It is against the law to do that .
What an experiment that is !!. .

Oops...........you are smoking..... .

Well, if that counts as love then maybe I love people far more than I realize and just have a different notion of love than most people.

I don't even believe in punishment at all. Not in the least.

This is yet another reason why I don't believe in the Biblical God who threatens people with punishment. That's neither wise nor loving IMHO.

If I were God, instead of asking people to make blood sacrifices to "pay" for their sins I would make them do community service related to whatever their crime was. Not as a 'punishment', but merely as a loving lesson. And the lesson would be a hundredfold.

If a person steals something, then as a lesson in proper behavior they must create a hundred useful things and give them to a hundred people.

If a person burns down someone's house, then as a lesson in proper behavior they must help 100 people build a new house.

And so on. Whatever they do wrong they must undo it 100 times.

That's my law.

What about things that can't be undone, like murder?

In that case as God, I would consider the murderer to be a 'defective' unit. Sloppy creation on my part. I would uncreate the unit. (yes kill the person).

However, as God I wouldn't be looking at this as a punishment I would just be doing away with a defective unit (assuming that I couldn't repair it). This already brings into question my powers as a God. I create defective human units that I can't repair?

Clearly I have limitations to what I can do. So in this case I try to be as compassionate and as understanding as I can be. But I'm certainly not going to cast a defective unit into a place of eternal torture to teach it some kind of fruitless lesson. I see no love in that act. It's a lose-lose situation. The defective human suffers for all eternity and so do I because I personally would regret having cast it into eternal suffering. So simply doing away with it all together is a far more loving act, IMHO.

As a human being I feel much the same way. I feel sorry for criminals who have done truly horrible things. As far as I'm concerned they are defective units by mere definition. Why punish them? They've already been severely punished by being gifted with(or by inheriting by accident) a defective brain.

Should we put these truly horrible criminals to death? Well, if we can't fix them, then yes, we should put them to death. Why keep them alive? For who's benefit? Even they most likely aren't happy with being alive. However, there's no need to give them the electric chair or put them in a chamber and gas them to death like a bug. Just put them to death as peacefully and possible. No need to hate them or even be angry with them. We can feel all the compassion in the world for them as we put them out of their misery and also protect other people from potentially becoming the innocent victims of their criminal behavior.

I don't hate anyone, not even George Bush or Bin Laden.

I feel compassion for everyone. I'm not even sure that I view Bin Laden as a 'criminal'. I personally think he's just an extremly confused person who used extremely poor judgment when he decided to take up what he most likely believed to be a just political cause. Considering the region of the world where he was raised and the religious underpinnings of how the Mediterranean Gods solved their problems it shouldn't be all that surprising that he might restore to an act of violence in the name of a God. It's certainly wouldn't be the first time someone has done this. Many people have been influence by Christianity right here in the USA that has drive them to go out and kill abortion doctors, etc.

Bin Laden didn't do anything out of the norm. He just did it on a far greater scale and succeeded.

I didn't mean to bring all these seemingly political issues into this thread, but how many Americans can truly say that they "love" Bin Laden by simply forgiving him and understanding that even though what he actually did was horrible, he may very well have believed that what he was doing was somehow 'righteous'.

How many people can truly view the man like that?

If that equates to true unconditional love, then I guess I love everyone because I don't blame anyone for anything and I forgive everyone.

But just the same, I don't agree that "love spreads".



I would LOVE to believe these words. I truly would. But where are examples of this in real life?

I mean, I'm sure you can point to small events where very persistent individuals worked extremely hard to try to generate a wave of love.

We have people like Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Jesus, etc, etc, etc.

But what was the end result of all their effort truly?

Look at Jesus. He tried to spread love and what happened to him?

He got nailed to a pool, and then used by authors to prop up the very hateful and bigoted dogma that Jesus himself had denounced. And his name and image have been used ever since to judge, slaughter and burn innocent people in his name. Even today people use his name to harrass and belittle same-gender lovers, and any "heathens" who refuse to become bigots for Jesus.

Sorry to say it, but his attempt at spreading love has actually backfired to create one of the most hateful religions the world has ever known.

I don't mean to sound pessimistic. I'm not trying to say that it's not possible to bring the world to peace. I'm just saying that this notion that all we need to do is becoming loving and it will spread 'outward' from our own actions and ultimately take root in the general masses.

There's just no historical reason to believe that such a thing would ever happen.

I for one, believe that if we want to spread love the first thing we need to do is to denounce hate. And that includes trying to educate people about hateful religions and why thy don't truly represent love at all just because they abuse the name of Jesus or whatever.

In fact, probably about 95% of the world's problems stem from religious beliefs in totally misrepresented dogmas. The Middle East is THE prime example. In fact, I'm quite sure that the whole Bin Laden thing I mentioned was ultiamtely supported by these kinds of mediterannean beliefs. All the highjackers who participated in the attack on the Twin Towers believed that they were doing the will of God. They believed that they were martyrs for God.

So from their point of view they were performing an 'act of love' in the same kind of sick way that Christians think that having Jesus nailed to a pole was an 'act of love'.

These mediterranean religions have a very sick notion of what constitutes 'love'. Think about it. They worship a God who's at war with a demon and who casts sinners and heatens into a hell fire!

That's their idea of LOVE!

So PLEASE don't tell RELIGIOUS people to spread LOVE throughout the world or we'll all be killed!

@ Abra :
If you do not believe in punishment then how do you solve the problems of crimes, wars.....etc...... .

