Where do you stand on other controversial issues?

Abortion: I definitely think it is acceptable, if the parents don't feel ready or the mothers health is at risk then do it.

Death Penalty: I'm really not sure about this one, I going to say I disagree with it.

No Fault Divorce: That fine with me.

Stem Cell Research: Likely to save many lives in the future, so of course i do agree with it.

Pornography: I guess i'm ok with it, just don't think it should be watched in excess.

Affirmative action: I'm for it.

Medical Marijuana: If it has positive affects on patients then fine.

Marijuana Legalization: We have enough legal harmful drugs in the world.

Gun Control: Very strict control, saves lives.

Religious language used for national purpose (on currency, or in the pledge): Against it.

Obamacare: Doesn't affect me.

 

You're reading into my words a moral judgment that isn't there. You seem to be reading it as, "You're bad! You're just like those other bad people! You're all the same!" That's not what I'm saying at all.

When I wrote: "I also have to chuckle a little bit, because even though they've placed themselves high up on that moral pedestal that exists in their minds, at the end of the day they fail to see that they're really not so different."

I meant what I said in the most literal sense. Let me break it down.

Why am I chuckling at them?

I'm chuckling at them because I see them as acting in a manner that is delusional. I'm viewing them not based in the context of morality, but within the context of their actions and their beliefs.

To give a less contentious example, let's say that I want to kill someone. Let's assume this person murdered everyone I loved and got to walk away on some technicality - the police dropped the ball big time. I want revenge on this person. I want him dead. So, I go and seek out a contract killer. We do business, I pay him the money, he kills the guy I want dead and we both go our separate ways.

No one would look at this and say that I was not indirectly responsible for murder. I might not have pulled the trigger myself, but I was the driving force behind what happened. If I were to get caught, the justice system would certainly see me as guilty and prosecute me for his murder.

You may look at my actions and rationalize them by saying, "Well, he did kill everyone you love, so I can certainly understand your reasons." But you wouldn't say that I wasn't a murderer.

So the question is raised: What is the difference between hiring a contract killer and the state executing someone?

In both cases you have to want someone to die. In the case of the contract killer, you have to seek him out. In the case of the state, you have to lobby to keep the death penalty legal. Both happen out of a desire for vengeance. In the case of the contract killer, you pay him for his job. In the case of the state, you pay taxes which pays for the executioner who carries out the job.

My point is that the actions are the same. There are two ways that I can think of in which you might argue a difference between the two. The first is an attempt to rationalize it, and I spent a lengthy post attacking rationalization - go back and re-read that if you don't understand my point of view there. (Short answer: It's an act of self-delusion.) The second is an attempt to engage in fallacious thinking that assumes that if the state does it that it somehow absolves people of their actions or motivations. ("The state has the authority to kill people, whereas a contract killer does not." The obvious response being, "Why does the state have the authority to kill people?" The answer: Because the people allow the state to have that authority.)

So, just as I view someone who hires a contract killer as committing a murder indirectly, I view someone who uses the state to murder people as also committing a murder indirectly. Their actions are the same. Hence the statement that followed the part you found objection to: "The only real difference between them is that he - the murderer - had the guts to pull the trigger himself, whereas the vengeful crowd gets to hide behind the curtain of the state."

What do I mean by "a moral pedestal that exists in their minds"?

Again, I meant it literally. You viewed my statement as an act of moral relativism, but that is not how I view it at all. I see it as them (those who are crying for the blood) as the ones who are engaged in moral relativism. I view moral relativism as the source of their delusion, which again is why I'm chuckling at them. As a delusion, their perceived morality (the reason they're on the pedestal) exists only in their minds.

They are saying, "I hate those who commit murder. I want to murder this person." They do not see the logical disconnect between their beliefs and actions. They rationalize it, hence why it is a delusion. I view moral relativism as nothing more than rationalized morality, and I think I made my point about rationalization quite clear.

Just so everyone is on the same page, let's define moral relativism. People who believe in moral relativism believe that different moral truths exist for different people, and it is generally expressed in two forms. The first is ethical subjectivism in which someone believes that morality is relative to each individual. The second is cultural relativism which believes that morality is relative to each culture.

