BALLSY ATHEIST OPINIONS WANTED

1. Death Penalty
I am for the death penality. We have people on death row who have been there or years. Some even longer. Now I am all for making damn sure that we have the right guy, but we need to put a limit on how many appels an inmate can make. I dunno, make it 3. If 3 different jurys and judges say that you are guilty, guess what? You're guilty. We spend millions of dollars keeping people alive and paying court costs a year. I say, "Form a line." Next?

6. The war in Iraq.
We did the right thing I think. We just did it in a piss poor way. Bush was pissed at Hussain and so we went. That was wrong. But we are there now and so we must do our job. We don't have to agree with it. That's neither here nor there. I think in the long run we will have helped a country in need. Even if no one else sees it that way. My thoughts and hopes are with those soldiers. Thank you all for doing your job. I think instead of bitching about a war that we can't change, we should be supporting all of our fighters that are put in harms way each and every day. I have friends and family over there and trust me, they could give a rats rear end about why they are there. Just like me, they want to do their job and come home. I for one salute them all. I'm Keith and this is my opinion.

By the way standard deviant. You and I are now in a minority of two. Do you have family or friends involved in the war? If so tell em I say thanks.

December 9, 2005
Friday

Keith:

1. On the death penalty.

164 people exonerated by DNA evidence is 164 people. By your logic, they'd be dead now.

You're an atheist. You don't believe in the religious fundamentalist view, "Kill 'em all and let god sort 'em out," because you know darned well there's no life after death, and if the innocent get killed, there's no justice in that.

So, why give the state the right to kill people when 164 people have been found to have been exonerated by DNA evidence? 164 people is 164 people. When I previously posted, I thought the number was 125. I was wrong. It was even more than that.

Additionally, most of the people who do statistical sciences on issues like the meaning of the 164 people exonerated now infer from the fact that 164 people were found to have been exonerated. And I just read in my local paper today that a guy in jail for rape, assault, child molestation, and in prison for a long time here in the South, was just found out to have spent something like 20 years when he was the wrong guy; DNA evidence exonerated him, too, and the guy who actually did the crimes was out there committing more crimes! So that's what the death penalty does, Keith. You kill the wrong guy, and the guy who did the real crime gets away scot free and it out there still committing crime, and the innocent guy gets iced. I'd say that's not very smart. You're an atheist. Use your brains, man, because if you're an atheist, I know you have brains.

2. And on the Iraq War.

Since when is being a cheerleader for keeping the troops inside Iraq where they're walking targets "supporting" them? I don't get that, Keith. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz -- none of these people ever spent a day in the armed forces. None of them! They're great cheerleaders. But that's cheap, and if you were in the armed forces, you know that's cheap. I don't see how being a cheerleader for a policy of keeping these guys walking targets is "supporting" them. To me, that's only insuring they remain walking targets, Keith.

How is cheerleading a policy keeping people walking targets "supporting" them?

I think the people demanding they be gotten the hell out of harm's way lickety split are the people who want them alive, not the people cheerleading the policy of keeping them there, Keith.

And as for Saddam -- he had nothing to do with 09-11. He didn't touch us. He didn't go near us with a 1000 foot pole. The entire story was made up. You're not stupid. You're smart. Use your brains. You watch the news, I presume. The entire Bush cabal made up the entire thing. They're a bunch of raving liars and raving lunatics.

I'll keep picketing against this war, and calling for the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all troops from both Iraq and Afghanistan.

And yes, Afghanistan, too. Why? Because it was not "all" Afghans who attacked America on 09-11. It was Saudi Arabians, with whom the Bush gang have been in bed for over 50 years, Keith. Furthermore, the entire U.S. government -- Republicans, Democrats -- gave aid and comfort to the Al Quaeda during the 1977-1989 period against the Soviet Union. If it had not been for a bipartisan policy of Christian fundamentalist bipartisan politicians here in the U.S. supporting the anti-Soviet cold war, with the anti-atheist attack on the atheistic Soviet Union, and pouring money and guns into Afghanistan and building up the bin Laden gang into a Frankenstein monster, these people would not have come back and hit us on 09-11. I wish the Soviets had won in Afghanistan, because if they had, they would have shot bin Laden and 09-11-2001's attack would not have happened.

