I’ve had several discussions with my friends about the death penalty. I found a site on the death penalty and its statistics. It seems that lethal injection is the execution method of choice, with alternatives if the death row inmate so chooses (Methods of Execution). Nebraska only executes by electrocution. Ouch. Burnt flesh. I remember watching Green Mile, and it was pretty horrific. There have been botched execution attempts as the prisoners needed multiple jolts to be killed. From the website, I noticed that lethal injection didn’t have a 100% quick kill rate either. Here is a site with Botched Executions since 1982. Scroll down to the recent ones. You would have thought they would have a fool-proof execution method by now. That’s not even the point.

For a forgiving religion, Christianity certainly makes a lot of exceptions. I’ve been given Genesis 9:6 (Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man) as an example. The current reasoning goes as “Eye for an Eye”. What the hell?! Are we freaking barbarians? I don’t know how “civilized” executions are. The same people who raise a storm about public executions in countries like Saudi Arabia, still condone executions in the US. What a friggin’ double standard.

People who support the death penalty use economics to counter life with no parole. They don’t want their tax payer’s money to be funding the survival of a murderer. It’s free food, free room, and free room to exercise. The prisoners are akin to animals in the zoo minus spectators. I guess it’s a valid argument, and it would seem economically favorable to execute the prisoners versus keeping him alive till they die a natural death. However, I have also been informed that it takes a decent amount of money for the process of execution. I need to verify that. Here is the website about the costs of death penalty.

Would starvation be a method of execution? Slow, painful. So, solitary confinement, without food. That’s inhumane, right? Inhumane compared to a quick death? How much of money would be spent in that chain of events?

Now to realistic alternative that would be developed eventually for maximal efficiency: Brainwashing, cognitive reprogramming, psychological reconditioning. I don’t think we have technology to achieve that now, but couldn’t a brutal person be made docile and useful by reprogramming? So, instead of execution, just change the person and put them to constructive use. Who knows, the diabolical genius could be a genius in other fronts too.. What’s future?

Anyway, what do you guys think?

Technorati Tags: Death, Executions, USA, Policy, Religion, Opinion, Crime, Prisons, Justice, Morality, Life, Death Penalty, Life Imprisonment

What would you rather have: singular secular society, or discrete religio-societal structure? Why?

Technorati Tags: Culture, Opinion, Religion, Islam, Muhammad, Controversy, Cartoons, Media, Denmark, Satire, Terrorism

This is an opinion piece of Flemming Rose, the culture editor of Jyllands-Posten, explaining his intentions with the publishing of the cartoons. It was meant as satire, just as the rest of the people usually depicted in such cartoons.

If the article vanishes, the full article is after the jump.
Read the complete article »

The fascination for Dan Brown’s style of thrillers kept me captivated through his earlier works like Angels and Demons (Amazon, Wikipedia), Digital Fortress (Amazon, Wikipedia), and Deception Point (Amazon, Wikipedia). The first two books were thrilling but do not compare to the Robert Langdon books. I hear that Dan Brown is writing the third installment of the Langdon adventures.

I’ll leave it to you to look at the plot from the links listed above, and I really enjoyed the books. It took me less than 10 hours to re-gobble this (night, morning, afternoon). Like I said, captivating.

I’m going to mention a few interesting tidbits I came across that I wanted to share.

1. Thumbs-up sign is an ancient phallic symbol for masculine virility.
2. Fun fact about the connection between Shaitan (Islamic) and Satan (Christian). See the similarity? According the book, “Shaitan is the root of an English word … Satan”.
3. The threads between Christianity and Paganism. Sun worship depicted in Christianity with Christmas given as an example as Christ was born in March, yet his birth is celebrated on Dec 25. Dan Brown says that December 25th is the ancient pagan holiday of sol invictus - Unconquered Sun - which coincides with the winter solstice. This also shows us that Christianity is yet another transmutated religion that assimilated different cultures and traditions to form this massive set of ideologies and faith. Even the image of God is akin that of Zeus, the Greek King of Gods.

Apart from that, I suggest visiting the wikipedia article of Angels and Demons for factual inaccuracies. There are a few prominent ones like mistranslation of Novus Ordo Seclorum on the US one-dollar bill. CERN has come up with it’s own facts/fiction about it’s role in Angels and Demons including a large section on Antimatter.

I’ve developed a taste for religion-history based mystery-thrillers. I’ve also read The Rule of Four (Amazon), which is another historical code based thriller.

I await the Robert Langdon’s third book Soloman’s Key with bated breath. It is speculated for release in 2007.

Technorati Tags: Science, Books, Culture, History, Religion, Christianity, Dan Brown, Angels and Demons, Paganism, Wikipedia, Amazon

Five questions non-Muslims would like answered

By Dennis Prager, Dennis Prager’s nationally syndicated radio show is heard daily in Los Angeles on KRLA-AM (870).

THE RIOTING IN France by primarily Muslim youths and the hotel bombings in Jordan are the latest events to prompt sincere questions that law-abiding Muslims need to answer for Islam’s sake, as well as for the sake of worried non-Muslims.

Here are five of them:

(1) Why are you so quiet?

Since the first Israelis were targeted for death by Muslim terrorists blowing themselves up in the name of your religion and Palestinian nationalism, I have been praying to see Muslim demonstrations against these atrocities. Last week’s protests in Jordan against the bombings, while welcome, were a rarity. What I have seen more often is mainstream Muslim spokesmen implicitly defending this terror on the grounds that Israel occupies Palestinian lands. We see torture and murder in the name of Allah, but we see no anti-torture and anti-murder demonstrations in the name of Allah.