As I said in the post itself and in a previous response in this thread; I don't embrace the notion of morality. I view all forms of morality as constructed by individuals for psychological, social, and economic reasons, but in the end hold no universal truth (moral absolutism) nor relative truth (moral relativism). I don't think that any action is inherently moral or immoral, and that every action from the most seemingly benevolent to the most depraved is decidedly amoral (indifferent) from the viewpoint of the universe itself. This is what I was implying when I kept saying, "and time will keep marching on" every time I touched upon something that most people would find "morally" objectionable. The universe itself doesn't stop time when something people regard as "evil" happens; it doesn't care.

In my view people embrace the notion of moral relativism because they don't want to admit that the universe is inherently indifferent to the extreme, and that as a result no morality exists at all. This may seem scary to some people, and so they engage in moral relativism which as I pointed out is just rationalized morality. I reject moral absolutism because in order for it to exist, it requires a force to impose it on the universe, and as an atheist I don't embrace the notion of a higher power.

However, as I said in a previous post in the absence of morality values can still exist. There are still obviously desirable and undesirable actions and outcomes. With values you can weigh or measure a certain action and intended outcome, and that ultimately leads to logical thinking. There is a strong difference between viewing something as desirable or undesirable, and saying that same thing is good or evil - a moral judgment. You can define and explain why something is desirable, but you cannot define good without engaging in moral relativism.

This is the foundation upon which my world view is built, and it informs how I view society and the government. As a consequence it informs how I make political decisions.

Let me clarify my statement. My assumption, which I thought was clear (though it was only implied), was that I had clearly committed some crime (such as mass murder), and had no realistic expectation of ever getting out. The evidence would be overwhelmingly against me, and I would know that I was guilty. So I have a decision over life in prison, which means I live twenty years or so in pointless and irrelevant misery and then die, or to get an "easy ticket out" immediately. I said I'd choose the easy ticket out because if I was in that situation, that is the choice that I'd most likely make.

There are obvious exceptions, of course. If I thought I could manipulate the justice system to get out on a technicality, or if I were innocent and I believed that I could prove my innocence.

Regardless, the goal is the same: To get out of prison the easy way (death) or the hard way (fighting through the justice system). If the hard way is closed off to me, that leaves only one other option. I suppose I could also plan an escape, which I'd probably make an attempt to do first. However, the goal of getting out doesn't change.

You're right. I probably should have worded the statement differently, as I was making the incorrect assumption that everyone in the position (that I outlined just above) would come to the same logical conclusion. That's incorrect, and would be an attempt to assume that they share my values.

Of course, that's just another reason to oppose the death penalty. It doesn't change the fact that they're going to die eventually (and therefore burn in hell), but if your goal is to punish people, then individuals such as myself would be punished more by keeping us alive.

In fact, if your goal is to punish people, I can think of many things worse than death and prison. And ultimately, if you believe in hell, they're still going to die in the end, so they're still going. If your goal is vengeance and punishment, why not make their remaining years as miserable and horrific as possible?

We aren't in disagreement on this point. Don't mistake my words as an attempt to excuse the actions of the executioner or the soldier. People own the consequences of their actions.

No, that's how they rationalize it. That's how some of them justify their actions to themselves and others. The reason they do those things is because it's their job. They are paid to do them, and they are expected to perform according to their contract. For a soldier, it is to show up and murder whomever the state instructs them to murder. For an executioner, it is to show up and murder whomever the state says is guilty and deserves to be murdered.

It is perfectly possible, and it happens all the time, that a soldier may disagree with the war he is fighting in. He may even use morality and define it as immoral. He will fight in it nonetheless, or he'll face the consequences. The state views the arrangement as a contract; they pay and educate you and you murder who they tell you too. If you don't, they will punish you in various ways because you've violated the contract.

Similarly, an executioner may believe that someone they're executing might be innocent, but they aren't in a position to stop the execution. They're expected to carry it out regardless, and if they refuse they risk losing their job.

Cloaking the actions in notions of freedom, democracy, justice, etc. Is nothing more than an attempt to give the actions an appearance of rationalized morality. It's an attempt to say, "Yes, it's murder but it's not - you know - the bad kind." It implies that there is a good or bad kind of murder.

A slave who kills his master to escape, is someone who is murdering for freedom. A citizen who takes up arms against the dictator of his state in an attempt to overthrow him and replace the government with a democracy, is murdering in the name of democracy. Someone who signs a contract, is paid a salary, and murders whomever the person or group tells them to is performing a job.

