Alan McDougall

He means once you put to death guilty murderers, they cant kill again. I agree to wrongly put to death a person who is not guilty is a form of murder, thus it is absolutely necessary to establish, without the slightest doubt the guilt of the criminal, before contemplation such a final act on them. I would limit capital punishment to only to extreme types of crime, Such as an act of premeditated, evil with intent of self gratification, at the expense of a totally innocent victim, this is why I despise those who abuse little children, they have lost the right to belong to the human race and have become depraved monsters roaming in our midst. However, there seems to be a difference in approach by those who for example, might catch a perpetrator in their home, many people will take this invasion of their privacy very seriously and shoot the criminals without going into any dialogue with them. Thus is seems that executing (Carrying out death penalty yourself) an obviously guilty criminal caught in the act in ones home is OK, but for the state to do the exact same thing is wrong. It is no use trying to prove if the death penalty is a deterrent, but I have noticed that most criminals will do everything in their power to avoid it after the have been caught by the law and convicted by a jury. Plea bargaining is a prime example.

I will read your comments in future, but no longer respond to your insults! Of course I am always wrong and you are always right, you have "proved that to everyone by now" have you not?. Finally the subject topic was to establish if capital punishment was a form of justice, in my scenario I would not wait for the state to do it, I will do it myself , because there could be no dispute about the pedophiles guilt. You can maim them if you like, I will eliminate them like the base beasts they are. How can you state as if it were a fact that, I don't know what I am talking about" and you always know what you are talking about, by inference, what nonsense is that?

I have never heard of companies using polygraphs, I am very surprised to hear than fact, I am not disputing your comment just surprised by it. Are you not confusing deception, with simply withholding information?

Maybe the space or void between two object at a specific moment of relative time? Has there been any experiments or test to prove or disprove the Hubble red shift accuracy?

Humor can make a friend out of an enemy, but it is not always a good thing and has its place just like all other forms of emotional expression. Some people take debating much too seriously, try to show how much more they are able to grasp concepts than "normal people", they want to win the argument at all costs, no matter what another person brings up, even if it is valid and true, they try to counter any argument with their supposed, subjective superior logic.

The space or void between two objects!

Withholding information is a form of deception, deception is always a lie. I did some research on lying and if there were time when it was better to lie than tell the truth, and fund somewhat to my surprise it is a complex issue that philosophers have debate over many centuries. Most philosophers believe that lying is always wrong as is the case with Emmanuel Kant. http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/lying/lying_1.shtml Lying under serious threat In a prison camp, lying can be used to gain an advantage The reason for lying that gets most sympathy from people is lying because something terrible will happen if you don't lie. Examples include lying to protect a murderer's intended victim and lying to save oneself from death or serious injury. These lies are thought less bad than other lies because they prevent a greater harm occurring; they are basically like other actions of justified self-defense or defense of an innocent victim. Lying to enemies When two countries are at war, the obligation to tell the truth is thought to be heavily reduced and deliberate deception is generally accepted as part of the way each side will try to send its opponent in the wrong direction, or fool the enemy into not taking particular actions. In the same way each side accepts that there will be spies and that spies will lie under interrogation (this acceptance of spying doesn't benefit the individual spies much, as they are usually shot at the end of the day). There are two main moral arguments for lying to enemies: Enemies do not deserve the same treatment as friends or neutrals, because enemies intend to do us harm and can't grumble if we harm them in return by lying to them Lying to enemies will prevent harm to many people, so the good consequences outweigh the bad ones. Other types of lying Other types of lying Mental reservations This legalistic device divides a statement into two parts: the first part is misleading, the two parts together are true - however only the first part is said aloud, the second part is a 'mental reservation'. Here are some examples: "I have never cheated on my wife" (except last Thursday) "I did not steal the cakes" (on Thursday afternoon) "I did not touch the painting" (but my glove did) Flattery: 'you look lovely' Gratitude: 'that's just what I wanted' Formal language conventions: 'sincerely yours', 'pleased to meet you' Bargaining: 'my best price is £500' Generalisation: 'it always rains in Manchester' Advertising: '#### washes whitest'If believing the advert might lead to bad consequences - for example in medical advertising - this would not count as a guilt-free lie. Jokes: 'there was an Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman' Unpredictable situations: 'it won't rain today' Sporting tips: 'Pegleg is unbeatable in the 3:30 race' False excuses: 'he's in a meeting' Conjuring tricks: 'There's nothing up my sleeve'

