Atheism & the Death Penalty.

[God of Mr. Hanky]

I'd rather die than have a life sentence with no chance of parole,
unless I knew I was innocent and there was a chance new evidence might come to light to exonerate me,
but by the time science advances enough to show new evidence,
a decade or more may pass.

Also, I think there are instances where violent crimes do not deserve the death penalty as much as some non-violent crimes.

For instance, a doctor who calculatedly betrays trust and knowingly causes disease or irreparable disability
or great suffering, to many people, for the sake of personal gain, to me,

deserves death,

...more than a man who pulls a gun and kills his daughter's rapist, in a rage...you see?

I've also heard of cases where deeply disturbed, extremely violent pedos, rapists, and murderers
have asked for death, and warned authorities to never set them free.

If a person is deranged, and has no control over their violent impulses, and the inside of their head is a living hell,
and keeping them alive in prison is doing nothing other than prolonging their suffering
and costing the public tax dollars....you may as well at least give them the option of assisted suicide.

I think that's less barbaric than letting them suffer.

But I'm painting in broad strokes;
the possible variables from case to case are endless.

There will always be the risk of innocents dying,
and there's just no way that will ever be acceptable;

but I think that the cold hard reality is that if most of us saw what life is really like in some of those places,
and we saw how much worse prison is made, for the non-violent criminals,
by keeping some of the monsters alive,
it would be a wake-up call.

I don't know...something tells me that it's easy to sit comfortably in our homes
discussing lofty ideals about the sanctity of human life,

but when contrasted against the reality of life in those places,
it might seem like a really bad joke.

Death is too good for some people, such as those who commit malicious medical malpractice, but I do agree that physical violence has been much overplayed while those who cause others a lifetime of misery or loss of life after using society to gain the victims' trust deserve to be punished the most severely.