I think it is a practical solution to an inconvenient problem.

An eye for an eye.

I absolutely believe in the death penalty. Let's do it AK to the back of the head like Chinese do. Make everyone watch it at least once. They can keep that image fresh in their heads. A constant reminder of the consequences.

That and putting people in prisons is a waste of time. They only get worse if you do that. Plus you have to feed them and take care of them. What a waste of money. Just kill the killers and rapists and child molesters.. Get a Cain and spank everyone else one they do in Japan. Oh and have a 3 strikes system. 3 felonies and you win a free trip to the grave!

Website: www.myspace.com/zwhitewolf

Interesting...
So, you what would you think about our BNP's proposed system of only unrepentant killers being given the death penalty?

But, if you kill killers, aren't you just becoming them?

The BNP were planning on getting a system in which all murderes etc were sent to the South Georgian Islands that are in our possesin, and there they have to work and build for the rest of their lives... That's bascially prison just on a sunny island...

I've often thought that the death penalty seems pointless. Then i realise that a large majority believes in the afterlife. What would truly be justice would be not to kill the killer, but HIS family member. I mean... the victim of the crime does not suffer, the family/loved ones do. I realise it's a stupid idea, not to be taken seriously :P

Are you saying we should kill the family members of... of... the victim?! :D LOL

The victim would go insane, what with him being attacked/raped then his family dying. :)

No, the attackers dummy.

Oh, I don't know why I read it like that... I'm problby drunk LOL.

Actually Saddam did something similar. If you threatened him be would kill you, your family and everyone you love. Thats why he didn't have terrorist problems. He spoke their language.

Website: www.myspace.com/zwhitewolf

There is a video of him (full) being hung on the internet. What kind of sick **** would watch another man die? Those are the people who are mentally unstable...

For all Saddam did, in the end he condemned 9/11 and called terrorists 'cowards'

So an overwhelming majority of people in the history on mankind are mentally unstable? Glad we finally agree on a statement!

People who watch that are Ok I suppose. People who enjoy to watch things like that are mentally ill, in today's world

Psychologically, apparently all people are on some level 'mentally unstable'.

The sad part is that the general public is so mesmerized that they don't even consider it like that, they see it on TV and get the same emotional response as if they were watching a movie.

The public just go along with what they're told, and while their governments feed them lies.
They're true sheep.

Sure people get sad and cry when watching scenes from the hanging, but if they were in Saddam's shoes they'd wish they hadn't of supported his hanging.

To actually chip on the subject, the whole bs of the executions in the US is a joke. Just line the people up infront of a firing squad consisting of the judge and the jury. If you want to execute someone, atleast have the balls to bloody do it yourself, bunch of cowards.

Isn't the fact that innocent people sometimes die a turn off from suport of execution?
The method in America, lethal injection, is apparently "humane", to me the death penalty is a medieval tradition that's somehow managed to remain well into the 21st century.

For an apparently religious country, it's odd they have the death penalty, it goes against everything in the Bible.

Really? Everything? The death penalty is a Bible-based tradition.

Death penalties have been around for thousands of years prior to medieval times. The oldest recorded code of laws includes several death penalty offenses.

There are certain people, for whatever reason, who commit heinous crimes and who cannot or will not be reformed. A government's authority is an exchange. We give up our personal rights for vengeance in exchange for a government's protection. In the case of capital punishment, the state - no one human but an entity beyond human - is executing the criminal. Yes, a human pulls the trigger, shoves the chemical in, flips the switch, or whatever, but that human can do so without guilt, and more importantly without stooping to the level of the criminal because it is the instrument of the state which does the killing and not the person. Yes, it's a psychological construct, but it works nonetheless.

On a personal level, I am neither for nor against the death penalty. Until I can make up my mind whether life in prison or death is more humane, I can't make up my mind about the death penalty.

When I say Bible, just assume I'm talking about the Christianity's New Testament, not the Old. The New wouldn't approve of this barbric ritual, no debate needed.

"The State"? Really? That's the perfect defense for the coward who kill another human being, it wasn't me, it was "the state"

America needs to follow the rest of the world, almost two thirds of the countries of the world have abolished the death penalty, and there were almost 60 that had the death penalty in law or practice, but didn't use it.

We abolished the death penalty a long time ago, even for treason.

"The death penalty is the ultimate denial of human rights. It is the premeditated and cold-blooded killing of a human being by the state. This cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment is done in the name of justice."

I couldn't agree more. Everyone has the right to life, not just by what I believe in, but by European Law, and the Law set by United Nation's Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
"Everyone has the right to life"

Saudi Arabia still crucify people, don't tell me that isn't sick. The whole thing's sick.