You're right. My view doesn't really factor in victims that much. That isn't to say that I don't care, or that my heart doesn't break. That's not true, I certainly feel a great deal of empathy.

However, is executing someone going to bring back those he murdered? Is imprisoning a rapist for life going to erase the memory of the rape from the victims or un-rape them? Is abusing the abuser going to somehow undo the abuse? The answer to these questions is obviously no.

When someone says they want "justice" frequently what they mean is that they want "vengeance." They want to get even. They want to see the person who turned them into a victim punished. The underlying assumption is that somehow vengeance is going to make the victim feel better. I disagree with this assumption; an act of vengeance isn't going to make someone feel better about having their entire family brutally murdered, but furthermore I disagree that the act of vengeance should even be the intended goal.

If you want a system based on punishment and vengeance, then yes the victims become intensely important.

However, if you want a system that serves the best interest of society, then you have to do what is in the best interest of society. Sometimes this may align with what the victim desires and sometimes it won't. That's already the case for our current justice system.

I believe a system that focuses on rehabilitation is in the best interest of society as a whole. As you point out, our current system which is largely based around punishment, has a recidivism rate of around 70% - that is an insanely high number. If it were to rise much higher it could easily be argued that it makes more sense to implement a one strike rule - once you enter prison you never get out. Ever.

Of course, if you're goal is punishment then that makes perfect sense anyway.

Naturally, this doesn't necessarily imply that a focus on rehabilitation will drastically improve the recidivism rate. That is the goal, however, because by reducing the recidivism rate we reduce the number of victims. That should be the overall intent to prevent creating victims in the first place, rather than to punish it after it has occurred. If we attempt rehabilitation and it proves to be a failure, then we will have to examine other options.

It is better to stop a murder, rape, or abuse before it happens. This is not always possible, of course, and as a result we need to rehabilitate those who can be rehabilitated, so that when they leave they don't engage in the same or similar actions.

I think it also is implied, though let me state it specifically, that those who we deem we cannot rehabilitate should be imprisoned permanently. So in your example, it would be someone in your position - in your field of work, someone who is an expert and qualified - who would determine how long someone becomes a ward of the state. It could be an hour or indefinitely - a group of people in your field would make that determination, similar to a parole board.

I touched upon this line of thinking at the start of this post when I spoke about the contract killer vs the state executioner. Murder is an action. The state (and in a democracy the people who elect those who make the laws) define what is lawful and is unlawful.

The action of murder is the act of taking another living creatures life. If you kill the chicken to eat it, you murdered the chicken. If you kill the cow to eat it, you murdered the cow. If you don't like the kitten and you kill it, you murdered the kitten. If you take a prisoner and execute him, you murdered the prisoner.

An attempt to draw a distinction between "lawful" vs "unlawful" murder in the manner in which you're doing it, is an attempt to say that by virtue of being lawful that it is somehow moral and therefore justified. This is an act of moral relativism and therefore an attempt to rationalize the act.

Don't mistake what I'm saying here as me saying that I'm opposed to murder. I'm not. There are certainly cases in which murder is necessary. If murdering someone makes rational and logical sense then I can support it.

An example would be the assassination of Osama bin Laden. The alternative was to take him alive and put him on trial. Although that would have been desirable, the consequences would have been to give him a platform to express his views. It would have also unnecessarily risked lives, and would have elevated his status as a martyr. So long as he was left alive he would have served as a symbol for his cause. So murdering him and then disposing of his body so that no shrine could be erected in his honor made perfect logical sense.

So I am not opposed to murder. To be in opposition to murder would imply that it was somehow immoral or wrong, which I don't hold as true. It is undesirable in many cases, but is sometimes necessary.

The difference is important. I can explain why murder is sometimes desirable, giving concrete and logical reasons why it is necessary, and ideally avoiding fallacious logic. (If the logic is fallacious then the reason it is desirable is flawed, and the reason must be reexamined.) However, someone who attempts to define it as "good" (in a moral sense) is attempting to rationalize the act. You cannot define good without engaging in moral relativism.

The reason this is bad, as I hope I made clear in my previous post, is because humans are capable of rationalizing any behavior - no matter how horrific. How do you think things like the Holocaust happens? People rationalized what they were doing, and many of them saw themselves as "good." Others might have felt it was wrong, but rationalized their actions as "just following orders." In which case, what they are saying was "following orders is good."

