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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Steel_Wind" data-source="post: 4720980" data-attributes="member: 20741">I already said that he was guilty of breaking a law.No argument.  And as for the reason that he did it - good!! It was an innocuous reason and, when placed in its context, suggests that no harm could have come from it.You are on a legal level,  confusing the issue of mens rea. When we intend to do an act, we are responsible for the act. One is guilty of committing the crime, sure. But that is a far cry from saying that one intends all consequences of the act, reasonable and unreasonable - or even to suggest that Baltar was reckless concerning the reasonably possible outcomes.  There was no reasonable basis for Baltar to expect that the destruction of the 12 Colonies was a possible outcome of giving Six access to the mainframe. EVERYONE knew the Cylons were toasters and they had no human allies.If you steal $10,000.00, and that act ends up unleashing a modified ebola virus upon the world - are you morally cuplable for that result, or simply guilty of the crime of theft? While that does not militate against his guilt, it certainly DOES militate against the sentence.  He's not morally culpable for the consequence of what happened.The point is that he was guilty of breaking a law. Not morally guilty for betraying the human race to its doom.The one thing Baltar did in the whole series that was an act of evil for which he really should not have been forgiven was his giving the nuke to Gina. That was an entirely different matter - and he was responsible for that.  If he avoided Judgment - he dodged the bullet for that one, not the destruction of the Colonies.I was always a little ticked at the writers of BSG for the petulant act of Baltar giving the nuke to Gina. They had done a fine job - before and after that one act, of leaving Baltar as an ambiguous man that the viewers could identify with on many levels. A man who was  neither good nor evil and did things for selfish reasons, but not for chaotic or vile ones.  That bit of writing was an event the show could have done without.  I would have preferred if he had allowed Gina to get the nuke unintentionally - and so was on the hook for the nuke by rescuing Gina in the first place, and being careless to let the nuke fall into her hands.  That would have been more in keeping with the overall theme and arc of Baltar throughout the series.  A selfish and negligent man, but not an evil one.</blockquote>

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