No Death Penalty. What Is Your Position?

[Sherman]

Knock off the personal attacks. Individual that do that will be given timouts from the thread.

 

[Clete]

Then why write it?


And yet here I am, a mature man with a doctoral degree. Go figure. And that sort of response from you and so many on the hard right, that methodological habit, is why I struggle to take you seriously, you doing that so soundly without me. It seems superfluous to try.


I'd say you could use a little more humility and a lot less assumption. People. We have work to do, don't we.


Presumes we know who they are, which as it turns out we sometimes don't and then someone who shouldn't be executed ends up dead. Given it isn't necessary, I find it fairly indefensible.


That's presuming two or three things not in evidence. The first is that murder is part of or largely part of a rational process. The second is one that gun control opponents love to use on that issue: are you of the opinion that criminals care about laws?



Only someone in too much of a hurry would present a false dichotomy as a coup de gras.


Then your saying a thing that doesn't make it so either. This is you ignoring my point. Now what good did that do either of us?


I think when we start believing that our thoughts are his thoughts instead of recognizing that our thoughts are mostly us approaching his as best we can, with stumbling along the way, we invite folly, and pride. I think I value life more than you, which is a very different thing. I think that because you're willing to sacrifice people who don't have to be. I'm pretty sure God had a horrible penalty for judges who did that.


The problem we have between us at the moment isn't the argument over whether or not the murderer should be executed. What I'm speaking to is the thing we have no right to do.

I had to get rid of you shouting at me. It was needless and takes up a lot of space. The concluding sentence was the heart of your mistake, as I see it. You believe we should be laboring under the OT law. I don't, but that's a separate argument and I've spoken to the pointlessness of that approach relative to what is and what can be accomplished here and now. It's a point separate from my proffer.


Maybe you're not doing the job you need to in setting it out. I'm a pretty good reader. So, who knows? Or, rather, why assume. Just try again.


The dosage being what, again? I'll wait. That's right, execution. The suggestion is that we're not doing enough of it to feel the effect of it. And that's just an assumption.


To illustrate the mistake you made. How did you not get that?


I think justice without mercy is hard. I think the law without the cross was hard. It was meant to be. It was meant to show the proud that they were willfully insufficient. That we fail the standard of justice and mean to. That the relation between man and God cannot be founded on it or our righteousness, but on mercy and in his righteousness...But that's beyond my point and an argument that I don't require to proffer the one I have, the one that can be accomplished and standard with a just result, that the innocent are not murdered by the state.


You're smart enough to understand what supra means and how it is used. Don't waste my time with this sort of nonsense because you're too lazy to look up.


And as in Congress we have opinions and arguments to proffer. Mine just happens to be the sort that reflects a fractured remedy in need of larger application, but already on the books in different states to different degrees. So, because it has already happened in parts it's reasonable to suggest it can happen writ large. Overturning the system isn't.


That's not what makes a thing practical or less. What makes it practical is that it is already being accomplished in part, is a part of the fabric of the law and doesn't require the overturning of a system to accomplish, only a uniformity and expansion of an operating principle.



No, that's just the banner you stitched and hold over your head.

So you respond to everything but the most important thing I said.

Good show! Welcome to my permanent ignore list.

 

[Clete]

Knock off the personal attacks. Individual that do that will be given timouts from the thread.

I, for one, am not offended by anything anyone has said to me.

 

[Town Heretic]

You believe in the fallacy of education making you wiser and smarter.

Nothing you just wrote is actually my position.

If you didn't you wouldn't have pointed to your doctoral degree as evidence of your superior knowledge and understanding.

That's not what I did.

Jesus was better educated by the age of 12 then the religious leaders of His day.

Right. If you understand what I wrote you should understand the point of it was to rebut the presumption you made above.

He baffled them with his questions and understanding of scripture at his very first visit to the temple. His mother and the Holy Spirit were His teachers and they did an outstanding job of educating Him.

He was God incarnate. You think anyone needed to teach him anything? I don't. Most of the rest of us, from physicians to masons, do a lot better when we're taught.

You wonder why the press points out that it is college-educated people who support socialism and big government? I can tell you. Those with college level/university level educations get far more indoctrination into left wing politics than the self-educated person does. I read widely in a multitude of areas, and I read on both sides the questions. You don't get that in the public educational system. It's all one-sided, and that side is always for the leftist side of the equation.

You actually do get that in public education. I know because I'm also a certified teacher with a masters in Early Childhood Ed. who has worked in the system.

