Another Libertarian theory fails in experimental reality.

[Diogenes]

Again it does not solve the basic problem of killing innocent people.

We get that. It's a problem. We should assume at least one innocent person would die each decade as a result of this policy.

How many die from car crashes?

Seriously, you're using rhetoric instead of thinking about the issue. No one wants to say there is an acceptable level of human life lost for any reason, but we do allow cars on the road, so obviously there is an acceptable level of loss. Those innocents who perish from the death penalty are by any estimation very few in number.

Not very logical for a supposed Atheist, is he? In every other human activity, the understanding that innocent humans will die is an accepted aspect of it. Alcohol kills 75,000 people per year. Where is the outrage about this horrible loss of innocent life?


It just doesn't have the drama that opposition to the death penalty presents.

[Diogenes]

In a surprise turn back to the original topic...

... there are a number of questionable statements in the linked article.

Abuse suffered by the women is now called an ‘occupational hazard’, like a stone dropped on a builder’s toe.

BS. Who exactly is supposed to believe this?

But only 5 per cent of the women registered for tax, because no one wants to be known as a whore — however legal it may be.

And it couldn't have anything to do with not wanting to pay tax?

Illegality has simply taken a new form, with an increase in trafficking, unlicensed brothels and pimping; with policing completely out of the picture, it was easier to break the laws that remained.

Wait, what? There are clear indications of crimes being committed, but policing is "completely out of the picture"? If that's true, how the frick is this anything but a failure of police to do their job?

Failure of the police to do their job may very well be an axiomatic aspect of legal prostitution. I recall the incident in which the police returned a young man who was bleeding out the anus to Jeffery Dahmer. (Murdering homosexual Cannibal serial killer who liked to smoke marijuana) The officers stated as their reason for doing so that this behavior was not unusual for homosexuals, so they didn't see it as criminal.

Same problem with prostitution. How do you make it easy to tell when a crime is being committed and when one is not being committed? Make it difficult for police to tell the difference and they will respond by not getting involved.

It's baked into the cake.

[Stubby]

Again it does not solve the basic problem of killing innocent people.

We get that. It's a problem. We should assume at least one innocent person would die each decade as a result of this policy.

How many die from car crashes?

Seriously, you're using rhetoric instead of thinking about the issue. No one wants to say there is an acceptable level of human life lost for any reason, but we do allow cars on the road, so obviously there is an acceptable level of loss. Those innocents who perish from the death penalty are by any estimation very few in number.

Not very logical for a supposed Atheist, is he? In every other human activity, the understanding that innocent humans will die is an accepted aspect of it. Alcohol kills 75,000 people per year. Where is the outrage about this horrible loss of innocent life?




It just doesn't have the drama that opposition to the death penalty presents.

GiT brings up car crashes
You bring up alcohol.

Please show where the government mandates fatal car crashes or government alcohol related fatalities like it mandates the death penalty. Otherwise your comparisons fail completely.

[paperburn1]

[quote="Skipjack]So you think that prisoners cost you too much money and thus want to execute them? Whats next? Prisoners of war? The US currently has a lot of them and they cost a lot of money. Well then what terminally ill that live on wellfare. Or just the terminally ill. What about drug addicts. The mentally ill? They all cost money too. Do you want to execute them too? Or what about the handicaped? Once you start with that argument there is no stopping. It is a slippery slope to argue for executions because of cost and I would not dare to go there...[/quote]
This is a reality we are going to have to take a serious look at in the near future like it or not. We are quickly leaving the age of vast surplus and are going to have to start making these Decisions sooner than later, like it or not.

[ladajo]

False example. Usually those that confess dont get the death penalty. Only those that maintain their innocense do.

Not true at all. The act determines the risk and deal making applies to all; guilty, not guilty, captital crime/not. There have been plenty that admitted guilt and were executed. Yes, some have pleaded out to avoid death. And some have not avoided it.

@stubby:

No ladajo doesn't get it at all.

Nice empty statement. Why not?

[Skipjack]

I would rather have them in work camps. Those that work get the better food and those that dont work get just basic, cheap stuff to keep them alive, but not happy.

Irrelevant to the point. The cause of prevention is far better served by wide spread and public knowledge of the deaths of individuals who commit murder. Your method will simply fail to discourage murder to the same extent as would execution, therefore it will end up increasing the level of injustice and killing in the world.

