by Country Girl 101 Replies latest jw friends
As for secular societies having less violent crime, Saudi Arabia appears to be lower than North America and all of Western Europe:
If your rant was directed towards this gladiator's simplistic reaction, here's my even more simplistic response:
predominantly theist does not equal secular.
I'm afraid I missed the point when the Saudi's turned into a bunch of non-believers? Do you have any link to back it up?
Burn the ships
Yes, you made a simplistic MISREPRESENTATION of what I said.
I am glad we can at least agree on half of that even if you don't have the maturity to apolgise for making a mistake and misrepresenting me.
It's okay, I forgive you.
And you are the person responsible for how you get treated, don't blame me.
Is human life tied to how much brain matter we have? Is an Einstein more human than I?
Nope, as there's not that much difference in brain matter. Both you and Einstein are individuals, i.e. you are distinct persons due to your own unique level and character of neurological complexity and upbringing (hardware and software if you like).
Once again, you say something I didn't. I said something with the same or less brain mass as a rodent can't be considered an individual.
Do you disagree with this?
I know yes and no answers to this underscore the weakness of your argument, and as an intelligent person you realise this at least on some level and will probably therefore giving a straight question a straight answer.
Is humanness an agglomeration of fat and neurons?
Paris Hilton shows this not to be true. Seriously, no, it is the 'software' that can be run by an agglomeration of fat and neurons of sufficient size to sustain that level of complexity provided it not suffered damage to cause a permanent crash in the ‘software’.
I don't need to prove the size of the brain of a foetus.
No, there's plenty of independently verifiable facts to show my point is true, you don't need to prove anything. Besides, you're argument is based on superstition even if you don't see it that way. You have a belief in some form of magic that makes a foetus with grams of brain matter the same as a baby with a brain hundreds of times larger. The weight of a foetal brain won't remove this superstitious belief.
A foetus of the gestational age I talking about does not have the hardware to run the ‘software’ to have a personality. It is a tabla rasa, albeit one smaller than a postage stamp.
That is a misdirection. A foetus is human.
Never said it wasn't old chap, so your claim of misdirection is curious given your level of evasion and misrepresentation.
To destroy it is to murder.
To destroy a human is murder.
Yes, I agree. So you advocate the murder of humans - by definition, in your own words. That was easy. Of course, your definiton of human is 'live tissue with H. sapiens DNA', whereas mine is slightly more meaningful as it requires the live tissue with H. sapiens DNA to have personality, i.e. that which makes us an individual human being.
And the fact a brain-dead woman can be used as an incubator means nothing in this discussion, however miraculous it was to the family.
Okay, so To use your brain matter argument as an ethical basis would allow me to euthanize the mentally handicapped.
Nope. Because even the mentally handicapped are massively neurologically complex and have personalities. Their brains are significantly larger than those of squirrels. Again, you misunderstand or misrepresent what I said.
If there is no person in a living hunk of human flesh, regardless of size - either due to cessation of brain activity or to brain activity of sufficient complexity to be classed in the same category as a born human never having started, then stopping the that hunk of human flesh living is not an ethical problem as you are not destroying a personality or individual in any sense of the word that has meaning.
I think what you have here Burn, is a discussion where you end up in two posts showing how poorly thought out your position is, as you show you advocate the murder of humans by the contradictions in your own argument, even in your own words. My position is actually consistent and sustainable.
Killing people is wrong because killing people is wrong.
Brain-dead humans are not people other than in the emotional standing they have in the minds of those who knew them, as what made them a person has gone. Unborn humans with such undeveloped brains that they haven't developed any capacity for a personality are not people, other than in the emotional standing they might have in the minds of some people.
Mentally handicapped people are people. Murderers and paedophiles are people.
Of course, as I said at the outset, I really don't expect you to change your mind. Even one person changing their mind on a thread like this is a miracle and a credit to them.
If your rant was directed towards this gladiator's simplistic reaction, here's my even more simplistic response:
predominantly theist does not equal secular.
I'm afraid I missed the point when the Saudi's turned into a bunch of non-believers? Do you have any link to back it up?
What is your point and what are you responding to? It makes no sense to me.
Burn
blather, blather, blather....meanwhile capital punishment is legal and now that lethal injections have been upheld by the Supreme Court they will resume. The vast majority of citizens want this punishment available for those cases that qualify for it. Which is more humane, to painlessly slip into oblivion or be caged like a rat for decades? The cost? Not an issue. The lawyers have to eat too. Besides, the protracted appeals are the extra measure of certainty that the penalty is legal and justified.
Those of you who are against CP can continue to be against it and enjoy your self perception of moral superiority. I completely respect your right to an opinion.
Yes, you made a simplistic MISREPRESENTATION of what I said.
No, I I was addressing the RESPONSE.
Once again, you say something I didn't. I said something with the same or less brain mass as a rodent can't be considered an individual.
Do you disagree with this?
Yes. To draw a line at "rodent size brain" and say "smaller than this not human, larger than this, human" is arbitrary and artificial. The brain's development is a continuum from birth to death.
Human life begins at conception. It is unique and individuated.
Even one person changing their mind on a thread like this is a miracle and a credit to them.
Indeed, I hope one day you will see your error and change your mind. When in doubt, CHOOSE LIFE.
Burn
blather, blather, blather....meanwhile capital punishment is legal and now that lethal injections have been upheld by the Supreme Court they will resume. The vast majority of citizens want this punishment available for those cases that qualify for it. Which is more humane, to painlessly slip into oblivion or be caged like a rat for decades? The cost? Not an issue. The lawyers have to eat too. Besides, the protracted appeals are the extra measure of certainty that the penalty is legal and justified.
