Noodle

Fishteacher73, you misquoted Syntax: that was my post. I tried to show how capital punishment works as a deterrent with very simple arithmetic. If killers are not released back into society to kill, there will be less murders. Any faulty logic in that? Of the 281 killers, in my example, that were turned loose and killed again, would you like them rehabilitated? Keep them housed, clothed and fed for another fifty years? You say District Attorneys don't go for the death penalty because it's too hard? Let's make it easier. End plea bargaining. It's a cancer in the justice system. As far as the Department of Justice running a skewed web site, you lost me there. They offer statistics, not opinions. I'M the one that takes the statistics and skews them. The problem with capital punishment is the people who are more concerned with the perpetrater than the victim, more concerned with hurting a killer's feelings than the well being our social system that is overwhelmed with violence. What is objectionalbe about ridding our social system of confirmed killers and sexual predators? We don't have the rescources to coddle killers. If you are really concerned with humane treatment of people, start with the victims. Spend your quarter rehabilitating the thousands of children who are raped and left to "deal with it." There is a finite amount of time and money available and I say, don't spend it on the deviants. Help those who are candidates to commit violence instead of crooning over the inhumane treatment of inhumane perps. All people are not created equal. There is nothing HOLY and sacrosanct about being born Homo sapian: or have I missed something?

Other comments, about how jails are filled with "violent men". Interestingly, I was reading an article this AM which shows that the single largest citation resulting in prison terms in my area is "Driving afte license revocation". With possession of pot in 2nd. Those horrible "violent men". It is a very small percent of the US prison pop that are actual "Criminals" in the "violent men" catagory. Freethinker, Try the US Department of Justice: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/prisons.htm. Most serious offense Percent of sentenced State inmates ..............................1995.............................................2001......................................... Total.......................100%...........................................100%......................................... Violent.......................47...............................................49............................................ Property.....................23...............................................19........................................... Drug..........................22................................................20.......................................... Public-order.................9................................................11......................................... Pretty funny, huh?

Fishteacher73, Your citation is for a site that opposes the death penality. What kind of statistics would you expect? Try a real database: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/prisons.htm. They provide the numbers and don't try to sell you something. Good thing your not a creationist or you'd be quoting the Bible to me for proof. There are over two million people in our prisons right now." At yearend 2003, 37 States and the Federal prison system held 3,374 prisoners under sentence of death." "Among inmates under sentence of death and with available criminal histories: -- about 1 in 12 had a prior homicide conviction." Divide 3,374 by 12 and you have 281 people that were killed by people who had been PREVIOUSLY convicted of homicide. That means they had already killed at least 281 people in the first place, then they were released to kill again. Add 281 and 281 and you now have 562 dead people not counting the remaining 3,093 killers who did not have a prior. Without counting multiple murders, the carnage here is at least 3,655 dead (3,093 and 562). If Hallmark was going to print cards, they would spend their money on sympathy cards for the dead victims families and friends. How many people are affected by 3,655 deaths compared to 23 deaths? We promote violent crime by not dealing with the underlying issues. Sex abuse plays a prominent role. " Abused state prisoners were more likely than those not abused to have ever served a sentence for a violent crime. Among male inmates 76 percent who were abused and 61 percent not abused had a current or past sentence for a violent offense. Among female offenders, 45 percent of the abused and 29 percent not abused had served a sentence for a violent crime." But, what do we do with sex offenders? Let's see: "Within 3 years following their release, 5.3% of sex offenders (men who had committed rape or sexual assault) were rearrested for another sex crime. On average the 9,691 sex offenders served 3 1/2 years of their 8-year sentence. Compared to non-sex offenders released from State prisons, released sex offenders were 4 times more likely to be rearrested for a sex crime. The 9,691 released sex offenders included 4,295 men who were in prison for child molesting." We let them serve less than half their sentence and return them to the general population. Child molesters, 4,295 of them, have molested children. Those children, at least 4,295 and probably more (ever meet a child molester that could stop at one?), are now candidates for violence. Violence has entered their lives and if they cannot absorb the impact, it will be redirected. This is a cycle that can be broken, but not by timid individuals who are afraid of violating convicted criminal's rights. Mine is a straight forward utilitarian argument with emphasis on negative responsibility. Spend your time and energy worrying about the 23 innocents and their families and let thousands of predators loose in an unsuspecting population to rape and murder as they please. Worry about the "morality" of permanently eliminating killers. Make sure that their trials are appealed automatically, thus increasing the costs, even if the killer doesn't want to appeal. Give killers a thousand times more consideration than the killer gave to his victim and then claim the cost is to high to justify capital punishment. Your argument promotes pain and suffering by ignoring the real numbers of violent criminals that our society has to deal with. We need something more practical in our justice system, something that will reverse the numbers of people in prison. Killing the 3,374 people on death row is a start, then move on to the child molesters and skip the sanitizing. Guillotines work over and over. Cheap to operate and very dramatic.