An emotional argument from an Atheist. Who would have thought? That you advance such an argument is evidence for my contention that "Atheists" are really people who are steeped in the dominant Judeo-Christian philosophy to such an extent that they don't even realize it colors their judgement.

How is that emotional?
Killing innocent people is wrong. Thus executing innocent people is wrong. The system that determines the guilt of a person is flawed and can not be fixed easily. Thus, until it can be fixed, innocent people will be killed. The only way to prevent that from happening it to no execute people.
I think this is perfectly logical.

Not very logical for a supposed Atheist, is he? In every other human activity, the understanding that innocent humans will die is an accepted aspect of it. Alcohol kills 75,000 people per year. Where is the outrage about this horrible loss of innocent life?
It just doesn't have the drama that opposition to the death penalty presents.

Uhm, the government does not force people to drink alcohol or drive cars and it certainly does everything possible to prevent these deaths from happening.
Any of these deaths are accidents, not intential. Your comparison is flawed. My logic is sound, yours is not.

[Diogenes]

Not very logical for a supposed Atheist, is he? In every other human activity, the understanding that innocent humans will die is an accepted aspect of it. Alcohol kills 75,000 people per year. Where is the outrage about this horrible loss of innocent life?




It just doesn't have the drama that opposition to the death penalty presents.

GiT brings up car crashes
You bring up alcohol.

Please show where the government mandates fatal car crashes or government alcohol related fatalities like it mandates the death penalty. Otherwise your comparisons fail completely.

For the purpose of deciding where the outrage should be directed, whether something is a government mandate or not is irrelevant.

The proffered principle is that the death of innocent people is a bad thing. If this *IS* the primary principle involved, then why so much interest in the theoretical death of an innocent person from a possible mistake made by the Justice system, yet no expressed outrage or concern for the thousands of innocent people who are killed yearly through other factors?


All I see demonstrated here is an example of misplaced priorities. Obviously there are greater threats to innocent people than is wrongful execution.

As someone said of a Rich London Socialite, " She can see poverty 5,000 miles away, but not just down the street."

[GIThruster]

Thus executing innocent people is wrong. The system that determines the guilt of a person is flawed and can not be fixed easily. Thus, until it can be fixed, innocent people will be killed. The only way to prevent that from happening it to not execute people.

It's certainly one of your more respectable positions. It does make sense but I agree with Dio, this is a case of misplaced priorities or in ethics terms, it is a case of poorly graded values.

I don't want to get into a separate argument about ethics systems, but I will just note that so far as my own ethics are concerned, I am what is known as a "graded absolutist" meaning I believe values have an absolute or objective being which we then discover, same as numbers and concepts loosely falling into the category of platonic forms. Some values are not really values, but rather just conventions. We value the person who refuses to wipe his mouth on his sleeve at a meal because we hold the convention that this is wrong--but this is just a convention. Morality and ethics are based upon values about right and wrong--such as the need to protect the innocent--that often come in conflict with one another. When they do, graded absolutists such as myself, are responsible to grade the values and protect the greater value.

So for instance, we hold the values that we should protect the innocent and in general should not lie. If a raving madman runs into the room with a bloody axe and asks where our sister is, we're perfectly justified in telling him "she's down at the police station. Why don't you go find her?" What we've done is respected or supported the higher value--to protect innocent life. The trouble with this ethics system is that values can be stated any number of ways, and how they're stated can form the most powerful case of slanting through use of emotional language possible. Additionally, people have legitimate disagreements about the importance of any specific value.

Again for instance, Skippy, Stubby and the other atheists here are all likely to believe that "once you're gone you're gone" because they're atheists. That alters how they see the death penalty. If you believe that this life is merely a proving grounds for the next, then the death penalty is not the final word. If you believe there is no after life, you're scared shitless of death. Just as they say, there are no atheists in fox-holes.

And note too, we are at an impasse that throws into sharp relief this notion of the "good atheist" of modern myth and urban legend. Are there any "good atheists" really? They must hold different values than everyone else. So in what sense can we say they're "good". They're not good. They don't even have the possibility to be good because they're broken in an unique manner. There is for this reason, very little point in arguing with them about the value of the death penalty. We are not even on the same page and their distorted world view is fatal when it comes to making good moral decisions.

[Teahive]

If you believe there is no after life, you're scared shitless of death.

If you believe there's no hell, what would you have to be afraid of?