But it was not "all" Afghans who did this. It was Saudi Arabians who used Afghanistan as a staging area. And bombing Afghanistan was like bombing Palermo, Sicily to get rid of the mafia, Keith. It makes no sense.

The U.S. government supported religious fundamentalists for 55 years in the U.S. anti-atheist, anti-Soviet, anti-communist cold war, and that policy came back and hit the U.S. right in the face on 09-11-2001. That was a bipartisan policy supported by both Republicans and Democrats. John Foster Dulles even spoke of it in the 1950s as the foreign policy of the U.S. government.

I think the U.S. government was responsible for 09-11-2001 -- in the sense that for 50 years of cold war, anti-communist, anti-atheist, anti-Soviet, red-baiting nonsense, the U.S. government would do anything against the Soviet Union (with whom, by the way, the U.S. government was formally allied in World War Two against Hitler, from 1941-1945, a war in which 27 million Russian people died fighting against Hitler).

So I don't get your notion that support for keeping troops in Iraq -- which means, keeping them as walking targets -- is "supporting" them, Keith. Seems like that's simply keeping them as walking targets.

And again, on the death penalty -- 164 innocent people is 164 innocent people. The statisticians who analyze that figure of 164 exonerated by DNA evidence inferred that that implied something akin to probably 20 percent of the people on death row are innocent. 20 percent's a lot of people, Keith.

And if you kill the innocent, all that does is insure the guilty are still out there walking around continuing to commit crimes.

Doesn't seem very smart to me.

At least so long as someone's alive, you can still determine if they're really guilty, and if not, you can find out who is.

That seems more reasonable to me.

Best for now,
Allan

1. Death penalty - ok in my eyes. If you killed someone, let's kill you and not waste our money locking you up for 40 years.

2. I'm pro-life. I am also PRO- BIRTHCONTROL. People, both men and women need to use birth control, condoms, the pill, whatever. If you don't use protection then you need to deal w/ the results of your actions. In the cases of incest, rape, then I believe abortion is warranted.

I believe adoption should be the answer for women and men who get pregnant b/c they don't use a condom. Many many infertile couples are turning to fertily clinics and spending thousands of dollars making children, when we have children already that need homes. It's their money to do what they want, yes, but I just learned that some insurance companies cover that crap... that's just wrong. I don't want insurance to go up just so some couple can make a kid. Adoption should also be less expensive so good couples can get children easier.

3. Same sex marriage is fine by me. What you do in your home, isn't my business. Marriage is sort of pointless nowadays anyway w/ the divorce rate what it is, with the number of unwed mothers, etc...but if a homosexual couple wants to take the plunge, it's their problem.

4. Adoption for same-sex -- great. All those idiots who got pregnant can give their kids homes.

5. We need to get the message out there. I don't want our pledge to have the words "under god" I don't want my money to be tainted with "god" either. I still don't know what to do about this though. If we press our thoughts on others, then are we any better than the mormons going door to door?? Don't know.

6. It's a stupid war, but we have a stupid president, so what can you do?

1. Death penalty - ok in my eyes. If you killed someone, let's kill you and not waste our money locking you up for 40 years.

2. I'm pro-life. I am also PRO- BIRTHCONTROL. People, both men and women need to use birth control, condoms, the pill, whatever. If you don't use protection then you need to deal w/ the results of your actions. In the cases of incest, rape, then I believe abortion is warranted.

I believe adoption should be the answer for women and men who get pregnant b/c they don't use a condom. Many many infertile couples are turning to fertily clinics and spending thousands of dollars making children, when we have children already that need homes. It's their money to do what they want, yes, but I just learned that some insurance companies cover that crap... that's just wrong. I don't want insurance to go up just so some couple can make a kid. Adoption should also be less expensive so good couples can get children easier.

3. Same sex marriage is fine by me. What you do in your home, isn't my business. Marriage is sort of pointless nowadays anyway w/ the divorce rate what it is, with the number of unwed mothers, etc...but if a homosexual couple wants to take the plunge, it's their problem.

4. Adoption for same-sex -- great. All those idiots who got pregnant can give their kids homes.

5. We need to get the message out there. I don't want our pledge to have the words "under god" I don't want my money to be tainted with "god" either. I still don't know what to do about this though. If we press our thoughts on others, then are we any better than the mormons going door to door?? Don't know.

