carepov

Agreed. Obviously the USA is a civilized society and so is China. I am sure that one day humans will look back at 2014 and ask, "how could such a civilized society support the death penalty?".

One way to distinguish barbarism and civilization is the use of violence. The more civilized the society the less it would resort to the use violence, unless it is the last resort. Another quality of civilization is the use of reason and the restraint of barbaric primitive emotions such as vengeance. On both counts, all else being equal, a society with capital punishment is clearly less civilized than one without.

It seems so obvious... and yet... Why is that?

1) Says who? 2) I disagree and so do many families of murder victims.

Here's a couple of good reasons for not executing a known killer: 1. Killing is wrong (except in self defence) and two wrongs don't make a right 2. The death penalty lessens the value of life in society I can't think of any good reasons to support the death penalty.

1. There is no perfect justice system. There were and will always be mistakes where innocent people are found guilty. When the state executes people it is a matter of time before innocent blood is on the state's hands. 2. IMO, it is often more merciful to execute a criminal than to let him live the rest of his life in prison. I see no benefits to capital punishment and many, many costs.

Much more than societal norms have changed in the last 75 years - mostly for the better. You still have a price to pay: taxes. IMO, welfare and most government benefits are not "gravy".

Both.

It sounds a lot like those people at the grocery store trying to convince me to get their credit card so I can accumulate more bonus points. The indoor playgrounds, cheap daycare, breakfast programs, etc... seem like a great service to me. Why aren't these services funded by the city/province?

Your article was OK but it did not cover my opinion at all. It is too focussed on Canada's missions and not enough on the failures of the overall war in Afghanistan and the WOT. Going back to my "building a new house" analogy, Canada may have done a great job in their (limited) role/trade however if the foundation and framing was NFG then who cares about the wiring/windows/ducts etc... Do you agree with me that there were far too few troops and resources deployed to Afghanistan from 2002 to 2008? Do you also agree that this lack of troops caused the war to drag on and costs (human + economic + political) to accumulate? Do you agree that the main reason there were not enough troops was due to the 140,000 US troops deployed in Iraq? There have been some benefits of the war, I am not ignoring them, but the achievements were not worth the costs. http://costsofwar.org/

Can you tell me more about this pressure? Is it real real or are you making assumptions?

As they should. OK I misunderstood. Of course they are different, my argument is countering the claims. Problem-solving resources are limited. We should not waste time on relatively minor/insignificant problems. Compare your first paragraph with the second. Do you see the irony?

IMO, religion has been an insignificant factor in warfare for at least the last 200 years.

There are so many delusions and claims without sufficient evidence out there where do you start. I say start with the harmful ones and leave the benign alone. That is not what most religious people beleive. IMO most religious people mhave a mixture of faith and doubt and keep their religion to themselves. How does this point related to significant political influence? What deluded version of reality do you live under? Moderate religious people are the majority and hold the power in Canada. For the US, the moderates and the extremists are about equal in number. Again, I fail to see how your reply relates to mine. I am saying that the more that secular societ accepts moderates, the less influence extemists will have. Even Bonam agreed with me on this one.

Agreed. Banning a religion? are you serious? Many posts argue along the lines of: "once people come to their senses and start thinking critically then they will reject their religion and become secular" or "religion is holding back progress". These are the types of claims I am arguing against.

Of course the amount of money matters. First of all if religious NGO funding went from $1 million to $1.42 million (42% increase) and secular funding went from $10 million to $10.5 million (5% increase) there would still be more money added for secular NGOs. Secondly, to discuss if religion has a significant influence we need to know how much money we are talking about, what percentage of CIDA's budget are we talking about? But forgetting the money, this issue points directly to one on my main points - who cares weather or not an NGO (or individual) is religious or secular? The work of NGOs should be evaluated based on objective criteria and those groups that best meet the criteria (or have the best potential/plan) should get the most funding. All the same criteria and rules should be applied equally. Most NGOs do great work and the last think I want to see is an increased division or bickering between religious and secular NGOs.

How much actual money are we talking about?

You have some of the worst analogies I have ever heard. Of course the costs of (potential) problems need to outweigh the efforts spent in solving the problems. LEAN or no LEAN. Management decides what problems to solve and which to ignore/live with. Again LEAN or no LEAN. A good example of LEAN is changing your winter tires. In your garage you can get them done in in an hour. At a shop it would take less than half the time. In NASCAR pit stops it takes seconds. Waste is everywhere, LEAN provides tools to see it, measure it and problem solve. Unlike comunism, it can be done properly and has been proven in many sectors including Health Care.

Religious beleifs/actions should be challenged when they are harmful, like if they violate other peoples rights. I also opose proselytizing as much as I opose telemarketing. IMO religion has virtualy no influence in Canadian politcs. There are some extremists in US politics but most are adequately marginalized. If secular society was more welcoming to moderate religious beleivers I think that religious extremists would have less influence.

We agree more than we disagree. I think that most significant problems have nothing to do with presence of or lack of religion. And therefore (except in extremist circumstances) there is no need to "combat religion".

No, on an earlier thread we discussed anti-theists. My understanding was that anti-theists are oposed to other people's religious beleifs, usually vocally. The above post by AC is a good example. Christopher Hitchens is probably the most famous example

OK fine, every single human being is sometimes irrational and unreasonable, religious or not. "Falling in love" is not rational. Road rage is not rational. Excessive gambling, drinking, etc... is not rational. I would say religious people are about as irrational as non-religious people.

You are making the claim that I am arguing against: I do not think that a reduction in the level of religiosity in most Western countries would necessarily improve society. I feel strongly about this issue because I think that vocal anti-theists (I am not suggesting that you are one) make society worse as they increase intollerance and also feed the religious extremist views that "secular society is out to get them".

You often stereotype religious people as irrational, unreasonable or otherwise inferior to atheists. Here is but one example:

Why is that? Why are there no atheist societies? If atheism is superior, then as per social Darwinism, it should have been adopted by the most successful societies, no? I never said that. I said that Japan is one of the countries that has the most atheists: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/05/23/a-surprising-map-of-where-the-worlds-atheists-live/