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Sam Slater wrote:

> Given our conclusions it's reasonable to assume there is
> something mentally wrong with these two murderers. They don't
> empathise with others in the same way most people do. Mentally,
> they're abnormal.
>
> If one's legs don't work as normal people's legs do, we don't
> blame them for being physically disabled. We don't blame a
> blind person, or deaf person for being blind/deaf. Why is it
> that if someone is disabled in a way that stops them feeling
> empathy (thus they don't give two fucks how others feel) do we
> change our opinion about who'd fault it is?

Because this notion of "we do not blame them for..." is ultimately one rooted in the Christian tradition, the separation of body and soul. However, in a more biological view of things the soul is just part of the body, and the distinction is no longer sustainable - not to say: pants. In the ultimate consequence the don't-blame-them-for-what-they-are philosophy leads to: don't blame them, full stop. (And on a 'moral' basis I am even happy with that, just not a judicial one.)

In other words, there is no soul to blame, and the concept of "free will" is undermined too. All there is is an individual who commits crimes, and is a danger to the rest of us. To what degree he/she is compelled to commit those crimes is a moot point: whether it's their genes, their choice of video games, their education, or whether they lived too close to a badly-maintained nuclear power station when they were toddlers... fact is: they are a danger to society now.

My personal attitude towards the death penalty: I do not mind it. However, I also don't think it makes one jot of a difference (regarding the safety of society) whether the state kills these extreme criminals - because they are compelled to what they do, and the fear of punishment won't stop them, if anything the fear of being detected. That does not mean that the death penalty could not make society a safer place, but it would have to be applied much lower down the disgusting-crime scale, and I see absolutely no sign that we have the stomach for that. The other argument for the death penalty would be to save money, by not having to pay for the upkeep of these people; that only works though if the execution is made quickly, without years and years on death row.

The main argument against the death penalty is that courts can make mistakes and an execution is irreversible. A very small percentage of errors in that respect I would deem acceptable, but the experience from the US (when DNA evidence was used to reevaluate decisions) was that the error rate was pretty massive.

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~Actually, it isn't. Wars are generally fought by the few, at the behest of even fewer. And even then one side is more than likely forced to kill in order to defend themselves. Most people who kill during conflicts do so not because they like killing, or that it somehow feels natural, but because they think it's the only way to achieve some goal or other. The majority of people don't like killing (either killing others or just having others be killed in their immediate vicinity) and this is why whenever their is a war you get people in their thousands (sometimes millions) trying to escape that region. If killing was ingrained, as you say, surely there'd be millions flocking into war zones so they can all have a pop!~


Yes you're right with the point that the majority of folk don't have it in them to want to kill, but nonetheless when the correct circumstances are applied whatever they may be the point is people can and will kill even if they don't like it. My point being that as untasteful as it is killing IS a natrual occurrence whatever the reason.

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~Actually, they have. Who are the 'billions' of killers? We only have 7 billion people on the planet now and there may not even be a million actively killing people. Even if there were, at present, 1 million people trying to kill others, that doesn't mean they're enjoying it. Even if 70% are in fact revelling in slaughtering other human beings, that's still only 0.01% of 7 billion. I'm comfortable in calling that a minority. 'Thou shalt not kill' is a general rule for all cultures I know of and, it seems, of 99% of people keep to it. If killing was genetically ingrained somehow, like eating and sex, I'd expect much more than 0.01% of people making up excuses to kill others (and that's people who kill because they think they have cause to kill, like for a religion, power, land or political doctrine.) The ones that kill just because they enjoy hurting others, or they're at least apathetic to others' pain, like the two in the story this thread is based on, must be an even lower figure. Of course, my 0.01% figure is just a rough estimate. Maybe it's as high as 1%....maybe 2%. Still, killing is a minority pastime, thankfully.~


I meant billions from the time we have walked this planet. Not just in todays terms, and yes most religions have a thou shalt not kill policy in some form, however tens of millions of people have been killed in religious wars through-out the course of history. So its a bit like, thou shall not speed, but everyone does.

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~I can guarantee that if we could get a few thousand children, young enough to be untainted by social rules and pressures, and place them in some sort of city on the moon, if we returned a thousand years later they'd have some sort of rule forbidding indiscriminate murder and torture.~

I agree, but again some within that would have killed in order to make the others think up that rule, minority or not again it would be a naturally occurring event.


Ultimately it all boils down to a simple rule in nature the strongest survive, thats all its ever been about, its plainly evident in the cylcle of evolution as you described, evolution essentially a weapons race albeit in terms of who has the best eyes for seeing the longest legs for running to simplify it in terms and it's hard for us as advanced as we are in so many ways to concede that we are still basic creatures with deeply imprinted crude motivations which we try to suppress.