On March 02 2011 15:48 jello_biafra wrote: Personally I'm in favour of the death penalty for murder, why waste all that money for decades on keeping this person alive when you could just solve the problem on day one with a bullet to the head.
But that's the thing, a criminal can pay for his own life. Have the criminal work a job so he can pay for his own living expenses. Simply keep him away from the rest of society.
Criminals working en masse wouldn't be allowed in the USA since that would 'take jobs away' from non-criminal workers (the job market would indeed suffer for a while, until it recovered by a shift to different sectors); criminals would also have to work ~11 hours a day at minimum wage to pay for their expenses($79/day), the economics of the matter just doesn't work out.
Imagine if one of your relatives or close friend was murdered by a psychopath - wouldn't your wrath and sense of justice boil as to want this psycho's life taken away as well ?
I would want to kill him, but would I actually do it? No. Humans have the gift of humanity. We don't have to resort to murder to solve our problems. Some humans aren't human at all, but that doesn't mean the rest of us should devolve to their level.
On March 02 2011 15:51 {CC}StealthBlue wrote: Really? Can I just move this to blogs before it implodes?
I think that will be for the best. The OP is way too provocative (without merit) and the thread will likely turn into another flame war about religion.
What i gathered from the OP is that you tried to convince your girlfriend of something, she told you that you're wrong, and now you are looking to defend your new values against anyone who'd like to take you on.. Did I sum that up pretty accurately?
My opinion is a pretty simple one: if sentenced to life in prison for murder, put the man to death. My reasoning? They probably deserve it.
I'd also like to point out that your opinion has the common fallacy of including religion as a backing for the belief.
On March 02 2011 15:49 spkim1 wrote: I do admit that I am indeed Christian, and that I do believe in the presence of God.
However, that is not my point. Be it God, Buddha, Yahwe, or any other superior presence, it does not matter - Man has no right to judge another man's life or death.
Moreover, unfortunately, many of the laws made by humans have been derived from religious bases. Had we no religion, we would have lived in an environment with brutal violence, where the strongest lived and the weakest died - Survival of the Fittest - The Rule of nature. The reason why we protect and care for the weak not only is generated from our sense of pity, fellowship, loyalty and generosity, but also from religious backgrounds like the Ten Commandments in Christianism. Justice as such is today, in order for our social system to work, it is an essential requirement for us to believe that a superior presence judges for our sins.
Edit: More than 'laws', I wanted to refer to our sense of justice and concept of fairness.
Here is the flaw in your argument. You take that bolded statement to be true, when it is essentially what we are trying to discuss.
Why does man have no right to judge another man's life or death?
And no, the reason why we care for each other isn't because of god or religion. It is actually quite the opposite. We care about each other precisely because of the survival of the fittest. Making a community is much more favorable for survival rather than being a lone wolf. If anything stopped us from caring about each other, it is religion.
Also wtf, are you just using this thread to preach? You are not allowed to argue because arguing requires arguments, and any argument is invalidated by god, or more technically I like to call Pee and not Pee (P ^ ~P, which we can use to prove anything we want).
I live in the United States, which is supposed to have a secular government. I'm also an atheist, so I don't believe in God.
I don't value a religious argument for pretty much anything... I'd prefer a logical, evidence-based one. Saying things like "Playing God" or "You just gotta have faith" don't sway my opnion at all.
I've heard that as far as the amount of paperwork, man-hours, and other costs go for the death penalty, it costs more than letting a criminal rot in prison for the rest of his life.
I think it might be a better punishment to let someone waste away in jail than give them a quick, easy, painless death. Life in prison is a worse (and therefore more appropriate) punishment than the death penalty, in my opinion, for someone who deserves one of those two sentences.
That being said, I'm not one to say we shouldn't have the death penalty. I'm happy as long as the punishments fit the crime.
This has been argued numerous times on TL and always goes down the same path. Three pages in and this is a mirror of every other thread. Go dig them up if you want to roll around in the argument.
EPT
