I oppose the death penalty. Not because i have anything against giving killers a dose of their own medicine, heck if it were up to me i'd go back to public hangings and sell tickets, but rather because i don't want to see an innocent man or woman executed.

If it's prison for life (real life without parole, not the Euro "couple years and out" version) then at least if evidence comes to light that clears the person we're not pardoning a corpse. Once a person is executed the point becomes moot.

August is right SubSerpent. The difference between term "murder" and "killing" in this context is the term in Hebrew referred to "unlawful killing" (much like our modern distinction with terms like manslaughter and first and second degree murder) and "lawful killing". Why would God tell the Hebrews not to kill, under any circumstances as you seem to imply, then help them kill their enemies in war (David vs. Golaith for the most famous example) or to stone adulterers, murderers etc? Obviously the New Testament changed that, "turn the other cheek" as Jesus preached etc. Of course for non-believers this does not matter, ther are other moral arguments for and against the death penalty.

As it stands I am against the death penalty for reasons August put forth (executing an innocent man) plus others, like the fact poor cannot afford the best lawyers, I do not believe it is a deterrent either.

And that is the one thing I do agree with. If someone is to be executed the evidence must be incontrivertible, and that's sometimes hard to establish.

He didn't make a mistake. It's just that the word Kill can be interpreted in various ways, such as rightly kill or wrongly kill. He just left out an adjective. So what. :know:

That same allmighty god endorses the death penalty in the bible as a deterrent. People who do not risk losing as much as the person they are murdering will be more likely to do it than one that does. That is if they are still of somewhat sound mind.

You're both mistaken. The Hebrew words for the 6th Commandment are "lo tirtzach." The word "tirtzach" specifically means "murder" in both ancient and modern Hebrew. Had the commandment wanted to generically forbid killing, it would have used the standard Hebrew word for "kill", which is "taharog."

<Edit - Gizzmoe>

The comment above is unacceptable for the standards of this board and illustrates either a very juvenile or a very primitive mindset.

Indeed...

It was a sarcasm :-?
(*psst* I am in a trolling mood today)

As I understand it, the biblical maxim about "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" was intended to mean that man, or society, in punishing one who has harmed someone else should receive only punishment that is proportionate to the harm originally inflicted.

That was from an age where stealing a loaf of bread could cost you an arm, and assaulting someone of a higher station could easily cost you your life (and usually by the most painful ways imaginable); thus, the verse is not meant to justify revenge, as so many misinterpret it, but instead it advocates restraint and proportionality.

Personally I have always opposed the death penalty. It is a fact that innocent people have been executed that newer evidence would have aquitted them on had they not been put to death first. It also has no deterrent effect: people who commit capital crimes do so eother in the heat of the moment, where passion overtakes sense, or do not believe they'll be caught and therefore do not consider the consequences to themselves.

I also oppose the death penalty because it practices, under legitimate cover of the state, the very thing it condemns and punishes with death; to me this presents a moral and ethical paradox, particularly when the state executes an indivual later proven to be innocent - this puts the state on the same moral level as the murderers it executes, in that it too has taken innocent life, but under cover of beuracracy and therefore without anyone to hold accountable. That is too much power for a government to wield over its own citizens, since it presents the possibility for abuse and for innocent people to be railroaded and put to death with nobody to be held accountable.

Ultimately it is cognitive dissonance at the societal level; we are taught from birth that it is wrong to murder innocent people, only to be raised (in some societies) in a culture that tolerates the state perpetrating the very action that is supposedly the ultimate evil - so what does that make the state and the society that condones and even celebrates such practice, and what effect does it have on young minds that have to integrate these contradictory concepts?

I strongly suspect that any examination of states that practice capital punishment will have both more violent crime and higher murder rates than those that do not.

This part i can agree with. Nobody commits a crime without at least some expectation of getting away with it, so it doesn't matter if the penalty is death or life in prison.

That verse refers specifically to cases of compensation for physical injury and was never understood to be taken literally.

That is only one verse out of dozens in the Bible that refers to criminal violations and their punishments.

Precisely the opposite. US violent crime rate is less than 1/4 of what it was since the death penalty was reinstated.

-S

PS. I think it was 1976 where capital punishment was on the table. Have to go look it up.

One more thing - these killers are coming up for parol, and some of them get out to kill again. We have a way screwed up system in the US.

Our phych people keep telling us that positive reinforcement will solve all our problems. One only need look around them to see what we are becoming based on those ideas.