Oh please Toby. The U.N is one of the most hypocritical institutions ever. Not to mention that it's only used as a pretense for military action against nations that don't play ball with the US.

EDIT: On a slightly unrelated note, your naivety is quite amusing. Oh, and you are right. The way they execute the execution (hehe) is cowardly. If you wish death upon another do it yourself or shut the **** up.

OK, I was merely stating that it is technically against International Law.

I firmly believe the Death Penalty is cold-blooded murder. Say whatever you wan't. *Shrugs*

As much as I disagree with your views on the Death Penalty, I have to agree with you there. Don't hide behind "The State". Cowards.

Fundamentalist and other Evangelical protestants typically favor the death penalty. I can think of several Southern Baptist writings, using nothing but the Bible as a reference, which are strongly supportive of the death penalty.

Or do you really mean, "When I say it's in the Bible, just go with I'm right because I read it once and know all about it now."

I'd be happy to show you the error of your ways, through scripture, so you, too, can be a good Christian and put the evil murderers to death.

Please.

Thou shalt not kill.

Wow. Some Christians favor the death penalty, some Muslims would love to hold you down while they sever your head just because you're American.
Is that true Islam?

I look at the Bible and see the facts, I don't do what you're doing.

No, you're wrong. I don't want to turn this into an pathetic argument, but you're wrong.

Everyone deserves to maintain there God given right to life, no matter what they've done, the nature of the crime, the charachteristics of the offender, or the method of execution used the "The State".

It's a cowardly practice, used by cowards, and enforced on cowards, by cowards. Cowards. :D

Well, Find me any passage of the New Testament that condones cold-blooded killing of criminals.

I don't want to argue, just debate. :)

Toby, i really need to ask you this. Are you aware that the bible is not supposed to be read word from word and taken as such but instead, it's supposed to be a collection of stories that try to show you widsom, not to tell you how to live your life?

Argue that with the 2,000,000,000,000 of us living our life by the Bible.

Don't try and tell me anything about the Bible. ;)

You still didn't answer the question. I was not arguing with anything, why such response? I merely asked you a simple question.

And I answered... :
L@@K.

He can't answer the question. He either lacks the cognitive ability to do so or refuses to employ it. Either way, he can't answer.

Yes i realised that. I just can't be bothered anymore so i didn't continue with the exchange.

I did answer.

And Unknown -
"Do I take any pleasure in the death of the wicked? … I take no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Sovereign Lord."

That's proof the Bible (New Testament) is against the death penalty. But I don't expect a reply from you as I haven't got one previously, Ill just assume you've admitted you were wrong. You can't really argue anything now.

And, I did answer the question.

The Bible does tell you how to live your life, it sets rules and guidelines for humanity to follow. What a stupid question.

Alright, I'm bored enough to bother with this this morning.

Let me preface this entire post by saying that I do not care what you think in regards to the death penalty or in regards to the Bible. This is an intellectual exercise and nothing more. I may even say things I do not believe in the following. I am choosing to answer the question of the death penalty from the point of reference of the protestant Christian paradigm. I'll even tie one hand behind my back, metaphorically speaking, and leave out any mention of the "eye for an eye" theme running rampant through the Old Testament. I haven't been what you, Toby, would consider a Christian in nearly 20 years.

***

First and foremost, Christ came to fulfill the Law and the Prophets. He did not come to set aside the Old Testament but rather to fulfill it. (See Matthew 5) Therefore, the New Testament does not supercede the Old Testament but rather augments it. It extends God's covenant from dealing only with Israelites to all peoples of the world (Gentiles).

Secondly, there are numerous instances in the Old Testament where the death penalty is specifically proscribed for particular crimes. Further, the New Testament does not mention the death penalty specifically. Jesus came not with a revolution but an evolution of Judaism. There are many places in the New Testament where Christians are told to obey the law of the land.

Romans 13
1Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. 2Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. 3For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and he will commend you. 4For he is God's servant to do you good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword for nothing. He is God's servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. 5Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also because of conscience. 6This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God's servants, who give their full time to governing.

Why mention that government "does not bear the sword for nothing" if government is not supposed to govern and enforce laws through might, including a death penalty law. The death penalty was a very real part of the government Paul is talking about here. He himself participated in the killing of criminals prior to his conversion on the road to Damascus. So, it is clear that the Apostle Paul is not against the death penalty, else he would have said follow the law except in the case of the death penalty which is wrong.

The commandment, "Thou shalt not kill." is given unto individuals. Nearly all, if not all actually, religious scholars will tell you this statement literally translates from the Hebrew as "Thou shalt not murder" and is directed to instruct individuals that murder is wrong. Murder is not done by the state - it is done by individual people and is the unlawful taking of another human's life. Death penalty executions are not unlawful and therefore not murder.

No where in all it's nearly 750,000 words does the Bible repudiate capital punishment. Many places over in the Old Testament, particularly in the codified law books, it establishes capital punishment as the correct punishment for a great number of crimes including murder, sodomy, rape, perjury, kidnapping, and disobedience to parents. In Luke 20, Christ tells a parable of the vineyard owner who sends messengers to the vineyard keepers. They beat the messengers and sent them away. So the vineyard owner sends his son as a messenger. The keepers kill the son. Christ then asks what will the vineyard owner do to those keepers and answers that he will kill them and give the vineyard over to other keepers. If Christ thought the death penalty were wrong, surely he would have taken the opportunity to point that out here.

How can one, then, love his neighbor and kill him? Many people want to say that Jesus told us to love our neighbor as ourself and therefore can't kill a murderer because that violates this principal. That theory can only be true if death is necessarily a bad thing, which is an inordinately hypocritical thing for a Christian to say, in my humble opinion. If being put on death row and knowing you will be killed for your actions causes you to come to God, then though the death penalty ended your life, so also did it save your soul, and therefor was the right and Godly thing to have done.

God himself instituted the death penalty (Genesis 9:6 - Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made man.) and Christ himself confirms it when he tells Peter to put away his sword and not commit murder against the officers sent to collect and crucify him because he will then die by the sword (by the law of the land which would have tried, convicted, and executed Peter for his action).

Wow, you obviously put some time into writing that, so thank you.

Believe in the oneness of God, believe Jesus was the son of God, and follow his teachings and you're a Christian. Irregardless of what anyone says.

But this - "Do I take any pleasure in the death of the wicked? … I take no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Sovereign Lord."

Isn't that evidence enough of Jesus' views on 'the death of the wicked'? It should be.

Also no matter what you say, the Bible teaches life is sacred and only God may take it.
This includes, Suicide and murder, murder under all guises including "the state".

As for Matthew 26:51-52 Jesus wasn't talking of the Death Penalty, when he said "those that take by the swrod, shall perish by the sword" he merely was saying that violence tends to lead to violence.



That's fine. I wish I could say I don't care what you think, but that'd be a lie.

In the end, I am against the death penalty, because of my faith, and my morals.
If for no other reason, because innocent people die, and if you don't care, or still support the death penalty you're evil incarnate.
END.

It is evidence that Jesus does not take any pleasure in it and nothing more. I take no pleasure in the death of another human being, whether criminal or saint, but that doesn't mean I don't recognize the validity or even sanctity of certain deaths.


It isn't what I say, it is what the Bible says. Yes, we are taught as individuals not to take a life, but we are also instructed, as a culture/society/religious group/whatever you call it, to punish criminals, and to punish certain criminals with death. I didn't say that. The Bible does. You can't rip one verse out of context and presume that that one verse out of thousands of verses sums up everything God had to teach us. Why not just boil the whole book down to the "the strong protect the weak, the golden rule, and believe in God above all" and quit reading it altogether.





If I am evil incarnate, then so is Saint Thomas Aquinas, Lord Justice Denning, J.J. Rousseau, Pope Pious XII, Sister Helen Prejean, all of the Southern Baptists, and other fundamental evangelicals around the world, and the apostle Paul, who stated, in his hearing before Festus, "if then I am a wrong doer, and have committed anything worthy of death, I do not refuse to die." Acts 25:11. This statement by Paul constitutes an acknowledgment that the state continues, just as it had in the days of Noah (Gen. 6:9), to have the power of life and death in the administration of justice.

You don't have to believe in the death penalty. In a perfect world, we wouldn't need it, and the Bible certainly teaches that we all should avoid any action which might earn us a death penalty, but no where does it specifically forbid a government to employ a death penalty for capital crimes. If you want to abolish it around the world, provide an alternative method that supplants humanity's natural inclination to understand and accept it with something more. If you want to abolish it around the world, in other words, come up with a reason that carries more weight than "I'm pretty sure the Bible tells me so."

Even when I was active in a church, proselytizing daily, I would never have presumed to condemn millions of people as "evil incarnate." How happy (Ecce - if you're in here btw- this is the happiness I mentioned elsewhere which you rightly called me out on as not a true use of the word) you must be to be certain of your beliefs to know everything there is to know of God.

If someone condoned the death penalty then they'd take pleasure in knowing an evil individual was dead.

I think the death penalty is cold-blooded murder by another name, I do so because I believe, and millions do also, that the teachings of Christianity are against the death penalty. I also believe morally the death penalty is unjust.