Someone who is sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole is deemed as someone we cannot rehabilitate. In my view, someone in your profession should see that as a failure. In these cases, the ward of the state should be confined to a secure and private cell. He will remain there for the rest of his days until natural death takes him. He may be studied by people such as yourself, so that you can get a better understanding of his condition so that you may attempt to rehabilitate him or others similar to him.

If someone cannot be rehabilitated then they are too dangerous to release back into society.

 

If you are going to make claims of execution being the same as murder, then leaving someone in a cell till they die is murder too. You are killing them both ways, just with different methods. Solitary confinement has negative effects on people that shorten their lives, same as lethal injection. The only difference is speed.

 

So is birth if the only you know will actually happen to the person is death o_o

 

Not my logic. Just confusion about his.

 

This is fallacious for two reasons.

1. Ignoring cause and effect. You didn't present enough information to know precisely what killed him. In the case of a lethal injection, it is the poison which kills him, but the individual who injects the poison who murdered him. You seem to be attempting to confuse the act of dying with the act of murder.

2. Ignoring a common cause. You can say, "Solitary confinement has a negative effect on people by shortening their lives." This would be a correct statement. However, you are saying that as a consequence of him being in solitary confinement he died. In doing this you ignored the common cause, which is the reason he's in solitary confinement in the first place - a result of his own actions. To give another example, this is the equivalent of you standing with someone in a hay field and claiming that their sneezing was caused by their watery eyes. Yes, the watery eyes may have been what caused the individual to sneeze (solitary confinement shortening the prisoners life), but it was the act of being in the hay field (the actions of the prisoner that placed him in solitary confinement) which caused the watery eyes.

Your statements seem to imply that shortening a prisoners life is undesirable, but you don't explain why it is undesirable.

Keep in mind my objection to the death penalty isn't based on the fact that it is an act of murder. It's based on the fact that it means that occasionally innocent people may be executed, and the fact that the focus is on vengeance rather than rehabilitation. Even in the case where rehabilitation may not be possible, I believe it is more valuable to keep them alive for study in an attempt to determine if or how someone like that may be rehabilitated, or how we might detect someone before they begin committing similar crimes so that we can try to prevent them from happening. (Example: Learning from the prisoner might allow us to spot mental problems earlier in life, and attempt to get them help before they commit similar crimes.)

Using the guy who massacred the individuals at the theater, according to reports from those who interacted with him people noticed that something was off about him. A guy at the store where he purchased some of the weapons, said that he suspected that he probably shouldn't be purchasing the weapons - that he didn't appear to be mentally stable. A guy who owned a shooting range where the killer attempted to sign up for target practice also said something was off about him. He was going to refuse him the right to use the shooting range, but something was wrong with the killers answering machine.

These people sensed that something was off about him, that he perhaps wasn't mentally stable. Had there been some system in place with the goal to prevent crimes such as this, they might have informed the authorities, and the authorities might have spoken with him, and using the knowledge we obtained from studying prisoners they might have identified some typical "warning signs." This may have then led to the discovery of what he was planning before he carried it out.

Obviously, this would not prevent such crimes from ever happening again, but it could potentially allow us to prevent some of them. And if we stop just one such massacre from happening then in my opinion it is a desirable goal to strive toward.

 

Wasn't an attempt to deliberately fallacious, just genuine confusion regarding your stance on the matter.

 

Did I clear up your confusion? I'm not sure what you were really trying to ask, per-say so I'm not sure if I answered your question / addressed your confusion or not.

 

Abortion? Against- see it as murder
Death Penalty? In favor- rightful punishment
No fault divorce? In favor- Choose to marry why not choose to divorce
Stem Cell Research? Against- See as killing
Pornography? In favor- peoples free will
Gun Control? In favor- but limited
Religious language used for nation purpose (on currency, in the pledge)? Dont know what it is
Obamacare? Don't know anything about this and i'm not an American anyway

 

Yeah. I was getting the impression that your primary concern was that you considered execution to be the same as murder. I somehow missed the innocent deaths being the primary concern, so my comment was mostly aimed at that, since, to me, it seemed like any action that inevitably killed them would be murder.

Your clarification in your response cleared it up.

 

Ah, capital punishment. Killing people who kill people to show everybody that killing people is wrong...

People often mistake revenge for justice. The state should not have the power to take the life of one of it's own citizens, and the risk of executing an innocent person is too great.