Where is the mind/consciousness/awarenes of an end- stage Alzheimer Sufferer? I have long thought about exactly where the mind/soul/consciousness of an end stage Alzheimer sufferer, where the person has become so incapacitated that they are zombie like and comatose and for all purposes appear to be a body from which the awareness has already left, but cannot be diagnosed as brain dead. The degradation of the mind due to Alzheimer's disease suggests that the mind and, resultantly, the human consciousness is a transient thing.. Is the consciousness of the victims of end state Alzheimer's sufferer, still somewhere in their diseased brains? The mind might not survive without a functioning human body. Does an eternal soul live on? If the consciousness dies then the thing that makes you an individual, self-aware human might have already ceased, while your body cannot be diagnosed as brain dead. As the disease progresses the Alzheimer's victim goes through anger, rage, violence, depression, regressing to childhood, forgetting current life, almost living in a “past life”' state. as 5 year old child. as a teen or young adult, in random stages of this disease. We can learn from experience of those who are in the process of descending into the black hole Alzheimer's, which is probably one of the best source of information about Alzheimer's disease. A satisfactory solution would be of great help and comfort to the family and to those still in the first stages Alzheimer's, could medical science somehow find a means to establish where the person still lives on in the brain ? Is this one case in which active euthanasia might be a real option, to help the family looking on and the person who might be locked into some unimaginable nightmare. Speaking for myself if I ever ended up to all purposes a zombie like stranger to my beloved family members and friend, if I could I would insist on active euthanasia, to free me and them from further distress and suffering. An internet friend wrote about his personal experience with a friend who died of end stage Alzheimer’s I just watched a friend die of Alzheimer's. It took about 5 years and his wife is still recovering after two years of continuous care for him. One of the things that each of us will have to face is that there is no known way to prevent senile dementia. It begins with minor loss of memory as our older neurons begin to die off and not get replaced. It then proceeds until things stop working permanently. We have no way as yet to prevent this. Of course at the same time various body parts cease their function, which at least is a diversion. My guess is that the entire dying sequence that goes through one of the dementia, whether from Alzheimer's or the slower normal dementia, or from a terrible disease that causes a coma, or any other problem that denies function, will be about the same for the awareness of the person. I watched people with various degrees of mental impairment - actually, half a jug of rum comes pretty close to the dementia - and my impression is that the same person still lives in the shell, but is responding to new and unfamiliar stimuli. A quick review of people taking delirium chemicals suggests that at death there is an interruption of the flow of rational consciousness, does this happen before clinical death in the case of an end stage Alzheimer sufferer. Edited by me Alan, to shorten!

Closer, Closure, whatever like you say! I am fallible and sometimes the correct spelling of a word eludes me, you obviously used your brains and knew exactly what I meant! Address the scenario, I put forward in post 46 which I will repeat again below Lets imagine a scenario, where you have just arrived at your homer, unnoticed home from work. You open the door that leads directly from your garage into your living room and find to your horror two men in the act of sexually abusing your child who is just little toddler of 7. They were performing acts unspeakable depraved on the body of your screaming baby The two pedophiles did not hear you arriving, because they had put on the radio as loud a the could, to muffle the screams of your little child. Assuming you have a gun on your person!. What would you do? In this case I don't need to go and research "Closure" I would get immediate closure, while you would be out somewhere researching it. I would shoot them right there, this is not in cold blood, but out of the hot blood of righteous retribution. As far an closure goes, the victims family, of course never gets real absolute closure, because they will mourn, the loss of their beloved family member all the days of their lives. But in another sense there is a type of closure that the killer no longer exists and the can banish him/her from their minds. I would beat them to death, if this were possible, if not I would expect the state to execute like the inhuman monsters they are and get rid of them for good.

