The Religious Left's Misguided View On Capital Punishment.

I'm not religious so I'll leave it to the religious left to respond to the specific portions of your thread that deal with them.

However, it's pretty easy to be against the death penalty on practical grounds, even if you may support it in a perfect world. It's applied unequally to minorities, it's not a deterrent, and innocent people on death row have been freed (which means it's highly likely that some innocent people have not been freed,http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/09/07/090907fa_fact_grann) . This article pinpoints exactly how Rick Perry is culpable in the execution of an innocent man. It lays out the prosecutions case, show show it is false, and shows what happened, even after the man was already executed, to try and cover up the findings that arson was NOT committed. So an innocent was executed.

There's also the whole two wrongs don't make a right thing. It serves no greater good to society to execute people.

The logic of people who support the DP is usually like this. If you do an action to someone, then you deserve that action to be done to you. You killed innocent persons. Therefore you deserve to be killed. Clearly the first premise is just false. Imagine I punch you in the stomach, does that give you a right to punch me back? No. Or, imagine if your child lies to you. Do you lie to them back? It falls apart very quickly on closer inspection. And without any other ground to fall back on (88% of criminologists say it is NOT a deterrent), there is nothing left for the DP to stand on, except pure revenge, which is psychologically unhealthy.

 

Really? He slit the throats of two people. He spent 15 years playing golf and rubbing elbows with admirers and hot women. Now he is serving time ONLY because of a different crime.

How about the 25% of the condemned who are poor and conveniently so mentally retarded, it is doubtful they could have committed the crimes they are accused of, or certainly did not commit them alone.

Maybe I was imagining all the upset people HERE because Casey Anthony is forever free!

How about 50,000 or a hundred thousand raped children by employees of the Catholic church, aided and abetted and hidden by the the Catholic Church hierarchy until most of the perpetrators were dead!

"Justice always gets served"? I don't think so.

 

The above quot is in error, here I shall correct it.
"When I give food to the poor they call me a good Samaritan, when I give other peoples
food to the poor thay call me a socalist. When I ask why the poor have no food I should
ask myself that question."

i'm an Azzhole I know.


...

 

Anytime you bring religion into law or politics, you are creating a model for failure and unfairness. Justice may not be totally blind, but religious justice is the same as terrorism, no matter the religion. Because religion lives off brain washing, with fear, guilt, and obedience. Let's not go back into the mid evil days.

 

Well, truth be told, their opposition to the death penalty is really nothing more than an extension of the same weakness-as-a-virtue mantra that they extol in just about everything they believe; from hard work being "oppressive" to masculinity being "chauvinist" to national defense being "imperialist."

Everything they believe in always comes down to how much pain, injustice, garbage, and bull(*)(*)(*)(*) you can tolerate. The bigger masochist you are, the more cool points you get. And being perceived by others as morally superior is the most important thing you can aspire to. The whole thing is logically retarded. I actually feel sorry for people that live in that world. It's no wonder they're so angry and cynical all the time. Their whole reward system is based on how miserable they can make themselves.

 

I'm pretty sure that you don't know jack (*)(*)(*)(*) about what God wants.
The barbaric eye-for-an-eye bloodlust that defines right-wing ideology accounts for most of the evil and suffering in the world.

 

Actually, watering down justice because you are too soft to do what is right creates a lot more suffering on the whole. Because it denies the true victims any kind of closure and continues to keep them and others at risk of being victimized in the future.

 

Actually, it is the barbaric eye for an eye standard of proportionality which lies at the root of so much misunderstanding and injustice.

We should not execute incorrigible criminals in order to obtain revenge. We should execute them in order to get rid of them, once and for all. The single most important criterion for use of the death penalty should not be the crime of murder, but whether or not the convicted can be rehabilitated.

There are many convicts who have been sentenced to death, who, while having committed the terrible crime of murder, did not have any substantial criminal history (ie: Robert Marshall). Some of these convicts would likely have responded positively to a well-structured system of rehabilitation, and have been returned to society as productive citizens.

Conversely, there are many incorrigible convicts who have very substantial criminal histories, or have committed crimes, which while abominable and entirely intolerable to any civilized society, did not amount to murder (ie: Lawrence Singleton). These convicts should have been sentenced to death but were not due this primitive and thoroughly inane eye for an eye standard of proportionality.