6. It's a stupid war, but we have a stupid president, so what can you do?

December 18, 2005
Sunday Night

Dear Kitty,

So, DNA evidence has shown 164 people previously in prison are innocent. Something like 113 of them were on death row. Had everything been made "fast," they could be dead now. Meanwhile, the guilty parties are still out there killing people.

Does that strike you as smart, Kitty?

There's a guy here in Florida who was in prison 20 years for raping someone.

The DNA now shows he was the wrong guy.

Meanwhile, the guy who did the rapes has been out there the past 20 years while the wrong guy's been in prison.

The guy they recently killed in California, Tookie Williams -- 3 (not 1, not 2, but 3) eyewitnesses came forward the day of the execution saying he didn't do it.

He said he didn't do it.

Suppose he didn't.

That means the one who did it is still out there.

Does that strike you as smart?

Use your head.

--Allan

I know innocent people are convicted. It happens. But thank goodness for DNA evidence... shouldn't that help prevent the wrong people from being convicted?? if that evidence is available.

2. I'm pro-life. I am also PRO- BIRTHCONTROL. People, both men and women need to use birth control, condoms, the pill, whatever. If you don't use protection then you need to deal w/ the results of your actions. In the cases of incest, rape, then I believe abortion is warranted. - Kittylittle

Kittylittle -

Hello! Welcome to the forum!

I am curious, when does life begin, in your opinion? Is there no room for choice here? Incidentally, birth control pills prevent the implantation of a fertilized egg, does that constitute abortion in your mind? It does in mine.

Thanks,

Tief

I know innocent people are convicted. It happens. But thank goodness for DNA evidence... shouldn't that help prevent the wrong people from being convicted?? if that evidence is available.

December 18, 2005
Sunday Night

Kitty,

Actually, no.

There's an article in my local paper, The St. Pete Times, here in Florida. It's dated Saturday, December 17, 2005, yesterday. The headline reads, "Filing error could doom low-I.Q. inmate." Here's the content of it or some of what I can fit here:

"Though the Supreme Court has prohibited the execution of the mentally retarded, a Texas death row inmate who may be retarded cannot raise the issue in federal court because his lawyer missed a filing deadline, a federal appeals court ruled this week.

"The inmate, Marvin Lee Wilson, has 'made a prima facie showing of mental retardation,' a unanimous three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals wrote in an unsigned ddecision on Tuesday, meaning the court presumed Wilson to be retarded for purposes of its ruling.

"But the panel said it was powerless to consider the case because Wilson's lawyer had filed papers concerning his retardation in a federal trial court without first obtaining permission from the appeals court, which he did not seek until a deadline had expired.

"'However harsh the result may be,' the panel said, its hand are tied by deadlines established in 1996 federal law, the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act. The same law now forbids Wilson, convicted of killing a police informant, to appeal the 5th Circuit's ruling to the Supreme Court.

"The 5th Circuit court, which hears appeals from Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi, has been criticized by the Supreme Court for its decisions in capital cases. Still, said James W. Marcus, executive director of the Texas Defender Service, the Wilson decision surprised him.

"'Executing someone who is categorically exempt from the death penalty,' Marcus said, 'would be new ground, even for Texas.'

"The Supreme Court ruled in 2002 that executing the mentally retarded was unconstitutional. But it gave the states little guidance about how to make that determination.

"In Texas, under a 2004 decision of its Court of Criminal Appeals, judges consider three things: whether defendants have 'significantly subaverage' intelligence, using 'an I.Q. of about 70 or below' as a benchmark; whether they lack fundamental social and practical skills; and whether they can demonstrate both conditions existed before age 18.

"At a hearing in state court in 2004, Wilson's lawyers presented evidence from a psychologist, Donald Trahan, who said Wilson's I.Q. had most recently been measured at 61. A 1971 test had measured it at 73. In 1987, it was 75.

"Trahan said Wilson read at a first- or second-grade level, did not understand how bank accounts worked and had trouble with simple financial tasks like making change.