Lets imagine a scenario, where you have just arrived at your homer, unnoticed home from work. You open the door that leads directly from your garage into your living room and find to your horror two men in the act of sexually abusing your child who is just little toddler of 7. They were performing acts unspeakable depraved on the body of your screaming baby The two pedophiles did not hear you arriving, because they had put on the radio as loud a the could, to muffle the screams of your little child. Assuming you have a gun on your person!. What would you do? (I will shoot both of them) And the families of the victims of murdered don't have to imagine them been fed, getting good medical, living in relative comfort, with a television in their cell, all paid for by the tax payer of which they are one of. They never get closer as long as the murderer remains alive. If the perpetrator has been executed, they can forget him/her get on with living as best they could because of the peace given by the final act of retribution giving them closer at last .

Your experiences had both meaning and purpose and in my opinion you herd the voice of God in your mind much like a telepathy. People who have had a near death experience often sate that the means of communication in the afterlife in that of mind to mind contact or telepathic.

I cant grasp exactly what you are saying, you are right there is nothing wrong about challenging a theory.

He was a remarkable guitar player, and he could play it behind his back or with his mouth almost as good as he could with his remarkable hands in front of him He was taken from us much too early, he was a phenomenon that one only sees rarely, a musical genius of the highest order. Maybe you should pick up your guitar when he is around in the confines of your mind, and try to learn how to really play it.

I am not saying it is just, it is justice by the subjective laws of the particular society or country, that have them on their statutes. Exactly

Very informative comments, thank you!

Sort of subjective according to the laws of a particular country, state or country. China still executes people on a regular bases and many of those people would not be considered hardened criminal in western society. They use the corpses of the criminals they have put to death, as a means of obtaining organs for transplants. Justice for the family members of the victims and lawful retribution by the State according to the applicable laws in its Constitution.

Astrophysics differentiate in their definition of space and that of an empty void, they imagine them as two different things. As for me I also don't know exactly what spacetime really is, but the analogy of sort of fabric, satisfies me until someone comes up with an exact description of the reality we call spacetime

You see hidden meaning in my comment when there is none I know my mind and you do not what I was actually thinking, I just put it out as I saw it! The original discussion was around discussing whether the death penalty was a true form of justice and by carrying it out on the offender, justice were served, if it is then it is moral and ethical, if justice were not served by capital punishment, then this punishment is both immoral and unethical. I regret! that I side tracked the topic, by bringing up the crime issue in South Africa, but my family and I have been so profoundly effected by it, I felt a compulsion to bring it up, it has achieved nothing and I will not mention South Africa again in the thread, if the thread continues to generate interest. I want to move away from trying to prove that capital punishment can be a deterrent to those contemplation murder/rape etc!

Please tell us more this is the lounge where we can talk about anything, even the controversial, mythical and unexplainable!

Thank you! At last someone has the courage to state agrees with me that under certain narrow conditions, capital punishment is moral and just!

John no matter what a i post, you counter with some inane remark to side step the issue and show how advanced your cognitive capacity exceeds my pathetic one, are you attempting to suggest you are more insightful than I am? For once get away from philosophy and calling everything a fallacy, it is extremely irritating, you seem to want to put me down in full view of the forum, until they become convinced by you that I am some sort of an uneducated idiot. Please stop posting all these links as if they were gospel truth, most of them are not reflection of the real situation, and are the compilation of statisticians remote from the front line of the crime epidemic, which still exists in South Africa. I did not initiate this thread to get into a long and protracted philosophical debate with you, but wanted the issue to be addressed as a moral ethic topic, not get down the convoluted infinite roads of philosophy that lead to nowhere and achieve nothing. I used the South African crime issue as a means to bounce off the thread. we can movie beyond SA and return to the topic of the morality of capital punishment and if there is ever a case that warrant this type of punishment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidney_Cooke "Dirty Dozen"In the 1970s, Cooke and a group of pedophiles later dubbed by the media as the "Dirty Dozen",[1] began hiring rent boys and then taking young boys off of the streets, who were drugged and then raped and abused at group orgies.[4] By the mid-1980s, the group had acquired a flat on the Kingsmead estate in Hackney, East London,[4] which was also used for the torture of young boys.[1] Gang rape and murder of Jason SwiftIn November 1985, a group led by Cooke had each paid £5 to gang-rape 14-year-old Jason Swift in what the mainstream media described as a homosexual orgy.[4][5] After his body was found in a shallow grave by a dog walker, an investigation by the Metropolitan Police lead to the arrest of Cooke, along with three accomplices – Leslie Bailey, Robert Oliver[6] and Steven Barrell. Cooke was sentenced at the Old Bailey to 19 years in Wandsworth Prison in May 1989 for the manslaughter of 14-year-old Jason Swift.[4] Murder of Mark TildesleyLeslie Bailey had informed authorities that Cooke was among those who murdered seven-year-old Mark Tildesley in Wokingham, Berkshire, but Cooke's role in the murder was not investigated until 1999; by this time, Bailey was dead, having been murdered in prison in October 1993.[7] Mark Tildesley disappeared while visiting a funfair in Wokingham on the evening of 1 June 1984. He was lured away from the fair and his bicycle was found chained to railings nearby.[4] Bailey alleged that Tildesley was lured away from the fair by Cooke for the promise of a 50p bag of sweets.[4] Bailey and his lover, Lennie Smith, then met Cooke and the boy within the fair, before meeting a fourth man at Cooke's caravan. After Cooke gave Tildesley a glass of milk laced with muscle relaxant, the four men practiced non-consensual anal intercourse with Tildesley. After more muscle relaxant was applied directly down Tildesley's throat, the gang rape started again. Bailey stated that he knew that at this point that Tildesley was dead as he could not feel a pulse, but that Cooke had told him that he was fine and that he would take the boy home.[4][8] These are the type of base humanity that deserve capital punishment! Comment from a police officer on some of these investigation, " They are evil personified and as far as I am concerned they should burn in hell, forever, if there is such a place"