You make a huge unsupported assertion saying it was mostly Christians who supported the Nazis.

No, I don't. Most Americans claim and claimed Christianity. So did most Germans. Do the math.

The biggest anti-Semites around are found on the political left, not on the conservative side. It's a side effect of their following Karl Marx who was a blatant racist. I have the evidence to support this if you're doubting me.

Present anything you find relevant.

And you close with more unsupported assertions.

I didn't even open with them, so no.

Most Germans supported Hitler because of the propoganda they were fed consistently by the press, which was well-educated, about how Hitler was going to make the German nation wealthy again.

Well, no. The propaganda included and was rooted in blaming the Jews. It was like popcorn for a lot of Europeans. Christian sentiment in relation to them has been, historically speaking, less than kind. You want examples? It's an easy case to support.

Those same people, the common people, wept openly when the US army forced them to tour the concentration camps so that they had to view what the Nazis had done.

I'm sure. And most prisoners will tell you they were innocent of the crime they were convicted for, believe what you will.

Their own academic elite in their media had kept them in ignorance of what was going on.

Weak, revisionist history. Go to the Holocaust Museum and do better.

Those who disliked Hitler were often found among the common people. It was the academic elite found in the state controlled church who threw their support behind Hitler.

He was, in fact, hugely popular among the people. Take a gander at the newsreels sometime.

In the same sense most Christians in this country either supported or permitted slavery for a very long time and racist policy thereafter. It's not their faith that was at fault, but their practice.

 

[Stripe]

He was God incarnate. You think anyone needed to teach him anything? I don't.

Yes.

Most Americans claim and claimed Christianity. So did most Germans. Do the math.

How about you take into account the numbers that challenge your emotion-based argument. :up:

 

[Stripe]

It is more important to execute the guilty than it is to worry about executing an innocent man.

Some good might arise from a wrongful execution, but nothing good can ever come from letting a murderer live.

 

[Town Heretic]

So you respond to everything but the most important thing I said.

Again, if you don't want it considered, don't write it to me.

I assume the part you're speaking to above was the shouting part, which I briefly mentioned, but otherwise ignored, because it was a rules violating, enormously fonted bit that I wasn't interested in shrinking to respond to. If you had wanted it considered and singularly, all you had to do was put it singularly and in regular font. I'd have obliged.

Good show! Welcome to my permanent ignore list.

I didn't engage you on the point, but responded to your efforts, so all you had to do was stop talking to me and I'd have forgotten you were there.

And because I don't want it lost in one of the many rabbit holes littering the thread, Jacob asked a fairly straight forward question about our stand on the death penalty.

I answered: I'm against it because we know that we've executed the innocent. We have the capacity to incarcerate people for life. During that incarceration some of those innocent may be freed and some remedy applied. But once we take a man's life we cannot offer any remedy and cannot in any sense undo the injustice.

Someone added a consideration regarding damage done by those paroled, which I thought was a good point and my answer was that we should not, for any reason, parole someone who committed a murder.

And that's where it stands with me.

 

[Stripe]

Someone

Coward.

a consideration regarding damage done by those paroled, which I thought was a good point and my answer was that we should not, for any reason, parole someone who committed a murder.

Your proposal will never be implemented.

Bars don't stop murderers.

And this is only part of the challenge you face.

So as far as recaps to banned people go, it needs some work.


And that's where it stands.

 

[TrumpTrainCA]

....... Weak, revisionist history. Go to the Holocaust Museum and do better.

In the same sense most Christians in this country either supported or permitted slavery for a very long time and racist policy thereafter. It's not their faith that was at fault, but their practice.

In a thread about the death penalty which is a legitimate debate, you manage to attack Christians as slave owners and bring up the Left's favorite Nazi boogyman. What is wrong with you.

Can't you ever stay on topic?

Speaking of the topic:

The founding fathers and the authors of the constitution did not consider the death penalty to be cruel and unusual punishment, so that's that. No more discussion is necessary.

 

[Rusha]

In a thread about the death penalty which is a legitimate debate,

You say the death penalty is an issue that can be legitimately debated and then go on to state this:

The founding fathers and the authors of the constitution did not consider the death penalty to be cruel and unusual punishment, so that's that. No more discussion is necessary.

There is ALWAYS a necessary discussion when it comes to the criminal justice system and protecting the rights and lives of the innocent.

 

[Stripe]

You say the death penalty is an issue that can be legitimately debated and then go on to state this: There is ALWAYS a necessary discussion when it comes to the criminal justice system and protecting the rights and lives of the innocent.

