Capital punishment! HaHaHa!

I think you will find that rape is not murder.

Sorry couldn't help it.

 

That's not true. It is impossible to debate economics without encountering welfare at some point because there is simply no line of thought about economics that denies the existence of welfare (that I know of). However, I am clearly providing a way to debate life and death without including any deity, and therefore it is apparently possible to do so. I understand that for those who do believe what you say, it will be impossible to do what I do here, and so a better example would be to try to debate society without being allowed to refer to class. One group will be perfectly able to debate on, but the other will be unable to do so since according to them the subject exists only in terms of class struggle.

I'm not blaming the son here because I'm not acknowledging that we're talking about an actual human being at the time of abortion. What about morning-after pills in this respect btw? Does Christianity say a few cells is a human being?

Oh, and "I'm sure that's in the Bible somewhere" doesn't exactly convince me that you're right!

Or they don't, and the children they have will only suffer from it, since the mother is irresponsible or weak-willed while the children are unwanted and possibly unsupportable.

That would have been the way it would have been. Pity for such great people as Einstein, or you, not to have been born, but during pregnancy I say the decision lies entirely with the mother. After all the baby doesn't have a voice yet, and there is no other authority over a woman's body but that woman. It's what the second feminist wave was all about.

Yes, I'm aware that you do think there's another authority over the woman's body... This is just my view on it.

Yes, we are. What you describe as a sin, all being equal before your god, means nothing to me and as such a sin doesn't exist for me. Bad deeds fall into three categories: morally wrong, legally wrong, or both. I recognize the need to punish what is legally wrong, adjusted to the seriousness of the crime; I recognize the need to reject what is morally wrong, adjusted to the seriousness of the act. Moral codes are different for every human being and as such can't be described as universal, and therefore interpreting "sin" as a moral offence would be wrong. The only remaining category is a legal offence. And so I will interpret what you call a sin as a crime.

 

Example accepted! I was in a hurry and could not think of a better one…

The argument is that the bundle of cells will become a human life. It is the start of every life. If you stop that happening, you have effectively ‘played God’. Which, to most Christians, is seen as a bad thing.

That was simply a tongue-in-cheek remark about the conclusion I came to about not punishing the son for the father’s misdeeds – because that is in the Bible.

So you would suggest that irresponsible / weak-willed women should never have children?
Edit - I forgot to point out that people will never have the chance to mature / learn anything if their mistakes have no consequences.
Coming from a Brit (we have the highest teenage pregnancy rate in the world) this may sound rather idealistic...

And the father has no say? After all, the bundle of cells would not exist without him.

And you are entitled to your view. In my view you are disrespectful & playing God – in your view I am probably misguided, a touch gullible and inflexible. Again, this comes down to the basic difference we have over the existence of God. However, I am prepared to love you anyway (‘brotherly-type love, so don’t worry! ) rather than burn you at the stake or torture you into converting – a good example of loving the sinner…

I think again, sadly, this is a difference that is down to the existence of God.
Yes, there are sins that are not crimes – lying, for example. It is wrong to lie, surely? But find me the law that states you must not lie (except for lying in court or to the police).
And yes, there are sins that are crimes – murder, for example. And yes, a punishment should be served in my opinion. Not as a ‘penance for sin’, but as just reward for committing a crime. And to show that committing crime has a consequence.

 

Just had a thought overnight...

You can even remove God entirely from this particular argument if you wish... (I know a few non-Christian anti-abortionists)
There is a little bundle of cells there that will be a person. What gives anybody the right to say which little bundle of cells should be allowed to develop and which should be stopped?

Um, are we (well, me ) getting sidetracked into abortion?

 

yes you are

to me to mix abortion and capitol punishment is apples and bulls**t. capitol punishment stands alone simply due to the fact that it is the result of a choosen action by a person knowing his actions are wrong. the person doing the dying is has earned it by their own actions. this is not the case with abortion or mercy killing.

 

Re: yes you are

Yes, we did get a little sidetracked somewhere down the line...

 

You're arguing that only the creator of the bundle has such a right. So am I. We're just not in agreement about who created what, once again.

Lynn1212: yes, the two things are entirely different, but in both cases a professional (whether a doctor or a judge) takes it upon himself to decide over the life of a human being. To me, however, abortion isn't deciding about the life of a human being, or rather it's about deciding what the life of the pregnant woman will be like - with or without child. Therefore I don't see any problem with 'killing' the unborn. Killing a serious criminal, IMHO, doesn't help, because he's more thorougly punished by lifelong imprisonment and killing him off makes for a very big error when it turns out that he was innocent. The amount of errors and fault margins in crime investigation is still far too great for a "just" form of capital punishment.

