Nobel Prize vs Proof that the Death Penalty MUST kill innocents

I will answer no more posts by you until you make your position consistent and clear...1) Are courts a viable form of enacting law and their decisions respected?
2) Is killing always murder, if not when is it not?
3) What is the difference between a soldier and a police officer in following out an order.and then...4) If human societies cannot make anything which is able to function, especially those things which are based on systems of rules created through thought experiments, how can you believe in communism which advocates the superiority of societal governed systems created through thought experiments toward an ideal?Once you get a firm position I can point back to and say, see you believe X, its a waste of my time. You're flashier than Shade the Changing Man.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

Yup. It has nothing to do with whether the death penalty is wrong or not, it's irreversible. So it shouldn't be used.It's really quite simple. The death penalty is irreversible, so it should not be used.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Sorry crash, you didn't have a mean spirited post, but you took up the same argument I have already dealt with and I was already about to blow my top with its misuse. Please take my comments with the knowledge that it is a result of addressing many that came before you as well. That is why arguing abuse of a system may lead to X, does not mean that the system itself is a failure. It needs protections for common to relatively extreme abuse, but cannot be said to be failure when and absurdly complex conspiracy manages to abuse the system.That is why I am pointing out that if one is using the argument of abuse, or "anything can happen", it will effect all law enforcment and not just the death penalty cases.In that case all anyone is arguing is some weird technical point that when a super-conspiracy of extravagant dimensions moves to kill someone, it is better that they use bullets during a police raid, or knives in the prison, than a gas chamber. You are not the first one to point this out and I have already answered it. Am I talking over everyone's heads or something?What everyone appears to be missing is that they are actually arguing the creo side, and not the evo side regarding science.Let me try and make this as clear as possible (hopefully brevity will not kill clarity).Science was originally wholly philosophy. Philosophy of nature. It dealt with a pursuit of metaphysics and physics, using rules established through epistemology. These are all big words but it boils down to figuring out rules for examining evidence.Modern scientific methdology, including this "tentativity" that everyone keeps throwing at me, was part of the long history of creating rules to apply to evidence.Tentativity does not mean everything is metaphysically up for grabs. That level of skepticism was reached by Hume, who as it happens was my major focus of study among philosophers, and it was proven not appropriate or reliable for scientific investigation.Yes, science really does allow for some certainty. It really did reject the acceptance of all logically possible theories from being entertained as viable. That is how all of us supporting the TOE are able to say to the creos and ID theorists that they are NOT USING SCIENTIFIC METHODOLOGY.If all science was based on tentativity alone, then the creos and ID theorists are completely correct. Indeed if one reads Dembski's books one will find he is making the argument that all of you guys are throwing at me and claiming is the side of modern science. It's not.This shows the ability of humans to create rules, that trade-off certain possible fallacious or biased results, for cleaner results. On top of arguing that when it is something as important as a person's life we must now use weaker standards, it is also being argued that it is impossible to create still stricter rules of knowledge.Yet I have not had a decent answer besides humans make mistakes and so cannot come up with rules for knowledge that are perfect, ignoring that we don't need perfect (read metaphysically omniscient), we need perfect (as in practically adequate for this level of experience).There is a point where we can be "certain" of a conclusion for scientific purposes, and (with greater evidentiary requirements) we can be "absolutely certain" of some things caveating only for the most extreme metaphysical or bizarre conspiratorial realities. The irony here is evident. So far everyone refuses to answer honestly the very first question I asked, instead repeating their original position. A position I might add which contradicts positions held by many in the Schiavo case, which DID go through the justice system and ENDED WITH HER BEING KILLED.Pulling the plug there was irreversible. Did we know she was brain dead? How on earth did we KNOW that? Did she really want to be pulled off life support if she was disabled like that? How did we KNOW? She couldn't be rehabilitated? How did you KNOW that? What made you 100% certain?It was the evidence, the level of evidence.Unlike here, in that thread certain knowledge was allowed. Physical evidence and scientific methodology was NOT ALWAYS TENTATIVE. No then I saw everybody arguing what I am arguing right here. That science can know and there is a level of evidence which we can accept as certain... even when death is involved and irreversible.Now here we are talking about prisoners having the plug pulled on them... its just as irreversible, and I've got UFO plots I have to accept as always plausible so as to negate the ability to decide to pull it. Indeed I cannot get people to even admit that they know Dahmer and Gacy were definitely guilty. I cannot get people to entertain a hypothetical and answer what would it take for a person to be sure?This really has pissed me off and I have to say really supports the creo claim that they get the raw deal. It was generally them defending schiavo, and the evos not. Can you not see the giant reversal of position here on the evo side?TENTATIVE does not equal absolute incredulity or credulity (hard to tell which it is when the lack of knowledge is based on accepting farfetched gov't superplots).I would be greatly relieved if one person would start the ball rolling on intellectual honesty and answer the initial question. I will rephrase it here:Is there any case where you could say you positively know a person killed another person? ...And/Or... Is there any real case in history which you can say for sure a person killed another person?Certainly someone who supported the schiavo case can say yes and give me an example to the above.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

