Capital Punishment, what are your views on it?

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Yeah, well I guess it's not possible for me to change others' views about this. I thought the word 'immoral' was a strong enough argument against it!! But I'll just say that even if the perpetrator is found without the slightest doubt to have committed a premeditated and heinous crime - once they have been captured this person becomes defenceless and vulnerable. For a group of people to take advantage of a vulnerable person - regardless of their history - to me, is just as heinous, and an abuse of their power.

Perhaps a better method of execution is to arm them and face off in a duel?

Why is there such an insistence on killing?! !! ! I thought that anyone with any intelligence would know that killing is wrong. So, no. I'm not looking for better methods of execution because I'm totally opposed to execution. But thanks for the ridiculous suggestion (and I mean that light-heartedly!).

Are you a vegetarian? If so, congrats on your stance on killing being wrong. If not, then realize that you finance the organized slaughter of millions of lifeforms. Really though, even though I do not like to see anything die, it is not killing that is wrong, but murder. Murder is the killing of those who are innocent.

I think I can see what's happening here - I get the impression that on the balance between form and substance, you tend to be farther to the 'form' side on this issue than most people are inclined (and one thing I'd hold up along side that - we ok millions of abortions per year, if you're as adamantly pro-life on the abortion issue as you are on capital punishment - your positions do add up, if not though - you still have some thinking to do as one might consider capital punishment to be something tantamount to society having an abortion of sorts).

Goodness gracious! what are all those cows and chickens guilty of?

opposed to it. I'm all for rehabilitation.

IDK, I'm a college student and unemployed, therefore I eat Ramen noodles.

Aw man - you guys want to get personal! Yes, I'm a vegetarian - since birth actually. My parents tried to force-feed me meat but I refused it. I have tried it and my instincts were correct - I find it repulsive - but I accept that as my personal taste. I'm vegan now unless circumstances make that too difficult. Except the only pair of shoes I own are actually made from leather - so yes it's a bit hypocritical, but it was the most affordable option at the time. Anyhow I accept that killing can be unavoidable in the case of all the insects and smaller living creatures that die in the harvesting of crops. But don't worry - I've given up a LONG time ago of convincing anyone else to avoid meat. (Besides the fact cows are innocent and therefore people are murdering them, serially. Should people then be subjected to capital punishment?) And yes I'm opposed to abortions although my opinion is not so firm on this issue given the uncertainty of when the foetus actually becomes a sentient being.

But I think that differentiating murder from killing is ridiculous.
iamnotaparakeet - you're saying that it's a perfectly innocent action to kill someone who is guilty of murder? Don't you stop to think how sick it is for a society to accept killing as a form of punishment? That children can grow up to think that if someone does the wrong thing it's perfectly acceptable to deprive them of life? Then people grow up placing less value on life. When life is the one thing each of us value the most. Without it there's nothing - and we think it's okay to take that from someone? And for a Christian even?! ! I'm astounded that you'd find it acceptable to send someone to a certain type of hell without allowing them the opportunity to find remorse? I'm not at all condoning the killing that's performed by irrational and sick people. I think that is generally found to be unacceptable. But people who are able to reason should be able to find more acceptable modes of punishment.

So if people grow up in a society where they can see that killing is acceptable in certain circumstances - then what do they do when they wish to take justice into their own hands? And I'm quite sure this happens. If killing fellow human beings is tolerable in any way - then it's inevitable that there will be confusions as to where to draw the line. And say for instance that people have different ways of perceiving innocence. What if a murderer murders someone who has murdered? The so-called victim is not innocent. So should we force death upon that murderer? I actually don't even want you to answer that question because it is so ridiculous.

And I don't wish to get into the animal debate either. This is about humans. And the value of human life. How anyone thinks they have the right to deprive another of their life is incomprehensible. The past actions of the perpetrator may be far from innocent - but the fact that a potential exists for them to regain a newfound innocence means it's murder to kill them from my perspective.

Even if a man has grotesquely raped and murdered a thousand children. If you contain him in a situation where he can never hurt anyone again - and then you want to murder him - I know whose side I'm taking - and it's not yours!! ! To not allow people a chance to redeem themselves by taking their life is MURDER. So that makes anyone in support of capital punishment NOT INNOCENT.

And techstep - I don't know what you mean by form and substance. You kind of lost me with that wording.

Well, anyway, whether you dine off their flesh or not, it's reassuring to know all those pigs, cows and chickens are murderers and deserve to die. No doubt reality TV would benefit tremendously to watch them face off in multiple duels to the death.I woul be especially fascinated in a sword wielding chicken in a cape beating out a fierce bull matador style or a shootout between a pig and a duck high noon simulation.

Form is the positive aspect of something - whether its a physical matter or whether its rules and regulations of a law or philosophy. Substance is the spirit or essential identity of what's behind it; the intent of a law, the use of a specific tool as separate from its physical features in one or two instances.

I don't like quoting answers to other people if its an involved debate but I think this speaks to the issue somewhat:

Capital punishment is meant to be dose of reality that registers and shows a very specific societal value: we don't just frown upon murder, if you commit murder and specifically premeditated murder - you're irredeemable in our eyes, God may forgive you but - that's between you and him.

