RE: Atheism & the Death Penalty.
January 20, 2016 at 8:50 pm
(This post was last modified: January 20, 2016 at 9:08 pm by Simon Moon.)
(January 20, 2016 at 7:24 am)Jehanne Wrote: Would you, as an atheist, support it? As for me, I would not, for the following reasons:
3) Innocent people, of course, are going to get executed -- "improbable, but not impossible."
Not so improbable.
Since 1973 there have been 156 people on death row exonerated, most because of new evidence. And most of the new evidence is DNA. Now consider all the executions that took place before DNA evidence was admissible beginning in 1986.
There have been 1423 executions since 1976.
That is a bit over 10% innocent people on death row.
It is almost a certainty, that 10% of the people on death row before DNA evidence was admissible, were also innocent.
You'd believe if you just opened your heart" is a terrible argument for religion. It's basically saying, "If you bias yourself enough, you can convince yourself that this is true." If religion were true, people wouldn't need faith to believe it -- it would be supported by good evidence.