Aren't you in favor of the DP?

Why do you keep thanking TH's posts? You do realize he has a poor argument against it — one based on his shoddy theology? Aren't you an atheist as well?

:idunno:

 

[Town Heretic]

Can't you ever stay on topic?

That's hysterical (either). I omitted your off topic bit.

Speaking of the topic:

The founding fathers and the authors of the constitution did not consider the death penalty to be cruel and unusual punishment, so that's that. No more discussion is necessary.

That's not how debates work. :nono:

But is the debate about what the FFs thought? I mean, if that settled issues we could still own people. No, that's not the gold standard.

Meanwhile, at least at this point and with me, it isn't about whether or not the DP is cruel and unusual. It's about preventing the deaths of the wrongly convicted, keeping the state's hands clean of innocent blood.

There is ALWAYS a necessary discussion when it comes to the criminal justice system and protecting the rights and lives of the innocent.

You'd think people on our side about abortion would be as invested in keeping us out of the accidental murder business. I know you and I will probably disagree beyond my initial objection, but it's a hard objection to get past, I think.

:cheers:

 

[Rusha]

There is ALWAYS a necessary discussion when it comes to the criminal justice system and protecting the rights and lives of the innocent.

While I fully support the DP, the discussion of error-free verdicts should be a mandatory in DP cases.

EXAMPLE: The Central Park Five. A horrendous verdict based on a shady investigation and malicious prosecution.

 

[Rusha]

You'd think people on our side about abortion would be as invested in keeping us out of the accidental murder business. I know you and I will probably disagree beyond my initial objection, but it's a hard objection to get past, I think.

:cheers:

We should all be invested in making sure that innocent people are not convicted of a crime they did not commit. My follow up on that is that those who DO commit DP violations should meet their maker sooner rather than later. Like Old Yeller, they cannot be trusted to not re-offend as long as they are alive.

 

[JudgeRightly]

But is the debate about what the FFs thought? I mean, if that settled issues we could still own people. No, that's not the gold standard.

So, TH, what IS the gold standard?

How about God Himself and His word?

God said to put murderers to death to protect the innocent, and that it was just as wrong to let a guilty man go free as it is to kill an innocent man.

Your suggestions are biased, in that they try to protect the innocent more than they punish the guilty, which puts you in the wrong.

Meanwhile, at least at this point and with me, it isn't about whether or not the DP is cruel and unusual. It's about preventing the deaths of the wrongly convicted, keeping the state's hands clean of innocent blood.

See? There you go again. Trying to protect the innocent more than you try to punish the guilty.

Those two things need to be BALANCED. Your suggestions do not achieve that balance.

You'd think people on our side about abortion would be as invested in keeping us out of the accidental murder business. I know you and I will probably disagree beyond my initial objection, but it's a hard objection to get past, I think.

:cheers:

 

[JudgeRightly]

While I fully support the DP, the discussion of error-free verdicts should be a mandatory in DP cases.

EXAMPLE: The Central Park Five. A horrendous verdict based on a shady investigation and malicious prosecution.

"Error-free verdicts" are not common enough to be relied upon, due to man's fallen nature, so it puts an impossible task on the shoulders of the judges, and makes trials tedious and convictions nearly impossible to acquire, which harms the victim(s) of the crimes.

That's why God said "two or three witnesses shall establish a matter."

 

[Stripe]

Town: That's not how debates work.

Also Town: That's an argument that needn't be entered into.

:think:

 

[Stripe]

It isn't about whether ... the DP is cruel and unusual. It's about preventing the deaths of the wrongly convicted.

But you ignore the deaths of tens of thousands more.

 

[Right Divider]

"Error-free verdicts" are not common enough to be relied upon, due to man's fallen nature, so it puts an impossible task on the shoulders of the judges, and makes trials tedious and convictions nearly impossible to acquire, which harms the victim(s) of the crimes.

That's why God said "two or three witnesses shall establish a matter."

That still leaves the problem of the reliability of the two or three witnesses.

 

[Town Heretic]

That still leaves the problem of the reliability of the two or three witnesses.

Eye witnesses are notoriously unreliable. I've seen illustrations of that in interviewing and deposing multiple witnesses to a singular event. It's like a game of telephone in the macro.

They were the best you could get before forensic evidence, which itself isn't perfect, but resting on that or excluding prosecution in the absence of that would be a worse idea given what we can do today. In fact, we've had cases without witnesses solved by forensics and murderers identified and convicted by that very thing.