Author Topic: 4-year-old tortured to death  (Read 10941 times)

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Offline StarSlayer

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Re: 4-year-old tortured to death
I think we label vicious criminals as subhuman filth because one its has a nice ring to it and secondly because they are acting so far out of the social norm and we want to separate them from ourselves.   Are they really some scaly bridge troll from a Brother's Grimm tale? No.  Even a brief travel through human history shows that we have a massive capacity for brutality.  There is a nice short story written by a anonymous chopper gunner in Vietnam, Brutal Cannon its called and he sums it up quite nicely. With the right situation/indoctrination/training pretty much everybody can be turned into a wholesale killer.  That said i still believe in the death penalty because even though i understand the reasons against it the cold unempathetic bastard in me still thinks pedophiles  and serial rapists deserve a bullet in the brain.   I make no excuses. 
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Offline TrashMan

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Re: 4-year-old tortured to death
Trashman, I proved you wrong by pointing out that you can't believe in an immortal soul/repentance and criminals being sub-human at the same time. Feel free to style it out and claim that you were simply "asking "what if" questions and jumping from side to side" long as you wish though. I'm sure you can convince yourself if you try hard enough even if you'll completely fail to have anyone else believe you.

Who said I believed them to be sub-human? (depending on what you consider a sub-human in the first place)

But you're wrong in the belief that someone can't believe in a immortal soul and death penalty.


So let's talk about repentance. A severe murderer might repent..or might not. If he does, there's no way for us to know if it's not all just an act. Either way, for the society, repenting or not, nothing changes. The murderer will still spend the rest of his life behind bars.

Now, if you're talking about the difference repentance would make to the murderer himself - that is, that he might save his soul if he repents, and by killing him I robbed him  of the opportunity to repent - that another matter completely.

First and foremost - a death penalty is not instant. He would have time to repent - months, years. If anything, being faced with imminent death does tend to entice people into re-evaluating their lives.
Chances are, if he didn't repent after being convicted, he wont' repent at all. Either way he would have plenty of chances to repent.
Not to mention that God might consider after-death repentance for him.
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Offline karajorma

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Re: 4-year-old tortured to death
I didn't say you can't believe in the death penalty and a soul at the same time. I said you can't believe someone can be sub-human and have a soul at the same time.
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Offline TrashMan

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Re: 4-year-old tortured to death
I didn't say you can't believe in the death penalty and a soul at the same time. I said you can't believe someone can be sub-human and have a soul at the same time.

RLY?

I bet I can find you plenty of people who do.
Not everyone who believes in something like a soul believes in the same thing. I don't think it means the same thing to various people either.
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Offline Colonol Dekker

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Re: 4-year-old tortured to death
Not being human, and having no humanity are two different things guys... :nervous:
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Offline karajorma

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Re: 4-year-old tortured to death
Go ahead and explain the difference then.

I didn't say you can't believe in the death penalty and a soul at the same time. I said you can't believe someone can be sub-human and have a soul at the same time.

RLY?

I bet I can find you plenty of people who do.
Not everyone who believes in something like a soul believes in the same thing. I don't think it means the same thing to various people either.

I could find people who believe the world is flat too. Doesn't make them right.

As I said before you can't believe in the Christian view that every human has an immortal soul which can always be saved by repentance at the same time is believing that certain actions make you sub-human. If you claim to believe both you are lying and only really believe one of them.
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Offline Colonol Dekker

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Re: 4-year-old tortured to death
Go ahead and explain the difference then.


Well being human is pretty obvious, in my understading of the term at least.... Homosapiens etc, mankind.. That whole shebang.

Humanity in the most widespread use as a term generally implies compassion or at least a sense (even on a basic small scale) assisting fellow "Humans" I.E. helping an old dear across the street or helping a mum up/down some stairs with a buggy. Even allowing a an old lady to have a seat on the bus. Basic things...


Everything that goths and Emos give up in other words :yes:
Campaigns I've added my distinctiveness to-
- Blue Planet: Battle Captains
-Battle of Neptune
-Between the Ashes 2
-Blue planet: Age of Aquarius
-FOTG?
-Inferno R1
-Ribos: The aftermath / -Retreat from Deneb
-Sol: A History
-TBP EACW teaser
-Earth Brakiri war
-TBP Fortune Hunters (I think?)
-TBP Relic
-Trancsend (Possibly?)
-Uncharted Territory
-Vassagos Dirge
-War Machine
(Others lost to the mists of time and no discernible audit trail)

Your friendly Orestes tactical controller.

