(January 29, 2015 at 12:06 pm)YGninja Wrote: Clearly the crime is committed against the woman, your entire idea that the punishment is for taking another mans property is so weak you havn't even tried to substantiate it.The verses make clear that the difference in the situations is whether the woman is betrothed; that is, she is engaged to marry another man. If this is the case, the rapist is put to death. If she is not promised to another man, then a fine is paid to her father and she becomes her rapist's wife. The crime is obviously committed against the woman in our eyes, but back then the payment for the crime was designed to compensate the victim's owner, be it her father or her fiancee.
Of note, verse 13-19 tells us that if a man maliciously defames his wife, he is to pay a fine to her father. But if there isn't enough evidence to clear her name she is presumed guilty and put to death. Not only is she being treated as property, but she's barely considered human.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould