http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/10/22/georgia.landfill.body/index.html

Just wanted to discuss this issue, Its just crazy that this kind of stuff happens. I just don't understand how we could let things like this happen a little girl that was 7 was murdered and dumped in a landfill!

1) What should we start doing to stop things like this.
2) Should the parents be blamed by allowing their 7 year old walk home alone, I mean really she was in Second grade and she was walking home alone, what has happened to our morals in America! I know if i was a parent I wouldn't even think about letting my kid walk alone at this age.
3) desensitized, have we let our generation get too bad? I mean really I couldn't imagine anyone able to kill a cute little girl like that, and then when it does happen its plastered all over the media!

Discuss I personally think everything about this situation is just wrong.

Just the other day my friend was on facebook and there was a video of someones head being split opened, I didn't watch it but it had thousands of views have we just gone to far, where have our hearts gone!

Reducing this sort of crime throughout the US is extremely difficult to do through conventional means, and would require vastly more police officers or comprehensive crime-reporting agencies, and even that won't be perfect. My own, cheap, non-perfect approach would be first and foremost to greatly increase consequences if you're caught. If a criminal who does this knows that he will be tortured for days if convicted of the crime and killed in a gut-wrenching way, and if the means of torture are made public for him to ponder on, this crime-rate will drop. I'm not saying that torture should be used for everything - for thievery, it's obviously too harsh - but I think that in many cases the punishments should be several times stricter than they currently are.

Anyway, without going off-topic into something like my proposition, I don't think there's much to discuss here.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Oct 22 2009, 7:53 pm by Centreri.

This is one of the effects of sin on society. As countries become less christian, they become more depraved.
Most of you don't agree with me though, so I won't say anymore religioun-wise in this topic (probably )

I agree with you, but the part I don't understand is why people can't just have good morals, They have to be in religion to be a good person, This makes no sense to me why a country would even let something get this far. Something has to be done, there should never be anyone who could kill a little girl and still be able to live with them self's. We have to do something to stop this before it gets too far out of our reach, I personally think that its that we let our generation get too desensitized. I mean you can go to a website that just shows people getting killed, something like that should never of been created, peoples memories are destroyed because of it and no one cares.

I actually somewhat agree that a religious society would have less crimes of this type, but this, again, comes back to my punishment point - Christians believe that the'll be tortured for an eternity in the afterlife if they do something like that. The equivalent in a secular society would be harsh punishment.

Ashamed, to your point 2: Why the hell would it be the parents fault? You're saying that this couldn't have happened to a grown-up, or a teenager? The only difference is that the media grabs onto it if it's a child, because that captures the publics imagination and causes disbelief of the sort you're expressing. I would say that these crimes are probably far rarer than their equivalents for adults, but I don't have the statistics for that.

To your point three: Every generation thinks that there's something wrong with the next one. The population is, again, fine. There are outcasts and psychopaths in every generation, and there have been for quite a while. You're not one of them, so, of course, you couldn't kill a seven-year-old girl, just like you hopefully couldn't kill a twenty-year-old man. It's plastered in the media because in America's capitalistic society, money is everything, and a story like this is likely to get viewer attention - like yours, expressed here. Capitalism is an orgy where people would do anything for money. Fox, CNN and whatever, they need your views. It's that simple. In my 'utopian' socialistic society, I would definitely not let the media try to grab attention using stories like this.

As for the view of someone's head being split, what, that's new? Two hundred years ago, people were public hung and had their heads cut off. I think this is a definite improvement. Also, that video is probably fake or illegal, as I'm pretty sure that it's illegal to show gore like that on the interwebs (ESPECIALLY if the person is still alive - jesus), especially on a public networking website like Facebook.

Why is this topic turning into a religious topic? Even religion has their own fault, and apparently there are people who became psychopaths from religion, telling people "God told me so" for the reason. In my opinion, the more brutal technology becomes, the less brutal the human society is; the more thought into research, math, and science into society, the less thought of one being religious. And history can say that. Before the 20th Century, there are many people who care less about anyone else except their family, friends, and well known people. And also, Georgia is 70% Protestant, and with Florida being 48%.