Secret bomb God.
That one time I got permabanned and got to read who was being bitxhy about me :p....
GO GO DEKKER RANGERSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Offline TrashMan

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Re: 4-year-old tortured to death
I could find people who believe the world is flat too. Doesn't make them right.

Doesn't make em wrong either unless you can provide proof.


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As I said before you can't believe in the Christian view that every human has an immortal soul which can always be saved by repentance at the same time is believing that certain actions make you sub-human. If you claim to believe both you are lying and only really believe one of them.

Oh? So someone claiming it to be so is lying? And why? Cause you say so?
Really Kaj, just cause you can't seem to figure how can both be true doesn't mean it can't happen. But again, it really depends on what you mean when you say "sub-human".

For instance, one could interpret it that some action can indeed sully your soul making you "less human". Repentance might clense that, but until that happens you are not clean. One can get really creative here.
Not that I necessarily believe this stuff mind you.

Then again, you don't have to label someone or consider someone less-than-human in order to kill him. Happens in war all the time. It all depends on the moral framework you follow (and what exception to the do-not-kill rule you allow).
If there's no universal morality, then there is no right and wrong regarding death penalty, now is there?
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Offline Angelus

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Re: 4-year-old tortured to death
I could find people who believe the world is flat too. Doesn't make them right.

Doesn't make em wrong either unless you can provide proof.




 

Offline karajorma

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Re: 4-year-old tortured to death
I could find people who believe the world is flat too. Doesn't make them right.

Doesn't make em wrong either unless you can provide proof.


I hope you don't seriously expect me to provide proof the world is not flat.

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Oh? So someone claiming it to be so is lying? And why? Cause you say so?
Really Kaj, just cause you can't seem to figure how can both be true doesn't mean it can't happen. But again, it really depends on what you mean when you say "sub-human".

Sub-human as in less than human and thus okay to kill. You know, the entire context of this discussion in the first place.

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For instance, one could interpret it that some action can indeed sully your soul making you "less human". Repentance might clense that, but until that happens you are not clean. One can get really creative here.
Not that I necessarily believe this stuff mind you.

Find me a Christian who does then. Cause it goes against everything I've heard about the religion. Especially given the doctrine of original sin and repentance through Christ. If you're going to claim that a soul with sin on it is unclean then every soul is unclean. There is no level at which you say "This soul can not be saved"

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Then again, you don't have to label someone or consider someone less-than-human in order to kill him.

Which is why I object to any attempts to dehumanise someone in order to kill them. If there is a reason to kill someone it should be able to stand up on its own without the need to do so.
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Offline TrashMan

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Re: 4-year-old tortured to death
I could find people who believe the world is flat too. Doesn't make them right.

Doesn't make em wrong either unless you can provide proof.


I hope you don't seriously expect me to provide proof the world is not flat.

No, I was speaking in general terms. In order to say someone's claims is wrong, you need to prove it. The shape of the Earth has been determined ages ago, so it's a non-issue.
Reductio Ad Absurdum does nothing to diminish the validity of what I said tough.



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Find me a Christian who does then. Cause it goes against everything I've heard about the religion. Especially given the doctrine of original sin and repentance through Christ. If you're going to claim that a soul with sin on it is unclean then every soul is unclean. There is no level at which you say "This soul can not be saved"

As I said - you can interpret and rationalize things in many different ways (if I wanted to). That doesn't mean that the interpretation or rationalization is right - many a crazy sects can testify to that - but it still exists.

And since we are talking about death penalty in general, how would that apply to a non-Christians?
There are other religions out there and people without religion.



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Then again, you don't have to label someone or consider someone less-than-human in order to kill him.

Which is why I object to any attempts to dehumanise someone in order to kill them. If there is a reason to kill someone it should be able to stand up on its own without the need to do so.

True. But then again, what you just said sadly remains only a opinion/belief.
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Offline karajorma

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Re: 4-year-old tortured to death
As I said - you can interpret and rationalize things in many different ways (if I wanted to). That doesn't mean that the interpretation or rationalization is right - many a crazy sects can testify to that - but it still exists.

You can pull crazy cults out of your arse that believe in all kinds of crazy **** but the point I was making is that no one you would call a true Christian believes a soul can not be saved.