There are a billion Muslims in the world. How is it possible that essentially none have demonstrated against evils perpetrated by Muslims in the name of Islam? This is true even of the millions of Muslims living in free Western societies. What are non-Muslims of goodwill supposed to conclude? When the Israeli government did not stop a Lebanese massacre of Palestinians in the Sabra and Chatilla refugee camps in Lebanon in 1982, great crowds of Israeli Jews gathered to protest their country’s moral failing. Why has there been no comparable public demonstration by Palestinians or other Muslims to morally condemn Palestinian or other Muslim-committed terror?

(2) Why are none of the Palestinian terrorists Christian?

If Israeli occupation is the reason for Muslim terror in Israel, why do no Christian Palestinians engage in terror? They are just as nationalistic and just as occupied as Muslim Palestinians.

(3) Why is only one of the 47 Muslim-majority countries a free country?

According to Freedom House, a Washington-based group that promotes democracy, of the world’s 47 Muslim countries, only Mali is free. Sixty percent are not free, and 38% are partly free. Muslim-majority states account for a majority of the world’s “not free” states. And of the 10 “worst of the worst,” seven are Islamic states. Why is this?

(4) Why are so many atrocities committed and threatened by Muslims in the name of Islam?

Young girls in Indonesia were recently beheaded by Muslim murderers. Last year, Muslims — in the name of Islam — murdered hundreds of schoolchildren in Russia. While reciting Muslim prayers, Islamic terrorists take foreigners working to make Iraq free and slaughter them. Muslim daughters are murdered by their own families in the thousands in “honor killings.” And the Muslim government in Iran has publicly called for the extermination of Israel.

(5) Why do countries governed by religious Muslims persecute other religions?

No church or synagogue is allowed in Saudi Arabia. The Taliban destroyed some of the greatest sculptures of the ancient world because they were Buddhist. Sudan’s Islamic regime has murdered great numbers of Christians.

Instead of confronting these problems, too many of you deny them. Muslims call my radio show to tell me that even speaking of Muslim or Islamic terrorists is wrong. After all, they argue, Timothy McVeigh is never labeled a “Christian terrorist.” As if McVeigh committed his terror as a churchgoing Christian and in the name of Christ, and as if there were Christian-based terror groups around the world.

As a member of the media for nearly 25 years, I have a long record of reaching out to Muslims. Muslim leaders have invited me to speak at major mosques. In addition, I have studied Arabic and Islam, have visited most Arab and many other Muslim countries and conducted interfaith dialogues with Muslims in the United Arab Emirates as well as in the U.S. Politically, I have supported creation of a Palestinian state and supported (mistakenly, I now believe) the Oslo accords.

Hundreds of millions of non-Muslims want honest answers to these questions, even if the only answer you offer is, “Yes, we have real problems in Islam.” Such an acknowledgment is infinitely better — for you and for the world — than dismissing us as anti-Muslim.

We await your response.

Kan. School Board OKs Evolution Approach - Yahoo! News

Pennsylvania Voters Oust School Board - Yahoo! News

While Kansas Board seems labile about the issue of Intelligent design being taught in science classes, the voters in Penn had greater success fighting the inception of Intelligent Design into science courses. Boy, who knew the search for truth could be so political! Haha. Just kidding. Of course, its political. It’s a battle of wills not the truth.

Vatican: Faithful Should Listen to Science - Yahoo! News

It seems as though the Catholic church is asking christians to listen to secular science. They actually differentiated it from Christian science and the likes by calling academic/research science “secular”. Galileo was used as a paradigm in his speech.

‘Intelligent Design’ Advocate Testifies - Yahoo! News

I don’t understand why people automatically connect Intelligent Design with God. What if it was just a extraordinary alien civilization? If people believe in God and Intelligent Design, why do they not believe in existence of life beyond the Blue Planet? Why is intelligent life in the Last Frontier such a hard concept to acknowledge?

Bush claimed God told him to invade Iraq, Afghanistan: BBC - Yahoo! News

Bush’s crusade? If we did everything that the voices in our head said, the world would be a scary, messed up place.

10 - You vigorously deny the existence of thousands of gods claimed by other religions, but feel outraged when someone denies the existence of yours.

9 - You feel insulted and “dehumanized” when scientists say that people evolved from other life forms, but you have no problem with the Biblical claim that we were created from dirt.

8 - You laugh at polytheists, but you have no problem believing in a Triune God.

7 - Your face turns purple when you hear of the “atrocities” attributed to Allah, but you don’t even flinch when hearing about how God/Jehovah slaughtered all the babies of Egypt in “Exodus” and ordered the elimination of entire ethnic groups in “Joshua” including women, children, and trees!

6 - You laugh at Hindu beliefs that deify humans, and Greek claims about gods sleeping with women, but you have no problem believing that the Holy Spirit impregnated Mary, who then gave birth to a man-god who got killed, came back to life and then ascended into the sky.

5 - You are willing to spend your life looking for little loopholes in the scientifically established age of Earth (few billion years), but you find nothing wrong with believing dates recorded by Bronze Age tribesmen sitting in their tents and guessing that Earth is a few generations old.

4 - You believe that the entire population of this planet with the exception of those who share your beliefs — though excluding those in all rival sects - will spend Eternity in an infinite Hell of Suffering. And yet consider your religion the most “tolerant” and “loving.”

3 - While modern science, history, geology, biology, and physics have failed to convince you otherwise, some idiot rolling around on the floor speaking in “tongues” may be all the evidence you need to “prove” Christianity.

2 - You define 0.01% as a “high success rate” when it comes to answered prayers. You consider that to be evidence that prayer works. And you think that the remaining 99.99% FAILURE was simply the will of God.

1 - You actually know a lot less than many atheists and agnostics do about the Bible, Christianity, and church history - but still call yourself a Christian.

This is just a great list!