You are right about South Africa having the highest Gini coefficient in the world, poverty in my my opinion is one of the prime causes of crime in SA, but I am not sure if all violent crime originates from this segment of the population, There gangs that highjack cash security trucks, often showing no mercy and shooting the driver and any other occupant, in the back while they are running away to excape. In my opinion there is a a segment of the criminal, for lack of a better word "community" who qualify for the death penalty, these are the depraved repeat child abusers, who carefully arrange so called group fun night "Parties" where they gather around a carefully groomed innocent small child, each taking his turn to in abusing the little person they have captured, both sexually and physically, not stopping in their "fun" until the child has perished, in their presence, due to the abuse, they want to see the child's slowly die, because that is a vital part of the fun and sexual stimulation. I saw this a while back on a BBC TV documentary and could hardly believe my eyes and ears at the time. They then discard/get rid of the little body, as if it were a lump of used up garbage, throw it out into the nearest convenient place. To achieve their sick depraved aims, they must plan long before hand, carefully select or groom a child for their night of fun. These reprobates come from all walks of life in the community, they are often respected members of society, such as medical doctors, lawyers, school teachers, ministers of religion and the thugs that roam the streets to capture their prey. If you don't believe me do some research on child abuse by groups of men! These people have lost the right to be part of society and if anyone needs to be exterminated it is these base beasts. You might say Oh! no" then you are bringing yourself down to their level, it is easy to take that position when it is another parents child/children, but you will quickly change your perceptive in one your own children or grandchildren, become victims of these hideous pedophiles. There is an ingrained intrinsic need in the human psyche, for vengeance and retribution, and if anything will bring it raging to the surface it is an horrific event like I have just described. Execute them at the first opportunity

