(August 18, 2022 at 6:37 pm)bennyboy Wrote:(August 18, 2022 at 5:15 pm)Thumpalumpacus Wrote: Because a society should hold itself to higher standards than its worst elements hold themselves?
That's nice. But on what basis is refusing to execute criminals a "higher standard?" What's wrong with killing people?
You seem to be having a problem understanding moral congruence. Telling the members of society "killing is bad, don't do it", and then killing the people who break your rules (and it's not just for murder, btw) is the incoherent position here.
(August 18, 2022 at 6:37 pm)bennyboy Wrote: This question will get a lot of eye-rolls, I'm sure, but nobody yet has taken the time to establish that either (a) human life has intrinsic value regardless of who the person is; (b) killing people is necessarily wrong.
All values are subjective. Are you a tyro? We each have decided that our lives have a value to us. We therefore in our social contract recognize the fact that other people value their lives the same way we value our own, and thus we make social rules against killing. For that society then to say, "You broke our rule against killing people, so we're going to kill you" rather undercuts the entire scheme, don't you think? That's very eye-for-an-eye coming from someone who accuses others of being closet Christians. Maybe you've imbibed more than you think?
Or as my mom would ask me at times, if everyone else ran off a cliff, would you run off it too? Why do you think letting criminals establish our social values is a good idea? Because that's the essence of your argument here: "Joe Blow did X, therefore society has every right to do X to him".
If it's punishment you're wanting to inflict, let them live in a box for the rest of their lives. The only thing the death penalty delivers is nothing that hasn't been promised to us the moment we started sucking air. Dead people cannot, by definition, be punished.