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And since we are talking about death penalty in general, how would that apply to a non-Christians?
There are other religions out there and people without religion.

I wasn't talking about other religions. In fact the only reason I brought up Christianity was because you seemed to be making the ridiculous assertion that there were souls beyond repentance. If that's not what you claim then I'm basically done with the religious aspect. 
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Offline TrashMan

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Re: 4-year-old tortured to death
You can pull crazy cults out of your arse that believe in all kinds of crazy **** but the point I was making is that no one you would call a true Christian believes a soul can not be saved.

I didn't say it can't.
But not by me, not by you. How exactly are you saving his soul by a life in prison? If anything, such a sorrounding can be a even worse influence.
The only one who can save his soul is himself. And if he didn't show compassion or regret or repentace during the trial or the time behind bars, then chances are he won't miracolously start showing it just one day out of the blue.

Either way, soul saving is not the domain of the state. Someone sentaced for life will never be a productive member of a society, repentace or not.
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Offline NGTM-1R

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Re: 4-year-old tortured to death
You can take umbrage all you like but unless you can prove that someone committing a crime has caused a large scale genetic change you're going to have a hard time proving that he's no longer human. :p

Honestly, no, I don't think I would. But then, as I said more or less, I don't see it the way you seem to believe I do. The criminal can be or seem quite human. I accepted that long before I came to this conclusion. The victim is my concern.

Having met, in person, a victim of long-term abuse (this girl was pretty much trained into being a piece of furniture, and I am not making this **** up), and seen that they have more or less lost their humanity, it is not difficult to believe a person can be reduced to less than human status. Somebody who manages to fall straight into the uncanny valley makes proving the point remarkably easy. This is not quite tangential, because it proves the other point; you can demonstrate that someone lacks the basic instincts or morality associated with being human. And as the saying goes, it takes two to tango. An abused needs an abuser; sociopathy is a diagnosisable illness.

To revoke willfully and knowingly someone else's own humanity, in a premediated fashion, for no seriously defensible reason, is an easy route to be being diagnosed a sociopath. Sociopathy is more or less defined as lacking something intrinsically associated with human beings. It's not that hard a concept. Of course, you wish to argue biology rather than pyschology.

As I said to Trashman earlier there is a big difference between locking someone up to prevent them being a danger or even killing them in revenge for their crime and killing them because you have relegated them to whatever category (animal/monster/sub-human) you see fit in order to justify the taking of their life. That's just a big exercise in sticking your head in the sand about the whole subject. Instead of being willing to accept that humans can do really horrible things you want to relegate anyone who does something like that to sub-human.

On the contrary. Sticking my head in the sand is what I did before this.

You've instituted a false dichotomy. If I believe one crime is the result of being subhuman, I believe all of them are =/= reality. I am perfectly willing to accept humans can do horrible things to each other. We murder without premeditation all the time. This is deplorable, but it doesn't prove much about the person doing it besides that they have a temper. We go to war with each other. We steal and litter and jaywalk and start fires that end up burning down half of LA. None of these intrinsically proves very much about the criminal. It takes something serious on a face-to-face first-name basis before one instinctively reaches for the less pleasant explanations.

So yes it is a claim that they aren't human. And one I completely reject. They are human. If you want to argue that they are humans who aren't worth keeping alive  that's another matter but don't expect me to blithely accept your belief that criminals who commit certain crimes aren't human. You'll definitely have to prove that before it's anything more than an assertion.

Biology vs. pyschology again. But more than that, I don't really expect you to accept it, because I know you better than that. I do expect you to make a better attempt to understand it then you seem willing to. In a way I feel insulted; you treat my argument as if it was made by some of considerably less sophistication, and I think you should know better by now. This is not the first time this discussion has been had. Did you really think I was immune to the logic of the other twenty times?
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Offline Charismatic

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Re: 4-year-old tortured to death
No one offended by my statement? Pfft. An attempt at aesthetics ruined.
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Offline karajorma

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Re: 4-year-old tortured to death
Of course, you wish to argue biology rather than pyschology.

I would have thought the :p would have been enough to allow you to recognise sarcasm when it was directed at you. Evidently not.

You're basically trying to prove a philosophical point i.e what makes a person human. Good luck trying to explain that one easily. People have been debating that one for thousands of years without coming to a conclusion. Forgive me if I don't think you've miraculously arrived as a good enough one that you can divide people into human and non-human easily.

