(October 27, 2016 at 8:26 am)SofaKingHigh Wrote:(October 25, 2016 at 8:09 pm)Jehanne Wrote: With the impending Democratic victory, and hopefully, the continued progressivization of the federal courts, I did some online searches to see what Christian fundamentalists currently think about capital punishment. This one really stood out:
Andrew Allen Cook was executed on February 22, 2013 for the brutal, senseless murders of two young college students around his age, Grant Patrick Hendrickson, 22, and Michele Lee Cartagena, 19; he was apprehended nearly 2 years after the crime after his dad, an FBI agent, turned him in:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-...-1995.html
As an atheist, I am opposed to executions for any and all crimes, no matter how grievous, but what really bothered me after reading this story is what one of the victim's mothers said:
This just makes me sick! For starters, the idea of a "devil", "devils" and/or "evil spirits" is just plain lunacy; it's equivalent to believing that the South won the US Civil War. But, worse, when this mother was witnessing the slow death of her child's killer, she was thinking, "Hey, they're killing one of Satan's servants" and as opposed to think that a living, breathing human being was dying before her very eyes. How convenient! If this does not show the evil of conservative Christian thinking, then what does?
While there are atheists who support the death penalty, I am ecstatic about the upcoming victory of Secretary Clinton and the diminishing role and influence of Christian fundamentalism in the United States.
Can I ask why being an atheist has anything to do with your views on the death penalty?
Edit to add: While I am no advocate of the death penalty, if anyone were ever to do any serious harm to my daughter, I'd want them dead.
If they killed my kid, I would want them dead, too! But, I admit that I would not be in a proper frame of mind at that time to decide such questions. As an atheistic materialist, I think that scheduling a human being's annihilation is a cruel and unnecessary act. In the end, it is the living who suffer -- the correction officers and executioners, the family of the condemned, and even, the family of the victim, who often say that it was more trouble than it was worth. And, besides, some innocent persons have been put to death in the US since 1976; I am reminded of Cameron Todd Willingham from Texas. And, then, there's the cost -- the majority of death sentences are either overturned or not carried out, but the cost is roughly the same for the condemned who are executed and those who are not. The US has better things to spend its money on!