"In court papers, prosecutors said the nature of Wilson's crime itself proved that he was not retarded. The Supreme Court's 2002 decision, they wrote, 'was never intended to protect capital murderers who commit execution-style killings.'

"Wilson, now 47, was convicted in 1998 of kidnapping and killing the police informant, Jerry Williams, in 1992. Information from Williams had led to Wilson's arrest for cocaine possession."

--St. Petersburg Times, page 10A, December 17, 2005

The last country who executed the mentally retarded was, Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany.

Does this mean we're going forward?

You figure it out.

As for the 164 who were found to have been exonerated, prosecutors throughout the country resisted every step of the way letting DNA exonerate these guys.

Here in Florida, the state legislature resisted giving a decent compensation package to a guy named Wilson Dedge, who spent most of his life on death row for something they figured out he was not guilty of.

All the people who want to "speed up" executions ought to notice that. But they don't.

Meanwhile, some weeks ago, there was another article in the same local paper about a guy who, as I mentioned before, spent 20 years in prison taken away from him that he'll never get back for a rape he had nothing to do with committing -- while the real rapist was out there committing rapes and assaults of women.

Barry Sheck, a lawyer with the Innocence Project, has beaten his head against the wall trying to get one ounce of honesty from cops and prosecutors throughout the country in the form of trying to get them to say, yes, we'll let DNA evidence be used and let the chips fall where they may. The prosecutors tend to be elected offices, and they don't want to let this happen, because the ACLU has estimated there's something like 20 percent of the people in prison who are probably innocent of what they were originally convicted of, and all these elected prosecutors ran on "get-tough-on-crime" platforms, and now, it's all coming out that a lot of the people they put behind bars, including for capital offenses, were not guilty. They don't want to open this can of worms, because it might affect their political futures.

So guilty people run around committing crimes while innocent people sit in prison.

That sounds real smart to me.

I would think that atheists like us, who are unbelievers in gods or goddesses or other superstitions, might also be unbelievers in the secular superstition that the prosecutors and cops are always "honest" or that the state is always "honest" in such matters, and, instead, we ought to be more grown-up on the matter, be more skeptical, and withold assent to this silly and childish and infantile notion.

There's horrendous dishonesty among cops and prosecutors.

I lived in New York, in the 1970s, during the Knapp Commission hearings on cop corruption, after the cop, Serpico, almost got killed by some of his own trying to set him up. The Knapp Commission estimated 99 percent -- that's 99 percent, friends! -- of the cops were on the take.

There were humongous federal indictments of the Philadelphia cops which demonstrated throughout the 1990s that they had framed up huge numbers of people, primarily low-income and black, but also including other low-income people as well (including an elderly black grandmother) on fake drug possession charges.

There was some years ago another exposure, temporarily, of the LAPD's corruption.

It's rife.

Just right after the horror of Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans PD cops were caught beating the crap out of Robert Wilson, a 65-year-old retired black school teacher with a 25-year-history of being a teetotaler (non-drinker) whom the cops accused of being drunk. This was caught on national television cameras, then later on, disappeared by the complicit and, in my view, outrightly whoring media. The media typically have a long history of whoring for this kind of cop behavior.

I got robbed several times living in New York City. One time, we caught the guy running out of my room, and the cops came and found the money in the guy's jacket and the cop held up the 11 bucks and asked me, "Do you want this?" I said, "Yes, it's mine." This was a Sunday. The cop said, "Well, then you're going to have to come into court and prefer charges." I had been sick and could not take time from work, so I gave up. A witness later told me he saw the cop pocket my money.

That's authorities' "honesty".-A

December 18, 2005
Sunday Night

Kitty and Others:

Again on the death penalty. I should have added something else.

I mentioned that atheists seem to me to be more rational people. That is why I cannot comprehend why some support the death penalty.

Atheism means, unbelief in a god or gods. That means, atheists lack the superstitious belief in gods or goddesses.

But why should we hold to a superstitious belief in the state? Why should we hold to a superstitious belief in the honesty of the police and the honesty of the prosecutors? Historically, police and prosecutors have always sided with authority, whether authority was exploitative and oppressive and persecuting, or not. Particularly when authority was theist, and persecuted atheists, or persecuted people of heretical religious views, the police and prosecutors have sided with authority.