And note too, we are at an impasse that throws into sharp relief this notion of the "good atheist" of modern myth and urban legend. Are there any "good atheists" really? They must hold different values than everyone else. So in what sense can we say they're "good". They're not good. They don't even have the possibility to be good because they're broken in an unique manner. There is for this reason, very little point in arguing with them about the value of the death penalty. We are not even on the same page and their distorted world view is fatal when it comes to making good moral decisions.

You do realize that this argument works vice versa from the atheist position, right?

[Diogenes]

If you believe there is no after life, you're scared shitless of death.

If you believe there's no hell, what would you have to be afraid of?

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 093217.htm

[Stubby]

Wow thanks for putting thoughts in to our heads.
Scared shitless of dead? Really? So in order not to fear death, one must believe in a deity? Can you tell us which one or can we pick one at random?

I am certainly not in a hurry to die but that does not imply fear of death.

And note too, we are at an impasse that throws into sharp relief this notion of the "good atheist" of modern myth and urban legend. Are there any "good atheists" really? They must hold different values than everyone else. So in what sense can we say they're "good". They're not good. They don't even have the possibility to be good because they're broken in an unique manner. There is for this reason, very little point in arguing with them about the value of the death penalty. We are not even on the same page and their distorted world view is fatal when it comes to making good moral decisions.

What a load of absolute nonsense.
What utter drivel.
Ad hominem to start and even bigoted. I am incensed and surprised. I thought you were a better person than that.

As previously said, an atheist is someone who has answered, in the negative, the question "do you believe in a god?". That is it. The idea that we are somehow 'broken' is bigoted. Just like saying a black man is 3/5ths of a white man. Utterly disgusting on your part. and shame on you.

Secular morality is superior to any religious one. We do not do good things to achieve good karma or nirvana or receive everlasting peace in an after life. We do good things simply because we like doing good things. We don't need or expect validation from a deity. A thank you now and again is nice though.

[GIThruster]

The idea that we are somehow 'broken' is bigoted.

No. As I have explained on numerous occasions, I hold a reformed epistemology like that of Alvin Plantinga. Those of the reformed tradition, which is the majority of what you might call "Protestant" churches, believe that all men and women are broken. We are all fallen. This is the point behind Plantinga's "Warrant and Proper Function" because reformed folk believe all of us have broken noetic faculties. I did not single out atheists as broken. We're all broken. What I said was, that atheists are broken in an unique way, as is illustrated by their common refusal to believe in an afterlife.

Those who do not believe in an afterlife are not operating on the same set of assumptions as the vast majority of humanity, and are thus incapable of conversation about the relative value of protecting the innocent. They are wrong about too many, too important issues to have a real discussion on these subjects. You do not see the death penalty in light of an afterlife and are thus incapable of understanding the death penalty, nor even death itself.

[Diogenes]

Secular morality is superior to any religious one.

This is just a theory. Too many of you accept this theory as true without any real evidence for it. I keep pointing out that the only way to correctly weigh Secular Morality against Christian Morality is to produce a society in which Secular morality is dominant and has been sustained for at least a generation. (i.e. a real world experimental test of this theory.)

So far, examples include Soviet Russia, and Communist China.

Western Atheists are contaminated with Judeo-Christian principles and philosophy. They do not even realize that their world view is a product of their exposure to the dominant Christian culture. If it did not exist, they would have very different ideas about morality.

We do not do good things to achieve good karma or nirvana or receive everlasting peace in an after life. We do good things simply because we like doing good things. We don't need or expect validation from a deity. A thank you now and again is nice though.

The word "good" is subjective, not objective. The only reason you think it so is because Christian society has left you with that impression. Throw off the shackles of Christian perception and you can see an entirely new way of understanding what it means to be free from religious based morality.

The reality is, people are not actually equal. It is only Christian philosophy which proffers this socially beneficial fiction. Atheist philosophy acknowledges the truth. Some humans are lesser than others. The Superior humans should rule. THAT is uncontaminated Atheist philosophy.

[Teahive]

There is no such thing as "uncontaminated". Everything is based on what came before, even if it's a counter-idea.

[Skipjack]

I admit, having experienced death myself, I am not too eager to eperience it again. It is the end.
I also want to add that there cant be anything worse than being executed for something that someone else did, whether there is a hell or not.
Also even the worst criminal can go to heaven all sins forgiven, if he only repents before his death and "returns to god". So I dont see how religion would people less prone to commit crimes...