Uh... pulling the plug was irreversible.AbE:Your cracker barrel philosopher routine isn't cutting it for me. To say "it's not whether it's wrong or not" is pointless when you move on to a conclusion that it shouldn't be used.Whether the "wrong" is the first premise regarding killing itself, if it is in the conclusion (which it has to be if it is "shouldn't"), then you have to have a "wrong" statement in your argument somewhere. What is wrong? Where did the "shouldn't" come from?This message has been edited by holmes, 04-13-2005 01:39 PM

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

Yup. What does one have to do with the other?

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

The life of a person was at stake. The decision to take her life was just as irreversible as the decision to take the life of anyone else, including a convicted murderer.The people supporting her (including her brother) made that very connection.The reason to pull the plug is that we could be certain she was in a vegetative state with no chance of recovery (well actually not no, but so slight as to be negligible), and that it was proven (it was certain) she did not want her body kept alive in that state.This "certainty" was determined through the courts using rules of evidence.Now I can accept the ruling of the courts, and I can accept the evidence. Heck for capital cases I would even want more than was present here.But you are claiming that for a capital case you cannot accept the ability to be certain (it is "irrelevant"), which you had to accept in the Schiavo case... and that lady didn't kill anyone and there were people wanting to take care of her!Saying "yup", and "it's simple. its irreversible" doesn't cut it anymore. They both dealt with the same thing, rules of evidence to determine certainty in order to put a person to death. They were both irreversible.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

Yup. There is no relationship between the two incidents. In the Schiavo case the courts determined they were carrying out her wishes. In addition, the preponderence of evidence indicated that she wasn't around anyway. She died long ago.In a death sentence case we are carrying out the wishes of other than the person being executed. Two different situations with no parallel at all.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

This is a patent case of disingenuousness. The COURT determined THEY were carrying out HER WISHES?Uhhhh, exactly how did that do that Jar? Through examining evidence to that fact, and there were people that DID argue the evidence was NOT TRUE. There were a number of people arguing (they had evidence) that she did NOT WISH IT.But the courts looked at the EVIDENCE, and made a decision which was irreversible.On top of that the evidence the doctors used to make their diagnosis, and prognosis is the same evidence that would be in a court trial. If we cannot trust them to be honest when a person's life is at stake in a court trial, how can we trust them to be honest when a person's life is at stake in a court trial?Whether she was actually dead "a long time ago" is not even real. She was not dead, only possibly dead "as a person" (meaning the identity of Terri) was irretrievable. Now I do believe that the findings could determine this, but unless you are going to become arbitrary you cannot say you trust the scientists in this case, but not in others (because those OTHERS might be biased or bribed).Hell we had people posting some accurate info on the bias of some of the doctors and lawyers, and there certainly were doctors that disagreed with the diagnosis! You can keep saying there is no parallel, but the parallel is quite clear. And I have already set it out. Your original claim is we cannot have evidence which leads to a conclusion of certainty allowed by any court if it will result in an irreversible decision.Now you give me that in a specific case where they did just that, its all different because the court used evidence to come to a conclusion of certainty, despite the fact that it resulted in an irreversible decision.And by the way, there have been killers that not only confessed but asked to be put to death. Indeed some had to fight their own lawyers and the courts to have it done.But I guess that isn't parallel either.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