 

Except God is (yes, this is a Christo-centric view!) infallable & knows all, whereas humans tend not to be...
We have already established that people may have got pregnant through lack of will or irresponsibility. Should they be allowed to dodge responibility?
Also (and I hope any female readers will forgive me) pregnant women can have their rational judgement clouded by the high hormone levels - this information comes from my mother - they experience during pregnancy.
Is such a person in the best position to judge whether to grant or remove a life?

 

Now, getting back on topic...

Now, there is an issue here of enforcement.
Obviously, a legal system should be fair, which means that levels of punisment are equal across the country. So, obviously, you set levels.
(examples only)
If X murders Y - he dies.
If X commits manslaughter on Y for slight reason, he dies
If X commits manslaughter on Y for very good reason, he gets life.

However, given that no case is quite that clear cut, a lot of the punishment will depend on the judge's interpretation of how the case fits the guidelines. Which will lead to lots of 'unfair decisions', and a shed-load of appeals...
I have read somewhere (do not know how true it is) that the legal costs of having a guy on death row - with all the appeals etc - is usually more expensive than simply jailing him for life.

And then, of course, there is the 'what if he is innocent' debate.

A mate of mine was jailed for stabbing a policeman - he was eventually aquitted.

 

But was he innocent.

 

Yes, actually.
There was a bit of a riot, some guy stabbed a policeman & legged it with a bunch of his mates. The police gave chase, and my mate (going about his lawful business) got caught up in it all, and was battered senseless and dragged off to the police station where, while 'slightly' concussed, he signed a confession stating that he had stabbed the policeman.

Hence the eventual aquittal.

However, he spent several years in prison while that was being sorted out. Had there been a death penalty, anybody harming poice officers would certainly be eligible...

 

What lucky man. :lol:

Bet he doesn't think so.

 

No one is infallible or knows all, then.

Unless God was actually Odysseus, then I'd have to rephrase.

This is a fair point, but since I don't acknowledge that anyone else has more right of judgment over a baby's life than its inevitable mother, I will still give the nod to their impaired judgment. After all, most women will only consider abortion if they really, really don't want to have children, in which case letting the baby be born might make him/her worse off yet. The same applies to babies with disorders visible before birth.

 

something else to ponder

there seems to be a lot of concern over executing the wrong man and there should be but- the old saying goes, better for 10 guilty to go free than 1 innocent be found guilty. if we apply this to executions we would have a certain % of those freed commit more crimes that very well might result in the deaths of other innocent people. is society better off trading one wrongly accused man for the lives of several that would have been saved by harsher rules? or do we sacrifice them on the alter of our principals? its a question that cannot be answered with any certainty but one that has to be considered somewhere in the debate.
i have always been in favor of capitol punishment but if there were perhaps some other way to remove a felon from contact with the rest on humanity i would have no problem with that as an option instead.

 

Re: something else to ponder

Wasn't that a favourite of Himmler?
(not trying to compare you lynn1212, honestly)

 

IF YOU PEOPLE WANT TO URGE THE BIBLE< GO ABOUT 10 TOPICS DOWN TO THE BIBLE THREAD THAT I STARTED. I DID IT SO YOU COULD GET stuff LIKE THIS OUT OF HERE, AND ONTO THERE!

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4518599.stm

your views on this?

 

i am pretty sure, granted i am not positive, but I think that God has rape listed as a crime that called for death, but he also says that you need perfection or else you deserve the eternal punishment in Hell. If anybody wants to joke about Hell, just wait a few years, for me maybe 50 years, maybe not. When you are dead, if you wind up in Hell, send me an IM and tell me about it because first hand knowledge from people who don't think it exists will be interesting.

 

Roel, You opinion here surprises me. Not because of the side you choose but because you are usually so well factually informed on the issues that you debate.
If you think that abortion is only performed on a clump of cells or an embryo then you will be shocked if you look into the issue and see what is really happening. Take it from someone who does ultrasound exams for a living, what is being killed is often well formed young unborn human beings.
I won't get into the death penalty here..the issue is too large and complex for my time devoted to these forums as is the issue of abortion however I could not resist commenting upon a factual error such as at what stage of development an human being can legally be aborted.
embryo = conception to 8 weeks.

 

I was surprised actually to find out, a few years ago, how early on in its development anyone would say of an unborn baby that it looks "human". Luckily for my argumentation, no one brought that up yet. Thanks but no thanks Grieg!

It is my uninformed and subjective opinion that babies, being deformed, underdeveloped, basic-instinct creatures unable to communicate properly, aren't entirely human either, and so abortion isn't a problem. But let's not get all too politically incorrect...