Proving a biological change would be simple. But neither of us were seriously talking about that. Proving a psychological change isn't as easy but can be done. Proving that said change no longer makes them human? You're going to have to try a lot harder before you can convince me you can do that.

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Having met, in person, a victim of long-term abuse (this girl was pretty much trained into being a piece of furniture, and I am not making this **** up), and seen that they have more or less lost their humanity, it is not difficult to believe a person can be reduced to less than human status. Somebody who manages to fall straight into the uncanny valley makes proving the point remarkably easy.

Again you're assuming your concept of humanity is universal when it most definitely isn't. If someone who has been abused is no longer human rather than simply a mentally ill human you raise all kinds of interesting questions. Would you consider a severely retarded person human? Someone suffering from a severe nervous breakdown? Someone in a persistent vegetative state? 

So again, I reject your characterisation of the severely mentally ill as sub-human.

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This is not quite tangential, because it proves the other point; you can demonstrate that someone lacks the basic instincts or morality associated with being human. And as the saying goes, it takes two to tango. An abused needs an abuser; sociopathy is a diagnosisable illness.

If sociopathy is a diagnosable illness (I've always understood it to be a grouping of several similar disorders actually, I think it actually depends on which psychologist you talk to, but lets assume you're right for simplicity) then if you are suggesting that it deserves the death penalty you are therefore suggesting we kill people we can diagnose as mentally ill. Now that definitely sets alarm bells ringing for me. But I'll wait for you to explain if you actually were suggesting the death penalty for sociopaths or whether they should be treated in mental health facilities before I continue down this path.

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You've instituted a false dichotomy. If I believe one crime is the result of being subhuman, I believe all of them are =/= reality.

I never said that. You've set up a strawman.

My entire point was that you wish to relegate certain criminals to a new category of non-human. I'm not even interested in discussing which crimes or which criminals you feel would fall into this new category cause I'm perfectly willing to say that the entire concept of a sub-human is flawed and thus none of them fall into it. 


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I do expect you to make a better attempt to understand it then you seem willing to. In a way I feel insulted; you treat my argument as if it was made by some of considerably less sophistication, and I think you should know better by now. This is not the first time this discussion has been had. Did you really think I was immune to the logic of the other twenty times?

Actually this is the first time I remember the discussion on the death penalty focusing on whether or not the criminal is human or not. I have argued on the subject before but never about this particular aspect of it AFAIK.

And if you got insulted because I said your unsupported assertion that people can become sub-human was a claim then you really should ask yourself why. You gave no support for your argument other than your own personal opinion (and still haven't). If you said that I was claiming that there is no such thing as a sub-human I wouldn't be insulted because I've not supported my argument either (and probably can't anyway since as I stated earlier I feel it's basically a philosophical point).
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Offline castor

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Re: 4-year-old tortured to death
Does one decide to destroy a part of oneselves humanity - is there a decision to let it go? If not, how can that be punished? I think that a premeditated kill is just the grande finale, it demonstrates a piece of humanity that didn't sufficiently exist in the first place. I think the emphasis on this matter is somewhat messed up - the primary task of the society should be to try and make sure that missing piece gets developed (before its too late). Of course, its a lot tougher than putting people down.

That said, it is clear that humanity doesn't have the wit to get by without killing, any time soon - but pretending it to be just (in any case) will only hamper the progress towards that goal (if it is a goal).

And yet...then you've just made my point in a different way. Once it happens it's too late, so they have to be dealt with somehow.

Humans are not killers by nature. There is plenty of evidence to support this, starting with the fact that most of us never kill another human and going on to the fact that even extensive training to do just that does not always produce someone who can. S.L.A. Marshall proved the point pretty conclusively.
Yes, exactly. That is why I said the emphasis is wrong - it should be more in the preventive action, rather than in dealing with it once its already too late. But we can't go and start to terminate people based on DNA tests or psychological screening... Instead, we should try to identify and minimize the structures and practices within the society (and oneself) which have the tendency to corrode humanity in anyone that comes into contact with them.

  

Offline Mars

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Re: 4-year-old tortured to death
I think a world where people are identified as at-risk sociopaths, and given preemptive treatment is an attractive one, but one that could easily fall into some more dangerous paths - preemptively eliminating the threat.