I think in the U.S.A. -- and I'm white -- authority sides primarily with whites against blacks. I think they side with the well-to-do against the not-well-to-do. I think they tend to side with the native-born against the immigrant. I think they tend to side with men against women in a lot of cases. I think they tend to side with the different sex against the same sex. I think they tend to side with employers against workers.

I think it's not in keeping with an intelligent attitude to have this credulous or believing notion that the state is honest. I think the state is dishonest in most instances, and that's why they kill people even when there's all kinds of evidence pointing to the innocence of the people they sometimes keep locked up. I suspect the ACLU estimate of 20 percent in prison being innocent is probably correct, and even may be a bit too low.

I would think atheists would be the most sensitive types of people to this, because our types of people have endured religious persecution forever. Heck, the persecution of unbelievers goes back thousands of years. So I don't comprehend why some of us would support the death penalty. I would think we would be smarter than that.

If you go back to Middle Ages times, for instance, the police and prosecutors of those days sided with the established church-state-unified governments of those days against any kinds of dissenters in religion -- atheists or even dissenters who were religious.

If you go back to times of slavery here in the U.S.A., the main political propagandists who sanctioned legalized slavery here inside the U.S.A. sanctioned it on the basis of pretty horrendous theological notions they found in the bible involving the story of Ham, which caused a lot of these slavery-lovers to say, black people are inferior to whites and deserve being enslaved to whites. That, in fact, was part and parcel of the religion and theology of Christian, white, Anglo-Saxon, Baptist and/or Protestant fundamentalist Southern, upper class slaveholders in the period before the American Civil War of 1861-1865. And the main political propagandists of the legalized slavery system justified the legalized slavery system on that theological basis.

If you were a black person who escaped from slavery, they could kill you for that. They could hang you for escaping legalized slavery. They could flog you or severely punish you -- beat you horribly. And it happened a lot. And the religion of the slaveholders sanctioned that. The death penalty in the U.S.A. is the legal legacy of that period, just as it used to be, in England and in Europe, before the English and the Europeans finally abolished it, the legal legacy of the Middle Ages death by tortures. And all that was also sanctioned by the church-state-unified governments of the Europeans and English before the various bourgeois democratic revolutions abolished those unaccountable feudalist monarchies like the French monarchy in the 1789-1794 Revolution, or made the English monarchy from an unaccountable monarchy into a constitutional monarchy with the English Civil War of 1640-1649 (which period ended with the beheading of the monarch; the restoration of the monarchy later on came in the form of a very different kind of monarchy, a constitutionally more accountable -- to the English commercial and manufacturing bourgeois classes, that is -- monarchy).

The Americans never had monarchy and we never had feudalism. But we had legalized slavery, and we had a theology in the American Southern states like the one in which I currently live that justified this whole institution. This was the closest thing to feudalism and medievalism America ever had. And to this day, the religious far right-wing here in America has its core geographical basis here in the American Southern states. That's always where the most ferocious religious rightists have been. And that is also, by the way, the main "capital" of the death penalty historically. I don't think this linkage is at all accidental.

I do not for one moment have any sympathies for seriously dangerous criminals. But what seriously bothers me is, I think there's a heck of a lot of criminality right inside the authorities themselves -- inside the police and prosecutorial offices. I live here in St. Petersburg, Florida. I have lived here in Florida for 16 years, and in St. Petersburg for 2. In that time, I have seen stuff in the papers all the time about the white police officers shooting with utter and complete impunity and utter and complete non-accountability mainly black, low-income, unarmed civilians all the time, and never once has a cop ever gone to jail.

Furthermore, I saw the same thing when I lived in New York City, New York. I think there's an epidemic of police executions on the street of civilians. No cops ever do jail time over this stuff, either. Doesn't that strike anybody on this board as weird? A police state is, properly speaking, a state in which the police have the power and the civilians have none. That's the difference between the definition of a "republic," and the definition of a "police state." And I sadly and seriously think America is today a police state with fake "democratic" and fake "republican" trappings. We're supposed to be a democratic republic, but I don't think we are anymore. I think we've become a state in which the armed police can do anything they want, and get away with it, and get whitewashed for it. And the prosecutors are part of that.

