RE: Atheism & the Death Penalty.
January 20, 2016 at 8:53 pm
(This post was last modified: January 20, 2016 at 9:07 pm by Simon Moon.)
(January 20, 2016 at 8:47 pm)Jehanne Wrote: We've reached 20 votes, with a majority opposing executions in all circumstances. Of course, in a representative democracy based upon "majority rule," this plurality of opinion would not allow for executions. Even if only one-third opposed, how can those of you who would still support executions "in theory" ever support such "in practice" due to the fact that you would need to exclude one-third of the population (assuming, of course, a completely atheistic, hypothetical country) from serving on a jury overseeing a capital case?
The USA is not a democracy with "majority rule".
We are a representative republic.
And we also don't have "majority rule" specifically to protect the minority against the tyranny of the majority.
You'd believe if you just opened your heart" is a terrible argument for religion. It's basically saying, "If you bias yourself enough, you can convince yourself that this is true." If religion were true, people wouldn't need faith to believe it -- it would be supported by good evidence.