And to be on topic: the amount of cruelty in the world will still exist, and it definitely sucks. Situations like these, a 7-year old Floridian girl's body found in Georgian landfill is sick. And I agree, it just sucks.

How does religion give people morals? The only thing that religion does it displays but the actual PERSON has to go by these morals. So religion doesn't even matter when you come right down to it.

[/offtopic]

What can really be said? I don't find this topic to be much of a serious discussion at all to be honest. I just see it leading into another off topic debate of morals and religion when people actually forget that none of that matters. It's a 7 year old that was murdered. It's also not the first time.

You can't stop this kind of thing. That's the basis of it.
And are you kidding? During the medieval ages (basically the "golden age" of widespread Christianity) there was horrible depravity. Rape occurred fairly often compared to now. Women and minorities had no rights. There was a king who was killed in a 'humorous' way by shoving hot coals up his ass. (He was gay, and his executors thought they were quite clever.)

You kidding? That was the dark ages of Christianity, the golden age has been from appoximately the last 500 years. More recently, it's been backsliding in western countries generally, but increasing in china, india, and 3rd world countries. I'm not sure about places like russia.

A girl the age of seven should be ever unattended except when using the bathroom. Even in this situation, a parent should be standing outside of the stall waiting for their child. Letting a seven year old girl walk home from school is just asking for it. I want to beat the mother as much as the mother wants to beat the offender as much as I want to beat the offender. I'm definitely not blaming this on the mother or the parents: In the book Night by Elie Wiesel, there comes a part when he becomes angry at his father, while in a Nazi concentration camp, for not avoiding the wrath of some sort of German officer, instead of becoming angry at the officer himself. I won't make the same judgement mistake as the narrator of Night did, although, I definitely disagree with how the mother let her child walk home, just as Elie would disagree with his father not avoiding the officer.

About doing what we can do? Well, there isn't anything I myself can do. The next time your friend or relative is letting a small child walk home alone unattended, smack them upside the head. Prevention is the #1 cure for all infectious diseases, and accidents, and murderings.

Are the morals of society becoming degraded? I think not. In the medieval ages violence was rather rampant, sicknesses ran crazy since there were no precautionary actions, and rape occurred all the time. Terrible things have been happening as long as people have been keeping records, violence isn't anything new. Once people of the present actually see some sort of disturbing image or experience something terrible, they automatically assume that what they are feeling is much worse than what has been felt in the past. It is a natural thing to do, as when people, in general, learn about the past they aren't affected as deeply or harshly than when a certain event actually influences someone's life, directly, in the present time. This coincides with a little saying that I like to spout every now and then: "Things that happen now can seem very large and important, often times this is only because you are so dang close to the object." This can apply to terrible events that befall upon people in general; when someone experiences an event it is more likely to have an effect on the person than when the person just hears about a terrible experience from someone else, or when they think back to past experiences of their own.

In my criminology class, I learned that religion actually increases crime. A study was shown that there were more criminals who came from a religious background rather than a non religious background.

I use to walk home when I was 7 and It felt pretty safe. This could have happened to anyone anywhere. The media has blown it out of proportions.

I have doubts on the validity of your 'study', as I doubt it studied the entire world- and because I doubt it studied every religion. For all you could know, it could be just a 'background', and not religious- or stated religious right after the person commited a crime after feeling a handful of remorse and such and such. Criminology? What a joke.

She had siblings with her, but decided that she run off by herself. As far as the parents were concerned, she wasn't alone.

To ad hominem a field of study almost sounds like you have nothing valid to say. Even if it is just background it is a claim that religious atmosphere has an effect on a person.

http://bhascience.blogspot.com/2009/06/atheist-nations-are-more-peaceful.html

Did you read the comments below? Even the atheists there say it just feels right, but doesn't actually prove anything.