I don't see how even good police work goes together with the death penalty. Take one of the worst crimes in the history of this country, the bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Murrah Building in 1995. Gore Vidal in his book, Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: How We Got To Be So Hated, interviewed Timothy McVeigh before McVeigh was executed. Vidal wrote of this in his book. Vidal is a very highly intelligent man, and, furthermore, an atheist and secular humanist. He concluded after interviewing McVeigh that there were probably more than one person involved in this bombing, but that with the execution of McVeigh, nobody would ever find out. So even good police work is interfered with by the death penalty, and people let their emotions run away with them.

Psychopaths deserve to be shut away from civilized societies. But I don't think the death penalty does anything positive -- anything. It prevents us finding the guilty parties in too many instances, and it horribly victimizes innocent people. I think it's irrational.--AG

1. Dead Wrong. Death Penalty is a hate crime by gov't perpetrators. I stand for life imprisonment for most guilty perps with possible blood donations, organ donations required of them. Stay healthy in prison and give a lung or kidney to save other lives since they took live/s.
2. No mandatory breeding laws. No parasite has superiour or equal rights to a host. My daughters, spouse & women I know must remain free to choose when or if they shall remain pregnant. Human ova are alive. Compelling one or a few fertilized eggs to be the object of court or political action over the medical health or rational freedom of a woman who just may want to preserve other eggs to be carried to term in the future when she is ready and not at risk and wants the child of one man not the forced progeny of an unplanned mans sperm is so barbaric, stupid and cruel that it seems just like chattle slavery, when whites owned black women for their personal brood stock.
3. Marriage is a promise. Love is a human right. Churches do not come first in personal familial relations, the parties themselves do. Theocracy is treason. Most one man one woman laws were passed in opposition to Mormon polygamy, not prevention of gay or lesbian lovers. This is just the latest racist bigoted way to keep entrenched politicians in office who care not a twit for equality.
4. Every child a wanted child. If the birth parents of a child are in prison or dead and no extended family exists capable to care for their own, obviously adoption by a gay single parent or lesbian couple or "two dads" is a superiour choice to some brutal fundamentalist couple who brainwashes the poor kid on how to fuck, who to fuck & forces religious lunacies upon the child.
5. We need to stand together, or we all may hang/rot in prison separately. Theocrats are our enemies. Enforce Article 6. End prayers to the flag. I pledge allegiance to my flag and to the republic for which it stands, one nation indivisiable, with liberty and justice for all. We are not "under" any single or collection of alleged deities. We are the best and the brightest. We are inclusive.
6. Stop the killing in Iraq. Tell the whole truth about British Petroleum and the invention of a country for oil profiteering. Withdraw our troops as safely and swiftly as possible. Put daddy & the boy Bushes all in jail with Saddam. Rumsfeld & Rove should be cellmates in Leavenworth too. Cheney belongs in a federal prison hospital, due to his cardiac status.

On the death penalty I am totally against it.
On Pro Choice . A woman should have the right to call this one.A woman and her doctor.No one else.
On Right to Life.I will probably get flack on this one. You have a right to life once you're born.
On same sex marriage.Its time has come. I'm proud to live in Massachusetts.
On adoption for same sex couples. They make great parents.
On Atheist Activism and community outreach. Do as much as you are comfortable with.
On the war in Iraq. A terrible decision made by a terrible leader who told a terrible lie.

1. Death penalty - it is not a deterrent and there is always a chance you will execute an innocent person. Retribution - this assumes that every person has the absolute ability to choose between right and wrong (very christian) in truth each of us is a product of heredity and environment.

2. Abortion - should be legal and rare. We can send men to the moon. Why can't we invent fool-proof birth control? There should be a manhattan project on this.

3. Same sex marriage - why should heterosexuals be the only ones suffering? :) Seriously, rights enjoyed by one group should be enjoyed by all groups.

4. Adoptions should go to those capable of love, patience and understanding. (regardless of sexual orientation).

5. I would like to see Atheists move more away from militancy and toward the expression of a positive ideal. Hence my idea for a moral atheist project.

6. In the future the Iraq war will be seen as the greatest foreign policy disaster of the American Republic.
The Iraq war is a con game; misdirection. It has the middle class so engrossed in the war that they don't notice that are being robbed blind.