Uh, well, yeah, I'd say that's exactly what it means. For instance, an absurdly complex conspiracy managed to exploit weaknesses in the American air travel system and kill 3000 people. Certainly that's the fault of the conspirators, but it also points out that our American air travel system, at that time (and arguably at this time), was a failure at preventing its planes from being used as weapons.The system failed. That was the conclusion of the 9/11 investigation; that's the reasonable conclusion from any observer. When wardens/prisoners institute their own brand of "justice", that's a failure of the system. When an innocent man is executed, no matter what burden of proof was met, that's a failure of the system.There's no system we can build that is failure-proof, apparently. Hence the responsible thing to do is try to limit the consequences of that eventual failure. It is accepted (I presume) that the execution of even a single innocent person is unacceptable; therefore that's the consequence we must avoid at all costs. Well, it does. Law enforcement takes this into account. That's why we have all those "Internal Affairs" cop show episodes. There's a process by which law enforcement tries its best to uncover miscarriages of justice and police corruption conspiracies whenever possible. We do the best we can; when we hand down sentences, we do our best to make sure that they're reversable if it turns out we were wrong.But you can't do that with the death penalty. So its not an appropriate punishment for the state. I don't think it's better. But if a prisoner shivs our poor innocent bastard to death, there's somebody to be held accountable. If a courtroom and a jury of peers sends a guy to the gallows and it turns out they were wrong, who's fault is that? There's too many people and too little blame, and so, as we see because this is actually happening, nobody's held to account. It's just a "mistake." I'm well aware we're using the creationist argument. When creationists use it, they're right. Yes, I'll repeat that. Their argument is correct - science does not reach certainties. And that's our response to them, haven't you noticed? That's what we say to them: "You're quite right that nothing is 100% proven in science; the conclusions of science are tentative." If you can't eliminate the possibility of those bizzare conspiracies, then what's the point? You still can't eliminate the possibility of an innocent execution, and isn't that exactly what you claimed you could do? Sounds like you've refuted yourself, to me.If you can't eliminate - totally eliminate - the possibility that an innocent person will be executed by the state, then we have no business executing people at all. (And no, your silly "hey, the state might accidentally execute someone" is about as compelling a possibility as that guy, caught committing adultery, who insists that he had sex with the woman "accidently", because he tripped and fell out of his pants and into her vagina.) If you could find a way to tentatively execute someone, I'll support the death penalty.

Yup. No relationship with a death penalty. I would have no problem with their wishes carried out. If they wish to be executed then fine. I have no problem with that.If there is someone who is convicted of a capital crime and their desire is to be executed, then okay. Do it. If later evidence is found that shows they made a wrong decision I will grieve but not complain.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Dude, I don't know. How do you know?Everything I know on these things is based on authority and derived information (i.e. not primary source information). Let me put it this way--if an all-knowing GOD appeared and asked me if I was willing to to risk my family's lives on whether I knew a single instance of whether somebody killed somebody else or not, I would never do it. There's too many ways the conclusion could have been screwed up, and I'm so far removed from the entire process, how the hell could I know?Anyway, why don't you outline your practically infallible system anyway? Your argument has two premises, and we're stuck on the second (we can have practically certain knowledge). I think the first is much more interesting (If we have practically certain knowledge then we can have a practically infallible death penalty system). I think you have to show us such a system in order to justify this premise....One more thing.Also implicit in your premise "if we have practically certain knowledge then we can have a practically infallable death penalty" is that the death penalty system will kill ANYBODY. Otherwise, we could say "Sure, we could make a death penalty system that kills no innocent people, here it is:1. Death penalty = death by lethal injection.
2. The death penalty will be administered to those with DNA matching that of the fruit fly."However, I argued in my post #3 that the original set of criteria that you proposed would never happen. I'm afraid of the same thing for your overall system for applying the death penalty. I think your system has to be minimally practical; i.e. outside of absurd / extreme cases, would actually be applied in real life.