Inoccent people are hanged, and murdered for crimes they didn't commit, if that doesn't put you off the death penalty, they yes, you are evil incarnate.

Innocent people dying for no good reason, people being executed to "save money"?
Any good human being with a sound mind would agree with me, or anyone who's not a psychopath.

If you believe in the death penalty yourself then why don't you watch a lovely video of beheading gone wrong? People hanging on by the tubes they were using to breath not 10 minutes ago.
If you can't do that, you're a hypocrite, if you can, you're sick.

I can condone the death penalty without taking pleasure in the death of any one criminal.

You argue without reason and employ no logic.

I stated earlier, I neither condone nor condemn the death penalty. It is what it is - a tool of human governments in place since the dawn of recorded law and probably earlier.

Innocent people are trampled on every day. Do I wish this were not the case? Yes. Emphatically so. Do I think there is any way to avoid it ever happening on a wholesale scale? No. It is the nature of life.

Had you wanted to rebut my arguments, you should rather have argued with me than petulantly insisting that I must be wrong because I don't think like you. Show me I'm wrong with reason.

For example, all you needed to argue the point was to say, as the Catholics do, that even though the Bible gave us capital punishment, we now exist in a time and place where alternatives to the death penalty are available (life in prison, for example) and so must not necessarily employ the heinous act of state death but rather are liberated by the ability to incarcerate. You might have said that the overwhelming evidence that racism, classism, and economics evident in the death penalty system have voided any government's right to use it because it cannot be charitably and equally applied to all citizens. You might even have said that since the Bible remains effectively silent on the subject in the New Testament, neither specifically condoning nor condemning the right of the state to use capital punishment, that we as Christians are free to make up our own minds on the subject - considering what we know of free will, morality, and God's love in our decisions - and that either decision is correct and so should be decided democratically within a society.

But you didn't. You couldn't, could you? That would require thinking. It's so much easier just to condemn me and stand firm in your childish beliefs. Childish not because of what they are, but childish because of your level of understanding about them. But that is faith for you - a childish belief in the absurd.

*Yawn*



I can think of a very good way to prevent innocent people dying. Aboloshing the death penalty.



I have quoted this without reading it because the first 6 words made me yawn.

Thou shalt not kill. You shall not murder.
However you wish to phrase it, whatever words or spelling you use, however you take its meaning is irrelevant.
The rule for all of humanity - Thou shalt not kill.
That includes "The State".

I think I prefer Whitewolf to you. He's better at it.

"Guard what God has entrusted to you. Avoid godless, foolish discussions with those who oppose you with their so-called knowledge.


Reply as you may, I will just choose to ignore you, don't waste your words.
"When an argument flares up, the wise man quenches it with silence."

I'lll chip in with some wisdom for you! "there is no such thing as innocence, only degrees of guilt".

EDIT:Hahahahah, you have no clue whatsoever what unknown said so you reply with *yawn*.

:D
Ok, if anyone is re reading through what I wrote, replace innocent with "not that guilty - much".
:)

I rather think he missed the point where I proved the death penalty was wrong, even.

A man got a new hunting dog, and went out to shoot ducks. He shoots a duck, and it falls in a lake. His dog walks across the water, retrieves the duck, and brings it back to him. Shocked that his dog can walk on water, he shoots another duck, and again, the dog walks across the lake to retrieve it.

The next day, he asks a buddy to go hunting with him, wanting him to see what his dog can do. Shortly after arriving near the lake, he shoots a duck. The dog walks across the waters of the lake, and retrieves the duck. He shoots several more ducks, and several more times the dog walks across water to retrieve them. The buddy never says a thing about this dog.

Finally able to stand it no longer, the man asks his friend, "Don't you think there is something unusual about my dog?"

The friend replies, "Sure do. He can't swim."

Ok.... :S

It's also the perfect defense for one who is not a coward. That is why the system works as it has and has worked that way since we had legal systems. When King Hammurabi proscribed the death penalty, it was not his hand who wielded the sword. It's basic human psychology. I understand Hexi not understanding that, but you certainly should. One cannot be judge, jury, and executioner without ill effect to one's psyche. Why? Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. It's a mental construct, yes, for the state to employ an executioner, but one whose purpose is to leave the non-criminals involved in the punishment of actual criminals psychologically unscathed by the process.

No, the fact that one needs to use "The State" as a defence, means that they're a coward.
They're the worst type of human being, one consumed by evil.

Answer the ******* question.

I ******* have! :D

Unknown -

"Do I take any pleasure in the death of the wicked? … I take no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Sovereign Lord."

I win! (that was a joke...)