The statistics of murder during the early 1990's are skewed because South Africa was on the brink of a civil war after the murder of Chris Hanie by two while South Africans, there was also tribal conflicts between the Zulu and Khosa people during the transition period that was anything but peaceful. If Nelson Mandela had come out of prison spitting hate, revenge and retribution a civil war would have happened that would made the present Syrian civil war , look like a kiddies pick-nick party by comparison. People in South Africa were perplexed by the huge increase in violent crime after the free elections in 1994, we should have all been rejoicing in a new freedom, instead we had to barricade ourselves behind high walls, razor wire, and sophisticated electronic security systems, as well as armed guards on call for those who could afford it. South Africa is a much nicer place in 2014 than it was under the Apartheid regime or during the 1990' years of crises. However the state used the brutal Apartheid police, rule the country, as far as they could with an iron fist, and this might be a reason why there was less violent crime then, than during and after the rule of free democracy elections in South Africa, in April 1994. When I was in hospital I met a former prison guard of the Pretoria Maximum Security Prison. I asked him if he were ever in attendant during an execution, which was by hanging in South Africa, he said countless times, and to my surprise and horror he told me they never executed convicted criminals one by one, but would put up to nine prisoners on a large platform and hang them all at once, sort of mass produced executions,we were both in a psychiatric hospital in the city of Pretoria at the time for similar reasons of which I will not speak about because of the pain and horror of flashbacks. I wrote this some time ago and here I addressed some of the reasons for the crime epidemic in South Africa The walled-in fortified nation. Visitors to the beautiful land of South Africa are surprised after they get off the plane and travel through cities of South Africa They are amazed and confused with the maze of houses, confined behind high walls fortified by electric razor wire. The large beautiful houses in urban South Africa are almost impossible to see from the street. I think the visitors might think of the home owners as the inmates of a huge prison,while criminals are on the outside on the loose as prison guards, walking and prowling the streets outside, just waiting to pounce on innocent victims. Normal law abiding citizens of every persuasion are barricaded, confined, barred in and imprisoned in their own homes, out of fear from these evil monsters. This situation is bizarre and I wonder if it happens any other country.? The prime reason for the huge increase in crime these last few years has been the government's continual refusal to acknowledge that there actually is a high crime wave in South Africa It is a national disaster, needing emergency methods to deal with it now and not in the future. Soft interpretation of our liberal constitution,have resulted in the perpetrator getting off light sentences for horrendous depraved crimes that seem to be unique to S.A,. The rape of babies is something unique to South Africa with very young children, innocent woman, men of all ages and even the very elderly suffering the same fate in this epidemic of horror. South Africa has become the rape capital of the world. Murder is rampant throughout S.A and the killings are too often for the most ridiculously small rewards, such as a cell phone or R10 = $1 etc,. Unemployment and resulting poverty crime and grime are also major problems. Education must become a national priority. Overcrowding Of prisons are turning petty criminals into evil monsters. The easy availability and access to cheap street drugs and the easy access of unlawful guns to criminals and abnormal love of money and corruption of government which also them gives them power they should not have, according to the constitution which they ignore when it suits them. It is now almost impossible for a decent law obeying citizens to get a gun to protect himself and his family from these depraved monsters, while these criminals can get their hands on guns for as little as a $.1. The AK 47 machine gun is used against woman and children going about their shopping The Government involves itself in setting out petty ridiculous laws such as the ban on public smoking or forbidding teenagers to kiss or cuddle and these nonsensical laws are given more focus and comment by the government than our horrendous crime rate and appalling poverty experienced in our beautiful land. Then there is the unimaginable ignorance around the AIDS pandemic. By the government refusing to address this problems even sprouting nonsense like HIV never progresses to full blown AIDS. Sort of HIV is on Venus and AIDS is only found on Mars .This appalling lack of foresight and insight by the South African government is estimated to have resulted in the untimely death of about 400 000 people. These are the people who would still be living if they had been given the government with held antiviral medication in time. The desperate dying people were told by the idiot minister of health to each the African potato herb, mixed into a concoction of garlic and cabbage etc and other useless "STUFF" In addition, money must be urgently allocated where it is most needed, not to sports stadiums; high speed trains, huge unnecessary arms deals etc, as examples. I feel that given the national disaster crime has become, it is also a national shame and a crime by us and the government to continue paying the ridiculously low salaries to the police officers and police woman that offer up their lives for us, for this puny reward. We must, give our police a living salary now, sooner than later" when it might indeed be too late for us all. In this beautiful country. The hand of a gun and the loss of moral absolutes that comes with no accountability is sad and depressing, It is eat drink for tomorrow you die By Alan McDougall 2004

I did not "blame anything on the lack of capital punishment" "I am not trying to prove anything". This is not a philosophical argument, thus calling the murder of thousands a fallacy, because something happened before it, is nonsense and an attempt to highjack the thread with your own logic. You don't sit back, with your hand on your fist like the 'Thinker" and philosophy/muse about last night when they murdered my husband or wife as they were reversing out of their driveway to go to work. Or when he returned from works , as was the case with my neighbor who was gunned down in his driveway killed for the possession of his car by these callous thugs . Or when they broke into my daughters home, threatened to rape and murder her in front of her two young children, my beloved grandchildren at that!