing a menorah is all the same thing. Its a direct assault on a symbol which people place value in.

"It is hurtful," said Father Migeul Gonzalez with the Diocese. "Imagine if they kidnapped somebody and you make a plea for that individual to please return that loved one to the family."

On July 11 2008 13:08 Funchucks wrote:

See my earlier example with the all-you-can-eat buffet.

Consumption is not the same thing as ownership. The consumed item no longer exists as such. Permission to consume is different from permission to take ownership.

Note that he didn't consume the wafer. He pretended to consume it, by putting it in his mouth, so he could conceal his theft.

On July 11 2008 13:43 Klogon wrote:
I disagree a lot with the Catholic church and how they sometimes handle cases like this, but honestly people, how can you possibly defend a punk ass douche bag like this? He obviously did it to be a prick and disrespect a group of people who were honestly and legitimately going about their own business. All philosophical arguments, anti or pro-religion bias, and other bullshit aside, at the end of the day, you either are on the side of a douche trying to be cool or just some honest, legitimate (religious) people.

On July 11 2008 14:40 Funchucks wrote:

I explained this already: there is no transfer of ownership involved at all. Consumption is destruction. The property is not transferred, it ceases to exist. If the property is not consumed and destroyed, then it remains the property of the original owner.

If you give someone permission to eat your food, then no, you can't grab it out of his mouth. He's operating within the limits of your permission. You told him he could eat the food. He's eating the food. Your power to revoke previously granted permission and to interfere with the enjoyment of that permission is limited by a standard of reasonability. The mere fact of your property being in his mouth does not give you power to compel him to spit it out or to prevent him from chewing and swallowing, you would need an additional justification (such as him never having had permission to eat it in the first place, and you having some reason for wanting the property back).

Likewise, if you lend someone a ladder to climb up on, you can't snatch it out from under him just because it's your property. There are other legal considerations beyond property law.

On the other hand, you can't go to an all-you-can-eat buffet, put items of food momentarily in your mouth, decide that they are now your property, and put them in a container to take home with you. There is no point where the food becomes your property.

Ownership is not "vanquished" until the property is destroyed. If you conceal a wafer in your mouth, then take it out, you have not consumed it. It still exists as a distinct object, and therefore it is still the original owner's property.

On July 11 2008 21:23 opsayo wrote:
I don't think we can protect every religious belief just for the sake of being polite. What about that family that prayed for their child with diabetes instead of giving her medical treatment?

Quite frankly, hiding behind a facade of "We're trying to be respectful!" only brings this world back a step when we can as a community state the obvious and say what should be done.

To allow immature behavior as taking severe offense over the displacement of a cracker is like nurturing a teenager's attachment to a stuffed animal. You would never advocate the latter, so why do we turn a blind eye to the former? Out of respect? I imagine at this point the offended party is simply keeping up the complaint just to save face.

On July 11 2008 21:41 opsayo wrote:
I understand if you are fine with letting people be as long as they are not infringing or offending other people.

Quite frankly, this church is trying to push its archaic (I said it, tell me otherwise) beliefs on a child demanding that he be punished for what any other logical non-believer (and apparently believers alike) would recognize as irrational and over-the-top.

On another note, I am entirely against simply allowing others to wallow in their own "crapulence" (bonus points if you know the show this comes from). It brings down society's standards to allow the common people to be otherwise uninformed and uneducated. This applies to logical fallacies and common delusions. Similar to how health insurance betters society's health as a whole, higher public education requirements betters our community and builds a better future.

Catering to the foolish or unintelligent only takes us back. We don't allow children to believe that 1+1 = 3, or that the sky turns blue because it wants to. We teach children in schools to recognize and avoid delusions like pyramid schemes or small cult activities that take advantage of them monetarily. It is only a short extension to understand that we should not be catering to other irrational delusions like taking offense at a cracker being pocketed instead of eaten.

On July 11 2008 21:35 opsayo wrote:

If a friend of mine offered me food and got mad if I pocketed a little piece of it, I would laugh. "I said you could eat it, not have it!"

I would hope any other rational human beings would either. If you disagree, feel free to peg yourself as irrational or otherwise argumentative for argument's sake.

And assuming you are right, and that the church is not mad due to sacrilege but straight theft, I find it absurd that one of the richest and cultured institutions on the planet is going to go up in arms and demand retribution against a child still going through puberty. It looks like my high school counselor understands better than the Catholic Church that even kids make mistakes.

Cook filed an official abuse complaint with UCF's student conduct court regarding the alleged physical force. Following that complaint, Brinati said church members filed their own official complaints of disruptive conduct.