Well, like I said in my post, I'm not saying that nothing should be done about people who commit crimes.

All I'm saying is that when things are done about they should not be viewed as 'punishments'. They shouldn't be designed as punishments (i.e. the electric chair, or gas chamber, etc.)

If you're going to terminate someone for the sake of the safety of society then do it as humanely as possible.

I'm not against "lethal solutions". But I am against "capital punishment".

This is a take off from what AB had said:



I can kill you and love you at the same time. As strange as that may sound.

Take Timothy McVey for example. He blew up a Federal Building killing many innocent people including a darecare center for childern that was located within the building.

Well, I personally believe that Timothy was mentally ill. I mean by pure definition of the act that he performed. His very actions prove his insanity.

Blowing up a Federal Building because a person is pissed at the government is an insane thing to do.

So fine. I forgive Tim, he was clearly insane. Mentally Ill.

Could he be fixed? Maybe? I don't know. Maybe that's something that should have been looked into. Our society isn't even thinking like that.

All they are thinking is HATE Timothy McVey!!!

But what's to be gained from that?

I think they did the man a huge favor by putting him to sleep relatively peacefully.

If I ever go insane and do something like that I hope they put me to sleep too! It would be the most LOVING thing they could possible do for me!

The worst thing they could do is put me in jail and make me live with my own conscious feelings of guilt and shame for the rest of my life whilst being imprisoned in a horrible place.

Even mentally ill people are probably ashamed of what they did. It's even clear in their own minds that they truly had no control over their actions.

Sick thinking is sick thinking.

As far as I'm concerned any sick act was necessarily performed by a sick brain. By mere definition if nothing else.

So, no, I'm not suggesting that we just allow criminals to walk the streets and do nothing about it. People who do wrongful acts need to learn that they need to change their behavior if possible, and if it's not possible then they must be treated as being mentally ill and therefore defective not not responsible for their own actions.

There, are clear example of people who do appear to be totally sane, yet they do horrible things out of pure greed in the belief that they will obtain personal gain.

Those kinds of people should indeed be made to restore the situation. Or at least try.

It doesn't need to be thought of as 'punishment'. They aren't being 'punished', they are just paying for the consequences of their actions. But locking them up in jail is doing no one any good. Put them to work in public service to pay back their debt.

Consider it like the following:

You smash your thumb whilst nailing shingles on the roof of your house. The rest of the day you "PAY" for your stupidity (or carelessness). Are you being 'punished'?

No, not at all, but you're still paying for the fruit of your actions.

All, I'm saying is that we should totally rid ourselves of any 'punishment' attitudes. Especially within prisons. Prisoners should not be viewed and thought about as people who are being punished or who deserve to be punished. The only purpose of prisons at all should be to protect society from people who can be 'cured' from doing nasty things.

We currently have tons of people who are in prison for doing nothing more than hurting themselves! Drug abusers are a perfect example. Here we have a person who was already troubled with drugs, and now their lives have been extremely complicated by being troubled by imprisonment and having to live in a bad atmosphere surrounded by a lot of other people who have seriously bad problems and attitudes.

In fact, IMHO, we toss people into prisons placing them in enviroments that are far more conducive to making them worse insteado of helping them get well.

By treating the whole thing as a scheme of "Punishment" causes us to lose sight of the fact that the people we have imprisoned need help! We view them as being 'punished' But that does no one any good, neither us, nor the people who are in the prisons.

Thinking in terms of 'punishment' is a lose-lose mindset.

"Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.” - Yoda, Jedi Master

So without one you cannot have the other? So if you don't have one you can never have either?

Most humans are capable of some sort of love..or at the very least their interpretation of it. Most are not able to comprehend unconditional love let alone actively practice it. jmo

Right ON Stingola! Unless you be Jesus--not you Sting--please be careful about "unconditional love" Thanks

"Remove the paddles, note the time, it's Flatline"

only Jesus is "allowed" to talk of unconditional love?

oh my

Not at all Lady. I would encourage you to talk about everything and anything you wish--especially when you are posed against that tree.

respect from what I've read, Flat

Bravo! I agree completely.

This all seems humanitarian and all, but allow me to lend a little reality to the situation here.

Let us not get too idealistic in thought.

How much actual investment from law abiding citizens would you like to apply to those who do not abide and those 'sick' and 'insane' people?

Around $65,000 per year per inmate as it is now is invested with taxpayer money. In comparison, around $6,500 per year per student is invested into America's future with taxpayer money.

You suggest helping them more?

That is insane in my book!

With all due respect aren't you comparing apples with oranges?

First you say, "Let us not get too idealistic in thought."

And then you're jumping right into the pragmatic discussion of finances?

If we just stick to the concept of idealism then money shouldn't even be part of that equation at all.

Idealy we can change the way we view things whilst still using the same budgets. So finance shouldn't even be a question concerning our ideals.

Give me a prison that is being run on a given budget. And allow me to reducate the staff and change up the programming on that very same budget and I'll produce a completely differnet result with no change in finance at all.

In fact, if I had my way prisons would become money-making institutions. Just because a person is incarcerated is no need to 'lay them off work'.

But that's a whole other topic.

But really any monetary arguments compeltely miss the point.

It's all about our values. Money shouldn't dictate our values.

We can do good things or bad things on the same budget.

As you can see on this thread "unconditional love" is seen differently amongst humans. I hope for the sake of mankind we will find a way to see "unconditional love" in a way that can resolve and create better times for everyone that has had a chance to experience life on this planet.