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Comment by virtualritz | Hacker News Reader

Can you give a source for this?

https://old.reddit.com/r/Buttcoin/comments/4936kw/lukejr_is_...

Don't think it matters though; theft is still theft even if the victim is a nutjob, and it's still theft if he didn't protect his keys well enough.

But today a crime is okay if you don't like someone. Hmkay.

On a second thought: He reads like an extremely religious person. This actually makes me doubt the "tax evasion" story.

I see it as accepting karma; the guy is clealy an idiot and an ass, and was responsible for losing their own money.

Like if someone spread their money all over their lawn to show off; when it gets stolen, I'm not supporting the theft, but I can definitely laugh at the "victim" who did it to themselves. There is room for personal responsibility here...

There's a difference between "I'm ok with this" (which is what the comment further upthread said) and "lol, what an idiot". The first indicates approval of the crime, the second does not. Plus, it was purely based on his personal views, and not his op-sec (or lack thereof).

Besides, it's not like he strewn all his money on the lawn; stealing the wallet + GPG key still took some significant effort. More like leaving a lot of money in the house with a shabby door and lock: not a smart idea, but you'd still have to break through the front door – crappy as it may be – to get at it. It wasn't a "crime of opportunity".

he is arguing straightforwardly from the premise that catholic doctrine is the source of moral truth and that it has its own view of permissible and impermissible slavery. would it surprise you to learn that the 13th amendment has an explicit carve-out for prisoners? it's literally the same thing

The 13th amendment talks about "slavery or involuntary servitude"; the prisoner exception mostly refers to "involuntary servitude" – certainly in modern context. Plus, certainly in US context (and this guy does seem to be from the US) "slavery" strongly implies "racial based slavery". That's not the only form of slavery, but that's the strong connotation it has in the US for obvious reasons. His exact views are unclear, and at best he is careless in how he expresses his views.

Either way, I'm not especially interested in discussing his views in great detail; I was mostly replying to "I don't like this person, so I'm okay with him being a victim", which I take exception to.

A quick search turned up this collection of wisdom:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Buttcoin/comments/4936kw/lukejr_is_...

Some of the examples that he’s crazy there are just rules from the Catechism of the Catholic Church. You can disagree with it but being Catholic doesn’t make you crazy.

> You can disagree with it but being Catholic doesn’t make you crazy.

Yes it does. Just because crazy ideas are spread by an old religious organization does not make them any less crazy. There is no provable god. Any of their beliefs are just that, beliefs. Nothing they "teach" can be verified or measured. It is all made up nonsense and you might as well call it crazy. People do not raise from the dead. We die, that's it.

I don't think it's necessary to denounce religion to criticize these views, and that's usually viewed as flamebait.

> Just because crazy ideas are spread by an old religious organization does not make them any less crazy.

I agree with this, for provably wrong, generally accepted as wrong, or blatantly contradictory statements. But from a secular perspective, believing in god(s) is just an approximation or heuristic. Some people need or want that. For my own thinking I've judged it as an questionable axiom that creates a logic hole large enough to drive a bulldozer through, but to each their own. What actually matters is the conclusions and behaviors a person builds on top of it.

Catholic moral teaching on homosexuality does not require there to be a God. In fact the reasoning is entirely secular. You may disagree with it, but that is the case. Catholic moral teaching on slavery is based on there being a God.

When it comes to marriage, the church believes that relations between men and women that can result in the generation of a child are worthy of special privileges. Relations between impotent men or women who cannot have sex are similarly not considered marriage. If you can find two men or two women who produced a child, the church would change its beliefs, but no one has been able to do so. Note that there's no dependence on their being a god for this one. The fact that heterosexual couplings produce children is an observation. That this relationship should come with societal privilege is a statement one can come to through reason.

> Relations between impotent men or women who cannot have sex are similarly not considered marriage

Is this indeed so?

Yes, men who cannot have erections due to permanent disability or women without vaginas (whether due to surgery or existing disability) cannot marry in the church. It's always been the case.

I thought I heard about all the dumb things in the church, but I thought wrong

In my limited understanding as a non-Catholic, some of these are Traditionalist Catholic takes (notably the geocentrism), eg, rejecting the mild reforms of Vatican II. So, it being just the Catechism is something I think many Catholics would take issue with. I can't imagine any of the Catholics I've ever met offering up a defense of slavery.

Some, some are almost verbatim out of the current (post-Vatican II) Catechism.

Except he’s not “Catholic” (at least by what most define that as). Apparently he’s a sedevacantism follower.

It's ancient stuff which can be interpreted and translated to modern language but should not be taken literally.

Apart from this, religions were created as means of society control. Some people need religion, some can find spirituality without it, some don't have such needs. This guy appears to be a person who would set someone on fire to make sure that they're not a witch.

> It's ancient stuff which can be interpreted and translated to modern language but should not be taken literally.

That's a debate that belongs to the Bible not the Catechism. The Catechism is updated all the time and published in an authorized modern English version.

>> You can disagree with it but being Catholic doesn’t make you crazy.

No more crazy than some people in the middle east. They are not crazy but you can say they are religious fanatics or as the people in the U.S prefer to say Right-Wing

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