"How about, "nontheistic" as way of describing those people who do not wish for, or depend on the idea of, a supernatural order and being to live their lives or to give their lives meaning? Just a thought. It isn't a word in use today (in the OED, anyway), and lacks the sense of a decisive declaration concerning the existence or nonexistence of any particular god in any particular cultural setting. It isn't likely to obfuscate prior writings by modifying a longstanding definition. And, like "atheism" in its time, it (or another newly-coined term of your choice) serves a necessary linguistic purpose, that of expressing a new idea." I think Aquagem's argument for using specific language has merit: a scientific application to linguistics. Actually, that's redundant. The problem with this thread, from its inception, has been definitions. I would ascribe to being a nontheist. This option needs no augmentation. I was moving in this direction with my earlier post when I stated that I didn't play in the believer/non-believer game. The word god has yet to be defined by anyone participating in this topic, but living in a fundamentaly Christian society, I know what to expect. The proselytizers have marked my door. I have never encountered a wandering band of nontheists going door to door to spread the Nothing. I have never been accosted at an airport by nontheists banging tambourines for Nothing. Some things may be worth dying for, but Nothing has never had much appeal. No one knows, or can possibly comprehend, what happened at the beginning of time. Probably Nothing. To be drawn into an emotional maelstrom on an undefined topic is foolish. Bumab cannot be refuted. It would take a miracle, which is not part of my arsenal. I leave such things to my wife who is a every-word-in-the-bible-is-true Christian. We have quite a good relationship because there is Nothing to argue about.

I do not agree that murder is a moral issue. Viewing the circumstances of a murder involves morals in order to come to a judgement, but the murderer is always in the position of being justified in killing. In the murderers mind, he has the RIGHT to kill along with reasons to kill. If there is any hesitation about killing, it will be to assess the chances of getting caught. Spree and serial killers are not going to be rehabilitated. As a class, they have no place in a "civilized" system. Killers continue to kill in prison. Prisons are violent places because they house violent men. Because, we as a society, are timid about killing killers, we warehouse violent men instead of eliminating them. This is not without consequences. It is getting harder to get INTO jail. The jails are full, the courts are clogged and there is less and less we can do to keep violent individuals off the streets. I say, make room for the gangsters: kill the killers. Don't confuse morals with timidity.

The above quote is one way capital punishment works: it does away with repeat offenders. The current problem with usiing capital punishment as a deterrent is that it is not used soon enough, often enough, brutal enough and public enough. The concept of being killed for your crime is too abstract. Executions are more effective as a deterrent if the concept is made real to the general population. Shoot a law enforcement officer in Texas and you will die. Texans know that, so cops in Dallas don't have to walk in three's like they do in New York City. When a conviction is secure ( proven with more than circumstantial evidence and/or confessed), there is no reason to jail the offender for life. Prisons are a social burden. Better to unshackle society of the cost and use the prisoner to make a statement in the most effective way possible. I am confident that the American public would embrace satelite beamed beheadings on their favorite reality TV station. If every high school class was given the opportunity to witness such an event, there would be no doubt as to the consequence and action equation. Capital punishment, as it is so infrequently and painlessly metted out today, is ineffectual. Convicts rights (an oxymoron) should not exist. All questions of innocence should be decided/appealed/decided, then the conviction acted upon. There needs to be only one cell on death row to house the next execution guest on Saturday Night Live (which will become another oxymoron). Extreme? Unless you are very well off, it will take all the taxes you and ten of your friends will pay this year to house one death row inmate. If you and your friends could live tax free by embracing a speedy execution system, would it affect your moral dilemma? Would you pay double taxes to eliminate capital punishment? How much of your life are you willing to devote to giving murderers a decent life? We all share in the cost and I say there are better things to spend our money on, like space exploration.

Still, I am surprised too. I figured the ratio would be different. But 7 is too small a figure out of 500 members (out of whom I guess some 25-30 are monthly visitors and less than 10 are here every day). And then there are those of us who are outer planets and revolve annually around Hypography. Count my poll vote as NO. Like Freethinker pointed out, the choices of the poll are limited. I am not a "non-believer" as I don't play in the "believer" game: I am not a warmonger.

To summarize your responses: All of the energy that ever existed/exists is expanding the universe at an ever increasing rate until entropy (which is not only keeping up, but gaining) eventually snuffs out relative energy resulting in the "heat death of the universe". There is no energy required for this expansion: it has already been supplied to this closed system called "the universe". If the universe doesn't die a "heat death" it may coalease back into a grandmother black hole and re-bang ad infinitum. In the beginning, then, there was only energy and mass (a variation of energy) developed a few milliseconds later? Entropy is a condition of energy? The universe is a closed system of various energy states which lasts forever? Is this [universe] a perpetual motion machine?

Does the universe require energy to expand? Which law states that energy cannot be created or destroyed?

Time Stuff The Past Is an anchor Raking through the sludge of time Compounding the Inertia Of weighted days. The Present Is a constantly replaced Nanosecond, Fleeting And of no consequence. The Future, With the peril of happiness, Taunts fear and is shredded On the knife edge of "now" Exposing the fluff that it is. I float, clutching memories, Pretending My life has happened.