Also, the top ten countries have relatively low populations, except for Japan. Several of those have required military service. Nobody has any reason to attack those countries(except for Japan. Nobody attacks Japan because they don't want to drive Chinese cars xD)
because those countries are small, and not worth attacking, especially as most of their militaries pwn. So wars aren't really valid.
Crimes aren't valid either, as those countries all have too low populations to compare to, say, the US.

So the guy's statistics aren't useful in the first place.

Even if they were, it doesn't show that religion CAUSES violence, only that there are more Christians in violent places. This has basically held true over the ages. For example, during the roman empire, when christianity was highly persecuted, Christianity boomed incredibly fast. It's different for Islam, but similiar for eastern religions IIRC.

Again, as already stated, the studies merely show that the criminals came from a religious background, but I highly doubt that many were religious at the time of the crime.

Maybe a better way to put it is that people from religious backgrounds that reject their religion are more inclined to be as bad as possible (by committing crimes).

If you reject a religion, you are most likely to be agnostic or atheist but the website shows data is saying religion has a correlation (but not causation) with violent nations.
Why would you suddenly change beliefs before a crime? Most people never change beliefs.

It is done in percentages so population does not matter. A peaceful nation will have a higher PERCENTAGE of Atheists then compared to a violent nation.
To bridge this with the real topic I will say that the girl would have less chance of being attacked in a place with more irreligious people because apperently Georgia has a heavily Protestant population.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Oct 23 2009, 9:54 am by MasterJohnny.

The problem about religion surveys is that there is always a bias stance. People don't do it because they are generally interested in the facts, they do it because they are trying to say religion is either good or bad. Anyone can find bad/good out of anything if that's what they are looking for.
either they pick country's where they know it will show them the facts they want, its way easy to do this.

MasterJohnny, thank you for your kind words- and now I shall refute your claims with the following.
1. You cannot ad hominem a study. Ad hominem literally means 'Against a person' or 'Against man'. Study is not a man, nor have I insulted your characteristics. Not to mention the fact that you were the one with fallacy of ad hominem.
2. The information you're posting is not a common knowledge. If you want to make us believe an already controversial subject, then you must first present specific statistics and a specific 'study' which your statement it correlates with. Following 'religion' to 'crime rates'.
3. Following posts are links that say otherwise to your claims. It says religion has negligible to no effect on crime rates.
http://ideas.repec.org/a/ucp/jlawec/y2006v49i1p147-72.html
http://law.jrank.org/pages/1940/Religion-Crime--Hellfire-Delinquency-beyond.html
4. Also your link, studies, and claim are all suffering from the fallacy of hasty generalization.
You cannot go from 'Christianity' to 'Religion', nor can you go from 'Religion' to 'Christianity'. It is because if it is generalized like this, it is bound to suffer from bias. You must conduct individual studies of different regions and different religions to retain validity of your claims- in which a generalization like yours is obviously and logically false.
Plus to be a valid study, there must be a logical link between religion and 'peacefulness'. Your link lacks one, therefore making it invalid.
5. You are making additional, and possibly false claims from inadequate information. A statistic does not mean 'it always will' for every region, and for every ethnicity. It just means it generally is- and may vary largely with region and ethnicity.

And because of the already beautiful studies and huge articles with abundance of evidence states religion has no effect on crime rates, I shall just consider your statements all false and its validity, nil.

Also, on topic? I don't really have anything to say but Oh really? Thats too bad for that 7 year old girl. But shes just another hapless girl of thousand people in a day. Oh well.

Perfect that's exactly what I was saying! You hit it right on the nail!
Good job!!!
I 100 percent agree with you.

The only reason that a higher amount of criminals come from religious background is because there is a higher population that is religious, and if since there is a larger pool of people who are religious that can become criminals than there is a pool of non-religious people that can become criminals, there will always be more criminals with religious backgrounds than non-religious criminals.

For the record, if you can say that religion is a method that will decrease crime or make people into 'better human beings', stop kidding yourself.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religions_by_country
To validify Norm's claims, United States population % of Christians is 78%.