Those of you who are against CP can continue to be against it and enjoy your self perception of moral superiority. I completely respect your right to an opinion.
Gregor, what is the purpose of CP? Your answer will say much about what you perceive the justice system is supposed to be.
Maybe if they were forced to perform some kind of productive labor, grow food, or do SOMETHING other than lay around in a prison like a societal parasite sucking up our resources.
Actually, I am for the death penalty if there is absolutely no doubt. However, the above is not a bad idea.
I remember my father telling me that he worked at a State Hospital in the 1930's. The mental patients actually had work assignments on the farm and in the orchards, picking fruit, taking care of animals, and even driving tractors (occasionally). The institution was actually self supporting. Then the do-gooders decided that these people shouldn't have to work. So instead, they just sat around and did nothing. That helped no one. Now they became an expense to the taxpayers and they lived a fruitless life. Later, when the State was making some tax cuts, they cut off some of the revenue, and many patients were released only to become homeless street persons.
So, getting back to the pedophiles, why couldn't these parasites be made to support themselves or the community in some way?
Questions
fromReaders•
Do the courts of the land have the right to inflict capital punishment on those guilty of murder?—M.W.,Washington.No individual on his own has the right to execute another person because that one has committed a murder. However, we would not say that the community could not do so, acting through its legally constituted courts of law. If a person has been given a fair trial, and irrefutable evidence has been presented that that person is a murderer, then it seems that the community must take some action to protect its citizens. We have always said that jails are not Jehovah’s means of punishment, so we would hardly be consistent in arguing that it would be more in harmony with Jehovah’s law for a murderer to be imprisoned for life than for the murderer to be put to death. Jehovah’s law on the matter was that a murderer should be punished by death, not by imprisonment. If a person is a self-confessed murderer, or has been proved to be such without any shadow of doubt, then the community must take some action against the individual, rather than let him go free to commit further crimes.
At 1 Peter 4:15 the apostle said: "Let none of you suffer as a murderer or a thief or an evildoer or as a busybody in other people’s matters." (NW) Then the apostle goes on to show that if we suffer as a Christian we should not feel shame. Peter’s words seem to imply that it was proper for a murderer to suffer for his crime, and we know what the penalty was from God’s standpoint, namely, death, and not imprisonment. Peter does not argue that a murderer should not suffer merely because no man was present to act as an appointed executioner from Jehovah. In Peter’s day the duly constituted authorities of the community were the ones who brought the suffering or punishment upon a murderer, and Peter makes no objection to this practice.
The apostle Paul also seems to take the same position, only he puts it even more clearly. Acts 25:10, 11 (NW) states: "Paul said: ‘I am standing before the judgment seat of Caesar, where I ought to be judged. I have done no wrong to the Jews, as you also are finding out quite well. If, on the one hand, I am really a wrongdoer and have committed anything deserving of death, I do not beg off from dying; if, on the other hand, none of those things exists of which these men accuse me, no man can hand me over to them as a favor. I appeal to Caesar!’" Please note that here while standing before the judgment seat of Caesar, the duly constituted authority of the community, and not an executioner appointed by Jehovah God, Paul went on record as saying that if he had done anything deserving of death, he would not beg off from dying. This certainly seems to mean that Paul considered the properly constituted civil authorities as having power to inflict the death sentence. Rather than argue that such a human court did not have this power, he seemed to indicate that it did have the power and he would not object to the exercise of that power against him if he had committed anything deserving of death; and certainly a murder is something that makes the one committing it worthy of death, according to Jehovah’s law as well as man’s law.
Hence, there does not seem to be any violation of Scriptural principle in the community’s putting a murderer to death. It even seems a more Scriptural course than committing the murderer for life, to be thereafter fed and clothed and cared for at the expense of the community, and always with the possibility that the murderer may add to his crimes by killing another inmate, or by killing guards in an attempted escape, or by escaping and murdering other persons on the outside. In the nations’ practice of capital punishment there does not seem to be anything that is contradictory to God’s law, and where the law of the land does not conflict with God’s law we do not raise particular objection against it.
Watchtower 1952 1st March pages 158-160 Questions from Readers
Thanks
Greg Abbott the AG of Texas has been wrestling with this...... unfortunately many abusers are family members and the fear of an automatic death penalty may discourage victims from speaking up.
That's a very good point. The majority of abusers come from within the family unit and it would be interesting to take a poll and find out how those victims feel about it. Kids generally feel a lot of guilt if their actions break up a family and putting the death of a family member on their shoulders would no doubt triple that emotion. The problem I have with the whole death penalty is that I wouldn't want innocent people being killed for a crime they didn't commit which is where DNA offender samples come in and the fact that the law is inconsistent. Right now the States all have different laws in addition to 25 years worth of appeals and that doesn't make sense. In the Florida case of Couey? for example - they know he killed the little girl and buried her alive - he doesn't deserve 20 years of life, so if a state has the death penalty as a law, they either use it or get rid of it. It's complex and then I always ask myself - could I pull the switch myself and if I couldn't am I qualified to say I support it.....sammieswife.
Hell, why stop at murder or sex crimes... why not extend the death penalty to yet more crimes? Crooked politicians? Fry 'em. Burglars are a drain on society... end 'em. Shoplifters are totally useless scumwads... waste 'em. And lets not forget anyone who picks up a DUI or smokes weed.
Overpopulation problem = solved. Crime = eliminated. Sense of vengeance = satisfied. Prisons = empty.