This is why I thought the presentation of 'all killing is wrong' supports specific form (ie. do not kill) but at a cost to the substance of the rule (the reason and spirit of the rule 'do not kill'). Invoking the idea that killing a killer is still killing in the manner that the killer did so and therefor morally ironic - its a very narrow and esoteric view if taken solely on its own. I don't want to be too critical because its not unusual for people to have views like this, I just sense that its very surgically removed from the whole when that assertion is *defined to be the whole picture* and by that error it becomes an ultra-clean black and white issue. While statements like that always contain a kernal of truth, if you hyperfocus on one it can completely rearrange the frame of reality and take a person off on a stream of untempered logic if they're not careful. While I think you're argument about killing the killer is an important contradiction to consider, to call it the entire picture is to distort it into something that it - in form, may be, in substance - things are usually a bit less mathematical.

I brought up the abortion issue as well because a lot of people tend to have a strange paradox on the issue (ie. war is always evil, capital punishment is evil but..pff...you better recognize - my body my right); you may well be very pro-life, I don't know that but I'm guessing so if you are a vegetarian for the same reason that you don't believe in capital punishment. If you have consistent views I respect that a lot more.

I think in the course of this debate you and Orwell at least reminded me that as ridiculously small of a trickle as it is today, why not just shut it off when its barely even a reality in the mind of most who do rob, rape, steal, and murder in any manner more feeble than a cold blooded premeditated killer (which is, as Sand somewhat abstractly noted - dwarfs the number of textbook murderers). My big concern even there has been partly a) if people have such a concern over killing will we be able to defend ourselves at war the same way? b) if we remove the idea that certain acts erase one's right to life - do we in fact lessen the salience of these acts in the public consciousness? My conservative tendencies are that societal changes are of a nature where the consequences sneak up on you and little symbolic things that many people like to to blow off as unimportant or 'only symbolic actually have an immense end weight in terms of how the general public reflects upon itself.

I've gotta cut this post short before I ramble on too much more, perhaps in another post I'll throw more thought out on symbols and their value as frame-of-reference points for the human psyche but its probably best to call it quits for tonight.

Last edited by techstepgenr8tion on 05 Jan 2010, 12:08 am, edited 3 times in total.

As a vegan, reasonably so at least, you have a right to say so. When I had tried being one under my stepdad's domination of me, I was harassed until I gave it up.



Yes, as per the definition of murder being the killing of the innocent.



Where on Earth would you get such a notion from? Where in all of history? Which society in past or present has not? Why have they?



Perhaps so, which might help them if they are violated so as to defend themselves.



It depends also where the value of a life comes from.



Yes, as per Genesis 9:5-6

"And for your lifeblood I will surely demand an accounting. I will demand an accounting from every animal. And from each man, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of his fellow man. Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God, has God made man."

Such is the root of the laws regarding the avenger of blood.



Actually, making their death a certainty with a timetable gives them time and motive to change. Though with a longer life there are plenty more opportunities for both good and evil to be done by them. Putting them in a cage doesn't eliminate them from harboring malice or festering or plotting, it just provides them with a location and food while they think. Certainly, they can choose to do what's right if they want to though.



Ah, and therefore anyone who advocates a "less acceptable" mode of punishment is not as able to reason?



Take it. Especially when the system is corrupt. Sort of like portrayed in the movies Eye For An Eye and A Time To Kill.



Yes, certainly. Where ambiguity reigns there is chaos.



Quite so. We have defined innocence as not having committed a capital crime, and limited it to humanity.



No, the avenger of blood is not guilty. Biblically that is, though the court systems would still treat them like a criminal for legislative reasons as well as financial. More laws, less justice though.



Are you a Christian too then? Or Jewish? Or, even, Muslim? Otherwise, humans are just considered another animal, at least where moral issues like sex come into play.



No its not. You'd be surprised what years of physical, verbal, emotional, psychological, or even sexual abuse can do to a person. Or even when a spouse you thought was faithful is caught cheating. There is such a thing as justifiable homicide. In states that have capital punishment, people who kill for such reasons are not guilty, or in your mind perhaps "not regarded as guilty by the legal system" would be a better way of putting it.



Perhaps it is better for some people not to be punished immediately but given time to repent and change? If they change within such a time period, then they can be absolved and then released? Or would you prefer that they remain in a cage for the rest of their lives even if they do change?



Ah, this is a rhetorical ploy, whether you realize it or not, such that you condemn anyone who disagrees with you. Not quite an ad hominem, but you would have it that advocacy of something is equivalent to it? To an extent there is some partial causality, in potential at least, but not quite.

Nah, swords aren't weapons, you can't commit murder without guns. Just give each of the animals a firearm and then they can be considered murderers because they have guns in their possession.

And, of course, mounting machine guns on chicken and duck wings could give you great aerial battles. Missiles could be messy as heat seeking missiles to fly up overheated anuses wouldn't leave much to eat.

Too much to read and now getting pointless.

Last edited by MissConstrue on 05 Jan 2010, 1:12 am, edited 1 time in total.

That would complicate field-dressing some.