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God would be an atheist...
A rational look at religion, morality, politics and daily life |
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Column 91: An eye for an eye Morality and the death penalty By © Martin Foreman Word Count: 790 words Publication date: January 7, 2006 Print publications wishing to syndicate the column should click here. Individual subscribers wishing to receive columns by e-mail should click here. Watching the grainy, chaotic video of Saddam Hussein’s death on the internet brought me a flurry of emotions that are only now beginning to settle down. These were, in roughly descending order, horror, fascination, disgust, relief, anger and sadness, reactions compounded as I listened to the CNN and BBC interviews of those who were present. Among the twenty or so people in the small, dark execution chamber, it seems that only Saddam and the unknown voice heard begging for respect showed any dignity – a dignity reflected in the final image of the lifeless dictator’s face staring blindly up at his executioners. Many argue that although the circumstances were appalling, Saddam deserved to die. He had personally ordered the deaths of thousands and under his rule hundreds of thousands more lost their lives. His only fitting punishment was death. An eye for an eye has always been a superficially appealing argument. It satisfies the desire for revenge and brings a sense of closure for many who have lost loved ones – whether the criminal is the leader of a nation or the man down the street who murders his neighbor. But an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind. It neither restores the dead nor dissuades other killers. Sixty years ago, the execution of leading Nazis after the Second World War did not prevent Stalin, Mao, Amin, Saddam and dozens of other dictators from slaughtering many of their population. Nor is the murder rate in the general population lower in countries where the death penality is still in place. Worst of all, innocent people are sometimes put to death because the evidence against them appears overwhelming. So how should we deal with murderers? Every society needs a strong and principled judicial system based on sound moral principles. These principles cannot be religious. The confusing, contradictory and hypocritical collection of edicts found in scriptures, which place a higher premium on the whims of an egoistical deity than on the needs of the men and women around us, are morality for the mindless and immature. True morality is simple and clear. It tells us to do no harm – a principle which allows us both to define laws and behavior and to deal with the lawbreakers. To protect society – keep us from harm – lawbreakers should be detained and punished but the detention and punishment should reflect our highest aspirations to morality, not the lowest. Above all, if we truly respect the principle of “do no harm”, we have to offer all criminals the opportunity to consider and repent his (occasionally her) crime. That includes murderers. Life imprisonment, or at least incarceration until the age of 75 or older, not only maintains the core principle of doing no harm but it encourages the add-on “do good”. To execute a killer is to reduce ourselves to his level of immorality. To help him fully understand the implications of his crime – or at least attempt to do so – enables him to rise to our moral heights. I would allow the death penalty in one specific circumstance. Murderers who had served at least ten years of imprisonment could choose to die with dignity and in the manner that they themselves decided. Protocols would ensure they were of sound mind and were not under pressure from the authorities or other parties. Yes, it is costly to imprison people and to rehabilitate them, but the costs are minimal compared to the amount of money we spend as individuals or as a nation on absurdities such as junk food or the Iraq War. And the rewards are so much greater. This is not the American way. The US pays lip service to the idea of rehabilitation but the nation has always been more vengeful than others in the Western world. Not only does America maintain the death penalty but it imprisons a much higher proportion of its citizens, for longer sentences and for more varied crimes. All to no avail. America is no safer a country than Canada, France, Germany or Japan and in many ways it is much less safe. But let us return to the man with whom we began. Saddam should have been jailed for life and offered him the time and means to consider the destruction he brought to his nation and those around it. It would probably have had little impact. He would have died unrepentant, convinced that his actions were justifiable and contemptuous of his jailers to the end. But while Saddam relived his megalomaniac dreams, the society which imprisoned him could have rested easy in the knowledge that they had succeeded where he had failed, not only doing no harm but striving to do good. Instead, as Saddam died, so too did justice and morality.
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PREVIOUSLY... "Surely no theist would choose to stay on this polluted, violent planet when offered eternity in paradise? Foolish me. It takes little effort to find articles on the web where believers tie themselves into tight intellectual knots in the vain effort to prove that delaying entry into God’s kingdom is something that God Himself would approve of." I want to live forever (not) "The fact you do not like something does not mean you can wish it away. I am afraid of violence and cancerous disease but they will not magically disappear if I do not believe in them. Reality exists irrespective of my personal desires. Similarly, the fact that Reich wants God to exist – to protect him from “emptiness, the disconnectedness…” and so on – does not mean that there must be a God." Helping stranded motorists "No further proof of an emotional response is needed than the banning of same sex marriage in the states where such an initiative was on the ballot. This was democracy in action, but it was the same democracy that formally deprived African-Americans of their civil rights for eighty years and informally continued to do so for another century. (Some would say that denial continues today.)" Who won? "Time passed. I believed in God but he did not return the favor. With no confirmation of his existence, the pendulum began to swing back. By the time I left school, I was an atheist again in all but name." The swing of the pendulum "People whose primary motives are altruistic - driven by outside needs - tend to seek out new information and change their attitudes and opinions accordingly. People who are primarily driven by internal needs tend to seek out information that corroborates their pre-existing beliefs. This has nothing to do with political perspective - both liberals and conservatives can be open or rigid in their thinking." Anne Coulter doesn't bother me... "Blood circulates in the body, the earth’s atmosphere protects us from harmful radiation, neutrons and electrons exist, DNA is passed from to parent to child, the earth is billions of years old and gravity exists. We know these things not because a few individuals proclaim them, but because thousands of men and women over several generations have theorized and researched and tested each idea until there is no doubt that they are true." Bill Bryson and the base of our knowledge "Let us suppose for a moment that Christians are right. That somewhere Antony is either beaming broadly as he sings God’s praises or screaming in agony as devils torture him. At what point in the continuum of life and death did his spirit, his soul, his personality, call it what you will, pass from this world to the next? In the final ten days when you could see his mind shutting down, where was the Antony we had known and loved?" Death comes as the end |
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