the death penalty

[bolevar321]

A paragraph, or a sentance, mockery is still disrespectful, and disdainful.
My notion isn't as absurd as you say; for a while, people lived like this. Religion provided common ground, justification to live together peacefully. And yes, it established "morals." Some of which survive, some of which do not. Without morals, we would still have lived that way. Morals in a society do not HAVE to come from religion, but it's most likely. Without a whole lot of knowledge of their world, early humans tried to explain how things worked with mysticism, gods, and spirits. Eventually, they anthropomorphized these gods, and gave them "opinions" as to what did, or did not offend them. Well, people don't want to die, so their gods "forbade" people to kill. They didn't want to have stuff taken, so the gods "forbade" people to steal. It's not that people are immoral, it's just that religion comes early in a civilization, and with it, comes a moral code.
And with regards to your idea being almost the status quo, there's only one difference, that's whether the criminal gets a say in his punishment. This is fine with me; either way, they are considered a permanent danger to society, and are removed. Not many people get the death penalty, and, with that idea, still not many people will get it. I suppose it is a bit depressing that they can choose to have themselves killed...

[Lockeownzj00]

Bolevar: How can you seriously be arguing this? Atheists have 'the same' morals because basic religious laws are derived from common sense. "Don't kill people" isn't some great religious insight, it's human friggin' intuition.

Religion provided common ground, justification to live together peacefully.

Is this a joke? Let's just erase history, shall we.

And yes, it established "morals."

It gives a moral system for those who are unable to develop them themselves.

If you grow up in a completely areligious society, chances are (re: you will) you'll still probably get basic morals (depending on who raises you): the common traits are some level of altruism, not stealing, etc.

Well, people don't want to die, so their gods "forbade" people to kill.

Okay. People who follow a religion are influenced by the morals it purports. This does not equal religion is the source of morals. If it were we'd be stoning our children. And I don't mean smoking them up.

I don't think any serious historian would postulate anything close to this. Here's your logic:

"Religion created language. How can I prove it? Religions used language to convey their ideas, and religion has existed since the begining of time. Thus, religion is the source of language."

[Steel Shadow]

We're getting way to close to the line here. I think we've actualy crossed it a few times. Lets get back on topic, shall we?

Dasunudas, I was meerly saying I don't think most people are comfortable at all with taking another human life, thus (maybe misleadingly) called it humanity. I mean that really, if we decided to use pure logic in this situation, once murders were proved beyond doubt of guilt, then they would be executed to save the money they spend being cooped up in prison with free food and shelter, and to remove whatever defective genes/memes they have from our gene pool, and of course to garantee the saftey of everyone.

[bolevar321]

Originally Posted by Lockeownzj00

Bolevar: How can you seriously be arguing this? Atheists have 'the same' morals because basic religious laws are derived from common sense. "Don't kill people" isn't some great religious insight, it's human friggin' intuition.



Is this a joke? Let's just erase history, shall we.



It gives a moral system for those who are unable to develop them themselves.

If you grow up in a completely areligious society, chances are (re: you will) you'll still probably get basic morals (depending on who raises you): the common traits are some level of altruism, not stealing, etc.



Okay. People who follow a religion are influenced by the morals it purports. This does not equal religion is the source of morals. If it were we'd be stoning our children. And I don't mean smoking them up.

I don't think any serious historian would postulate anything close to this. Here's your logic:

"Religion created language. How can I prove it? Religions used language to convey their ideas, and religion has existed since the begining of time. Thus, religion is the source of language."

At one point in time, stoning one's children, and killing many people on religious ground was considered moral. As I said, some morals survive, and some do not. "Human intuition" didn't stop people from killing others before religion, now did it? And yes, if raised in an areligious society, you get the same sense of morals your parents/society has. Religion, however, tends to come early to a culture, establishing a moral code. The American moral code tends to be the common ground of these religions, IE no killing, stealing, etc.
I'm not saying that without religion, we would be immoral. I'm just saying religion is a very likely start for a society, establishing its own set of morals. Can you give me any country that has a moral code, but has never had religion?
And, in response to the "logic," religion has not been around since the beginning of time. To agree upon a religion, people had to talk to each other, which requires communication. Therefore, language predates religion.
Religion is not THE source of morals, but it is the most likely for a given society.
Anyways, I'm for the death penalty for only the most brutal cases, and life imprisonment for other killers. Pretty much, I think what we're doing is working alright.