Unless you are arguing for the cessation of all human activity it does not. Perhaps I am just not making myself clear.If you do blame the institution of "flying" for 9/11, then that is the end of it. That is what you are arguing for. Not fixes, not anything else. IF an abuse can lead to WRONGFUL DEATH then it is to blame and must be ended.Saying you must end all death penalties because that sentence is ultimately sullied by potentially ridiculous frame-ups, then so is every other human endeavour as they can ALL be perverted in this same way, in order to kill someone.Most certainly that goes for all law enforcement and all military. Actually there is to all but the most absurd metaphysical and conspiratorial possibilities. By the way WTC was not absurd. It was brilliant. Brilliant planning and brilliant execution. Not in any way did it involve massive conspiracies necessary to get (as an example of just some criteria we can demand):1) Several eyewitnesses to the event itself with no prior connections.
2) Having positive physical visual confirmation of the suspect at the scene engaged in the crime.
3) Having several other pieces of physical evidence tying the murderer to the scene and the crime.
4) The suspects willing confession and continued acceptence of the confession in court (which is not a soviet style kangaroo court).Those were a bunch of guys that studied how to fly, how to fight, and calculated where to hit a place once they got hold of planes at a certain time. That involved no one outside of themselves.The level of absurdity we are currently discussing are those claiming that 9/11 never actually happened and it is all a con, or that Washington did indeed create 9/11 with the help of a Jewish organization.Now do you KNOW that 9/11 happened or not? How DO you KNOW? A simple cop conspiracy cannot get a death penalty with a certain level of evidentiary rules in place. We can certainly make it tough enough that they always shoot people in fake raids (which seems to be what everyone is able to accept willingly and view as nonreversible).Maybe I should make that last point quite clear. Police and other law enforcement as well as the military have the right to kill you without prior court approval. They will generally always have that as long as you have a police and military (at least one that can exert its will).Their deciding to kill people is just as irreversible. Do you accept that? No see we're already well past that. I did not say we could not create a system whereby a jury could not be fooled. Remember we are dealing at this point with hypothetical hyper conspiracies where entire juries are bought out.That is about the only case left, and that includes all subsequent judges being bought out for appeals regarding the tainted jury. The only other one being that the judges and all the lawyers and all the police and the defendent himself are in on fooling the jury. Those are the two cases we are currently discussing, unless we start bringing in demons.Thus if we find out there was a mistake, just like the prisoner situation, we sure have some guilty people to hold accountable, because there was no "mistake", there was conspiracy.Certainly we can make a mistake proof system. That is what I said and why I argued hyper-conspiracies should not count as they can hit any human endeavour (theoretically). Sorry, crash you only got it half right. Do you understand what you mean when we say that to creos? Because from where I'm sitting it doesn't look like it.Do we hold it tentative that Gould wrote essays supporting evolutionary theory? See what I'm saying? Gould's theories were tentative, that Gould wrote them is not.Skepticism on the level you are now discussing was dismissed by science over 100 years ago. Yes, it is noted that there are metaphysical logical possibilities, but they are of the kind not practical to hold without voiding the concept of knowledge or certainty altogether.Man I love Hume and DesCartes. We can dismiss everything but that we exist... in theory. But in the pratical day to day world it is possible to achieve practical knowledge. That is your foot, for all practical purposes your wife exists, and yes sometimes you can know for certain someone killed somebody else.Scientific theories are generally about things that do not reach, cannot reach, that level of absolute certainty and thus have a tentative nature. Yet even with that tentative nature we allow cleaving of some possibilities for practical purposes. Some will never be entertained.I do not see why a court system must be weakened so greatly in reason, that we must throw out rules of knowledge to insist courts entertain the greatest of absurdities as equal to what is practical certain knowledge. Funny but this thread was how to build a system and yet everyone, including you refuse to take even the first step.But no I never said I could come up with something absolutely capable of defeating hyper-conspiracies and Gods. No one can. But at that level having jail sentences at all or having cops at all is as good as allowing the death sentence for all crimes.All I claimed is that humans could come up with a system to exclude innocent people from being executed. That means mistakes. Everyone seems to miss the point that they are talking about REPLACING the system we could have with something else.Yeah, I can't defeat that one. Yeah that's pretty silly. So why are you guys insisting that I have to accept that rationale? That is YOUR logical position, not mine.If we have rules in place, a SYSTEM of rules in place... and that SYSTEM is NOT BOUGHT OUT OR REPLACED THROUGH VAST CONSPIRACY, or GODS have NOT TRICKED US ALL... then that system can preclude innocent people ending up on death row.Claiming otherwise is as farcical as saying a system without a death penalty can accidentally kill someone. Wow great little zinger. Note for future post, you missed:
1) Addressing my straightforward question regarding knowledge
2) Addressing the schiavo case.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

You have suddenly become very dull. Congratulations, you have finally admitted to something and agreed with me (I win). The fact that you tacked on that it could still be wrong just made you that much duller.For the future, could you please stay out of threads I start if you have no intention of making a positive contribution.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

I'm sorry I have been unable to make myself understod by you. But I see a clear distinction between the death penalty and the other examples you have brought up.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Look, I guess I just don't get it. Your system that excludes innocent people from being executed allows for mistakes? Huh?Like I said, I just don't get it. This seems like such a rational position that its ludicrous to see you disagree with it. If its always unacceptable for a state to wrongly execute someone, then we have to ensure that never happens. Thus, the death penalty must be eliminated.This just doesn't seem to be refutable to me. It's iron-clad. The only disagreement possible for reasonable individuals is with the first assumption - that its never ok to allow the state to wrongly execute someone. If you believe that, sometimes, its ok for the state to wrongly execute someone, like in the case where despite the man being innocent, an astronomical burden of evidence has been met, then I guess we can discuss that.But there's simply no disputing that a human system of justice that allows the death penalty is going to lead to people being executed for crimes that they did not, in reality, commit. You haven't, as far as I can see, disputed that. So what are we arguing about?