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Re: Timothy McVeigh & The death penalty
Posted By: Sam, on host 24.128.86.11
Date: Wednesday, June 13, 2001, at 15:30:43
In Reply To: Re: Timothy McVeigh & The death penalty posted by Arthur on Tuesday, June 12, 2001, at 00:03:59:

Most of your refutations of arguments in favor of capital punishment laws are refutations of arguments I don't believe in either. Capital punishment does not deter future crime. Capital punishment does not provide closure to the families of the victims, or, if it did, does not provide what I believe is a particularly healthy kind of closure. Most importantly, let me dissuade you from the ridiculous notion that capital punishment is (or should be) motivated out of hatred or vengeance. Both are wrong. I admit that I do not feel much heartbreak over Timothy McVeigh (I think I wish I felt more), but I absolutely do not glory in his death, nor feel that any wrong he did has somehow been righted.

I've given my secular reasons for capital punishment in another post. I wanted to reply to you firstly to agree with your refutations of many of the other secular reasons for capital punishment, and then to refute your spiritual reason against it.

You can't use Christianity as a basis for condemning capital punishment as immoral if you only pick and choose unrelated principles of Christianity and ignore those elements of it that address the subject directly. Yes, "murder" is a sin; yes, all sins are equal in the eyes of God, and but a single lie is as loathsome in His sight as mass genocide, just as ten is no further from infinity than ten thousand. But God, in the Bible, endorses capital punishment and approves of human government wielding that power. What other Christianity-based argument can you have to refute this? If you're coming from a Christian perspective, from the premise that the Christian God exists and the Bible is true, you have to take all of it. And if capital punishment does not reconcile with the other spiritual knowledge you have, your responsibility is to learn how it fits together consistently, not deny the parts you don't understand. (And there will ALWAYS be spiritual things that we don't understand for the simple reason that God is smarter and more complex than we are.)

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