[Archbio]

Can you give me any country that has a moral code, but has never had religion?

Can you give me a country that doesn't have a moral code? You're inventing a correlation out of thin air. Religion has appeared early and the most basic ethics have appeared early, but that doesn't mean that one proceeds out of the other. Repeating that over and over and over again won't make it true.

As much as I hate debating this, we're not supposed to.

[Dasanudas]

Ja...so....EVERYTHING else besides death penalty in this thread should be stopped before we show that we have no self-control and the parental units have to close the thread.

Originally Posted by Steel Shadow

Dasunudas, I was meerly saying I don't think most people are comfortable at all with taking another human life, thus (maybe misleadingly) called it humanity. I mean that really, if we decided to use pure logic in this situation, once murders were proved beyond doubt of guilt, then they would be executed to save the money they spend being cooped up in prison with free food and shelter, and to remove whatever defective genes/memes they have from our gene pool, and of course to garantee the saftey of everyone.

So what you're saying is the reluctance to take life morphed into what we call humaniarianism, yes? If this is the case, then I don't see how this goes against logic. The structure of logic can be very mathematical, sure, but when applied to the world situations, it must also take into account things such as psychology. The feeling of reluctance, compassion, the negative moral and feelings of others around you when you kill someone, it isn't logical to ignore these, so again I don't see how adding in morality is against logic.

As for your example of pure logic, that is exactly the same as my system of morals dictates one should do, though for differing reasons. It is also what is seen as the compassionate thing to do, but I don't dare go into that again.

[kam_islash]

The reaosning behind the death penalty is that once a vile criminal is dead he can no longer cause harm to anyone and wont be a drain on the government anymore.

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[ZAKtheGeek]

Not really, first of all, karma is a one time shot, not cyclic. One death, a reaction death, then finished. It's not like a pendulum. Second, while karma is there, so is free will. Say a person has killed someone, and so in the next life the victim is now poised to kill them. The first victim always has the choice to simply not do it. This does not mean that the first murderer won't get a reaction of death, but it does mean that the karma for the victim will stop. This is kind of the point of my practice - removing ourselves from the reactions of karma altogether, but it is nigh impossible unless one has proper knowledge of how to do it, which to talk about I think would definately be off-topic and over the line here. In a sense though, yes - karmic law is convoluted and murky and generally not something you want to have any part of.

See, I assumed the person who murders the initial murderer would then be doomed to murder themselves. I got this from your own statement, too. You claim that it's fine to kill murderers since it'll happen to them anyway, but what happens if they were the ones that were balancing karma, the ones that were killing the killers? If they're not to be murdered for simply balancing karma, then you've just advocated killing "innocent" people.

And if it's possible to not kill the murderer, and still have everything okay, karma-wise, then even if someone wasn't killing just for karma, you might still be advocating an unjustified killing. What if the original victim would have chosen not to kill them back? You'd be killing needlessly.

And if the karma of murder is victim-based, then does that mean that every single victim of those who have killed many (in war, for instance) must then kill them in some other life? How many of those many deaths will be viewed as unnecessary murder and punished accordingly? Probably a lot...

[Roy_D_Mylote]

Originally Posted by Kaelus

In the other hand, there are some people who are guilty of killing others, but you can't really blame them. And even if you can...

First off...you want to defend that first statement? And secondly, the two parts of your arguments seem to contradict.

[Kaelus]

Originally Posted by Roy_D_Mylote

First off...you want to defend that first statement? And secondly, the two parts of your arguments seem to contradict.

There are just too many circumstances, and cases vary a lot.

For example, a guy who has nothing in life, living in pain and misery and committing crimes to survive. Among those crimes, this guy murders the kind of people who are responsible for making his life miserable, or their representatives.

Another example... a young man who had his parents murdered and now tries to have his revenge, taking out all of those who get in his way.

I can't blame those people. They have conscience of what they're doing, they're taking a life, they're murderers. But I can't help but feel that they're also suffering, and society never pays any attention to them... except on documentaries that make you feel bad, but you never do something about it, or even face it as a reality. I can't help but feel that they're also victims, and it could happen to anybody. They're guilty, but you still feel compassion.

I can't point a finger at those people and blame them for being the source of evil in society. Corrupt politicians are responsible for taking much more lives, yet they're considered good and correct human beings, working to make the society better. And those who have to pay for their actions are those killing to survive.

I don't know if I'm being too compassionate, but I feel that everything can be forgiven, if those involved work hard enough. >_<