 

Well, I for one would much rather spend the rest of my life in prison (especially a European prison, holy fuck they eat better food than I do) than die, but I guess some people are just claustraphobic.

If I was ruler of the world I would apply the death penalty to people that deserve it (On a "I know it when I see it basis"), key word: they deserve it, it is their comeupence, there is no god, there is no being that can instigate the laws of karma except those alive on earth right now. Mass murderers would qualify.

I believe you can reduce the chance of executing an innocent man to something comparable to nothing. And as Scalia often comments, there is no evidence that an innocent man has ever been executed by a US court.

 

A few tidbits for Justice Scalia...

Since the advent of DNA testing the USA in 1989, 294 convicted people have been exonerated of their crimes. 16 were on death row and 15 others were convicted of crimes eligible for the death penalty. Each of the 294 innocent people were imprisoned for an average of 13 years.

When you consider that only a fraction of cases involve DNA evidence, and that it was not available before 1989, any reasonable person can clearly see that innocent people have been convicted and executed for crimes they did not commit in America, and it is very likely that there are innocent people right now on death row in America.

The system in place for capital punishment is so deeply flawed that it should be abolished, not on moral grounds, but because of the sheer number of mistakes that are made that end the lives of innocent people.

The Innocence Project - Facts on Post-Conviction DNA Exonerations
http://www.texasobserver.org/cover-story/texas-observer-exclusive-dna-tests-undermine-evidence-in-texas-execution
Death Penalty and Innocence | Amnesty International USA

 

1. The problem is that a lot of people agree with you. The difference is some of those people are actually in a position to carry out such acts, and who deserves it is entirely relative to the individual. Some of them believe that we deserve to die simply for being gay, and they're more than happy to carry out the sentence. The mistake you make is that you assume that those who control the day-to-day affairs of the state will share your values, and therefore execute those you believe deserve it. That's the difference between having a personal opinion ("I hate this person, I wish they would die.") and governing. There are certainly people I would like to see wiped off the Earth, but I don't necessarily believe that makes good social policy.

2. Scalia's comment is laughably silly not to mention it is also fallacious. I would argue that he is committing the fallacy of division, "No one who has been on death row and subsequently executed has ever proven their innocence, therefore no one innocent has ever been executed." Obviously, if we had undeniable evidence that an innocent man was executed he wouldn't have been executed in the first place.

Instead, what we do have is a body of evidence that points to the likelihood we've executed innocent people. Notwithstanding people who we simply believe might have been innocent, but couldn't prove their innocence, there is a sizable list of people who were once sitting on death row but subsequently had the charges against them dropped. It is therefore reasonable to believe that someone with less evidence to prove their innocence may have been executed.

(I had some facts and figures here that I researched, but Bradley posted in the interim while I was doing the research. Simply review his post for the facts and figures.)

 

Citing Scalia is especially dubious as he believes it's OK to execute innoceny peopleprovided the were given due process.

 

Well, Scalia is just an extremely weak juror anyway and doesn't know his own branch's role in the separation of powers system that the federal government has.

 

Hi Aldrick!

Thank you!I've copied, pasted and saved your text for next academic year.

Kidd - I liked your comments too. May I use them too?


I understand what you are saying about recidivism and the need for closure for victims and families, but do you think that the death penalty is the solution for repeat offenders?

I mean, I could understand if you thought that multiple murderers should face the death penalty, but should we say that a person who keeps coming back into prison for violent crime should be put to death because it is a simpler solution?

I would find that difficult to square with the idea that we do not yet tolerate euthanasia.

My sister is a paliative nurse and cares for people 12 hours a day for the last 2 weeks of their life as they die at home of some hideous, painful disease. I would much sooner see a law which allows THEM to die with dignity in a calm and pain-free manner if they CHOOSE that end, rather than to hear people banging on about the sanctity of life and God gave and must take away.

To me, that argument straight away negates any notion of the death penalty being permissible in a largely Christian society.

Not a challenge, just a question - what are your thoughts?

 

Ya I probably misrepresented his statement, I believe there were qualifiers to it. I can't remember, but now that I rethink my statement, it only makes sense in the context of modern crime investigation techniques, like DNA evidence.

---------- Post added 23rd Jul 2012 at 01:46 PM ----------

I believe that the people who control the state more or less share my values.