| Submit your comments on this article |
| Home Front: Culture Wars |
| Evil Defined: It's What We Say It Is |
| 2005-02-21 |
| Evil to be 'measured' in death-penalty cases. Psychiatrists develop 'depravity rating' to decide which convicted killers die. Research psychiatrists say they can now quantify evil, and they will be lobbying state legislatures to adopt their "depravity ratings" for use by courts determining whether to impose the death penalty on convicted murderers. Long seen as a subjective moral term, evil, two recent studies of criminal personalities claim, can now be measured objectively. "People say evil is like pornography — they know it when they see it, but can debate whether or when it is harmful," Dr. Michael Welner, a forensic psychiatrist and professor at New York University, told the London Telegraph. "This is not true. We are finding widespread agreement about what is evil..." Welner's depravity scale is based on contributions of thousands of people who contributed their understanding of evil to a website. Democratic Underground? |
| Posted by:Anonymoose |
| #2 TW, as for Attila, he may have been a bit ruthless in battle, but otherwise, he was an honorable warrior. Beside that, he was also a shrewd diplomat. The tales of his bloodthirstiness were mostly rumors, dispersed by his agents to strike fear in hearts of the potential sujects. Vlad is a tad different story, but still, his most horrible deeds were committed against musulman. He really got Turks scared shi'tless, they simply did not imagine someone would behave more barbaric than themselves. He prevented expansion of Khilafah in south-eastern Europe, singlehandedly, in his times. |
| Posted by: Sobiesky 2005-02-21 11:17:02 PM |
| #1 So how does Saddam Hussein compare to Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Hafiz Assad, Ho Chi Minh, etc? Not to mention Attila the Hun and Vlad the Impaler and Savonarola. I've always wondered how the Wicked Ones rate on God's scale. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2005-02-21 10:36:19 PM |