 

Jesus was referring to taxes.

In other words, capital punishment is perfectly acceptable if the people vote to allow it in law.

(just following your same logic stream)

 

Good point, each synod does decide many issues on its own. The Synod of the United States was the last to publicly go against the death penalty in 1989. Our system does leave some room and the official stance is not necessarily the one that all the faithful take.

 

Nobody who has ever read the New Testament with attention could believe in the death penalty. It is a clear divider between Christians and fundamentalists.

 

And I am referring to capital punishment.

It's perfectly acceptable even if the people do not vote on it, and leave the enactment of such legislation to their representatives.

 

Well, when right-wingers come out in support of the death penalty for people like Kenny Lay or Bernie Madoff, then get back to us.
Those two have destroyed the lives of countless more people than any dozen of the largely poor, illiterate, violent criminals that the death penalty crowd wants to eagerly fry.
When we start applying the death penalty to corrupt politicians, bankers and business owners who harm people collectively by their criminal acts, as well as seriously damage the country, then we can discuss the merits of the death penalty honestly.
What you have now is bigotry, not justice.

 

The only situation where Jesus directly addresses the issue of capital punishment in the Bible is the incident with the adulterous woman and the crowd who wants to stone her to death. I don't believe I remember Jesus picking up a stone and joining in; in fact, I remember him being quoted as saying "let he who is without sin cast the first stone". Is that cherry-picking my biblical quotes?

 

Check out these quotes from GOD himslef made shortly after delivering the Ten Commandments to Moses:

"He who strikes a man so that he dies shall surely be put to death."

"He who strikes his father or his mother shall surely be put to death."

"He who kidnaps a man...shall surely be put to death."

"[If an unborn baby is killed] you shall give life for life."


Its quite obvious from those quotes that Jesus supported capital punishment. Quite interesting is the killing (abortion) of unborn babies. According to Jesus, all those abortionist doctors should be willing to give up their lives for their sins.

 

Always the Old Testament, never Jesus. The name you choose for yourself indicates how very far away you are from Christianity. It is totally obvious that Jesus DID NOT support capital punishment - at least to the reasonably literate. Get to meet some!

 

Indeed, I don't know why these people who like to kill and control simply don't call themselves "Jehovans" instead of "Christians" - they seem to have very little use for the teachings and example of Jesus Christ.

Of course, I guess it is probably good for them to not be honest about their intentions if they are derived from the old-testament God - people might tend to more quickly give the boot or lock their doors to people who behave as evil as Jehovah!

 

Yes it is, but you have lots of company in erroneously using that passage to phrase Jesus as opposing capital punishment. The use (or abuse) of that biblical passage by abolitionists has 3 big problems:

1. Jesus was not making a prescription upon the state or its right to execute criminals for the protection of society and the maintaining of law and order.

2. Jesus was not dealing with an act of due process. The woman was never tried or convicted. This was a mob lynching, an exercise in lawlessness.

3. Jesus was not opposing the death penalty that HE HIMSELF prescribed repeatedly in the OT. He was opposing the hypocrisy of those set to stone this woman for the very crime they themselves were guilty of.

You said that Jesus addressed the issue of capital punishment with this passage. I say that Jesus never took a political position in his entire ministry and this in spite of many attempts to enlist him in various factions and causes of his day. Anywhere in the gospels where you might think Jesus is staking out a political position, I'd be happy to demonstrate irrefutably that indeed he is not.

 

I'm so sorry that your religion has rejected the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. That would place you decisively outside the paradigm of traditional Christianity altogether.

Oh, before you get your dander up, what I mean is, Jesus is God. The God of the Old Testament is the same God that was born of a virgin, walked on water, and was crucified for sinners. God doesn't change. Men change and waffle on their opinions and sentiments, but God is changeless and timeless.

So clearly you think Jesus is some other entity than the God of the Old Testament, therefore you reject the Trinity, ergo, you must be a part of a non Christian cult.

 

I really gotta know - there's a religious left?

ahahahahaha! that is hilarious to even contemplate.

 

It does seem counterintuitive, doesn't it?

 

Indeed. And oxymoronic.

this was the laugh I needed today.

 

Religion is kind of a conservative thing. Us leftists tend to be more spiritual, not so concerned with religion.

 

whoops - the dreaded double post.
sorry.

 

There. I fixed it for you.