I just heard today about a 5 year old girl who lived with her dad but went with her mom for 5 weeks or something and the mother sold her into prostitution and the girl was raped continually until dead... 5 years old.

http://incognito73.instablogs.com/entry/5-year-old-shaniya-davis-whose-mother-sold-her-into-prostitution-found-dead/

This is the sort of thing that makes me believe in capital punishment. Also this makes me wonder about some peoples unbelievably low standards... or no standards at all.

What do you guys think?

Please expand upon the subject of discussion if you wish this topic to remain in SD. I'll give it a day or so and if you don't meet the requirements by then I'm going to move this to Null.

My supported policy for crime in general is extremely harsh punishment. Capital punishment isn't always enough. People need to know that if they do something of this magnitude, if they sell a person to a human trafficker, if they sell drugs, if they go on a serial-killing spree, that they will regret it. If I were head of government and had the power to unilaterally change everything, I'd make a crime like this be worth torture by government (which would be as bad as the crime, longer if there are more victims, or if the victims are tortured, etc) , followed by death. People just aren't scared enough. At the same time, I'd provide the police forces around the country with significantly more money (Screw keeping military bases in Africa or maintaining a fleet of hundreds of F-22's, this is more important) to expand and use more expensive (if necessary) techniques to catch criminals.

This particular case is really horrendous, but we must remember that the only thing here unusual is that it's the mom that sold the girl. These things happen all the time, though most of the victims aren't Americans.

I agree with Centreri, if someone has morals this low, chances are they don't believe in an afterlife, and figure that prison isn't so bad, and if there is a death sentencing then it's all over, if they don't believe in punishment after death, then they feel like there's really nothing to fear, something like this deserves worse than simply death.

In this case and some others, i believe that there should be an eye for an eye policy. She should be thrown into a jail cell full of men, just to make her feel what her 5 year old had to endure.

...don't even start with this.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Nov 23 2009, 10:18 pm by JaFF. Reason: Voy, please be polite

Fear of punishment after death is what keeps a lot of people in line, and as less people believe in that, less people fear breaking laws.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Nov 23 2009, 10:19 pm by JaFF. Reason: Don't get personal. If you see someone not playing by the r

Which is why atheists are well-known for the amount of violent crime they commit, right?

This is not logic this is something that is like a slippery slope fallacy

First of all, that "fallacy" often turns out to ring true, secondly, I said nothing to the extent that you'd do something like that if you lacked a belief in an afterlife, I said that it helps prevent you from doing something like that, it's just another moral barrier. It is not the key thing stopping you from doing so, it is simply another variable to consider.


Of course you wouldn't hear about what a tiny percentage of the population does, it's basic statistics.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Nov 23 2009, 5:18 am by Falkoner.

I'm not sure you understand why the slippery slope is not logically sound. I would suggest reading this.




Proportionally atheists do not commit more crimes than other demographics. There are also countries where atheists are the majority (or at least a much more significant part) of the population and they do not suffer from higher crime rates.

If you think your fallacy still holds, shouldn't prisons have less religious people?

If I conduct a P-value test I think I would find people believing in religious ideals more likely to commit crime. (or perhaps a p value test would not work?)

The slippery slope argument is logically sound. Just oftentimes, like any argument, people fail to make the connection between each premise and the conclusion. The "slippery slope" argument is simply a series of interconnected arguments, but if they correctly imply one another then there is nothing wrong with the argument.

"This type of argument is by no means invariably fallacious, but the strength of the argument is inversely proportional to the number of steps between A and Z" From another site regarding the slippery slope "fallacy", there are actual slippery slopes in life, it's not like they don't exist.

First of all, I'd love to see the evidence of that, secondly, a country happening to have more atheists and less crime does not directly correlate with the fact that there are more atheists there, most likely it's due to a more strict government, and comparing atheism to all of religion is a horrible analysis, since there are certain religions that teach excessive violence, for example, radical Muslims.


Once again, you are generalizing "religious people", not to mention missing the obvious issue that the majority of people are "religious", at least in how you consider someone "religious".

Cite a source or give reasoning behind people's belief in an afterlife being related and associated to the strength of their morals or the degree to which they are law-abiding citizens.

Or refer to post #6.

It isn't the key thing, however, my point was not that morally weak people are not religious, my point was that people who have no fear of an afterlife see the law as almost having no teeth, there's no suffering in their minds eye, it's not like prison is that bad of treatment.

Yes, and it's a ridiculously unsubstantiated point.

I know of a few people in my community that get into jail intentionally to have a nice place to stay. I even have family members that repeatedly get into jail when they are sick, or kicked out of the house, really down on luck, etc.

Stop taking my words out of context. That is really the only reason this discussion has come up at all.

Yeah, people gotta be afraid of the punishment they're gonna get. A threat needs teeth to it to work.

For instance:
"If you rape a girl we're gonna chop your dick off"
For that to work as a deterrent, someone needs to believe that:
1. Raping a girl will lead to them getting their dick chopped off
2. Want to avoid having their dick chopped off more than want to avoid the current punishment meted out to such people

On the basis of this, I propose that if someone commits a murder, we should kill the murderer and their family. A lot of people have nothing to live for personally, suicidal tendencies and the like. However they probably care about at least one member of their family enough for that to be an effective deterrent.