Death Penalty - Non-Religious Arguments

Hank77 · Jan 11, 2022

disciple Clint said:
That would work except there have been people released who had life with no chance of parole or pardon, a judge can change that in a heart beat.

Then the law can be changed so that a judge can't change it.

zippy2006 said:
the well being of the society which will be forced to pay for the long term imprisonment of such criminals

It depends on which state the prisoner is being tried and housed in whether it cost less for a death penalty conviction or a life without parole conviction.
Fact check/Is the death penalty more expensive than life in prison

zippy2006 · Jan 11, 2022

Bradskii said:
The person to whom the question should be directed is the person that's been convicted. Although it's somewhat rhetorical. He (he/she is too clumsy to use here so I'll refer to any assumed killer as 'he') has already decided that some life - the one he took, had less value than the benefit he gained from it. He has confirmed that he considers some lives dispensible. Why should we argue against his position? We know he's wrong but he can hardly argue that we should treat him any differently than he did his victim.

True, and MacIntyre hints at such an idea in the OP video. In any case, it is commonly held that a person who, say, commits murder has forfeited certain rights that they would normally have. We might think of saying, "In reducing your victim to a obstacle to be disposed of, you have reduced yourself to an obstacle to be disposed of."

TLK Valentine · Jan 11, 2022

zippy2006 said:
The point is that the question isn't so hard to answer.

But impossible to answer meaningfully. You might as well invent an imaginary number.

It works at the same level of abstraction as your claim that false convictions make capital punishment impermissible.

Except I never said it was impermissible. I said it was a bad idea. The people that the government are trying to protect will only tolerate so much injustice -- and you can't expect their ratios to be as high as your own.

zippy2006 · Jan 11, 2022

Hank77 said:
It depends on which state the prisoner is being tried and housed in whether it cost less for a death penalty conviction or a life without parole conviction.
Fact check/Is the death penalty more expensive than life in prison

It is true that in liberal societies the death penalty can incur large costs of litigation.

Hank77 · Jan 11, 2022

Hazelelponi said:
Now that we have DNA testing to convict, there's no argument that doesn't have it's basis in religion to keep death row inmates alive.

Many cases have no DNA evidence at all. Mistaken eyewitnesses, witnesses feeling pressured to positively identify someone in a lineup, etc. are still human mistakes that can't be ignored. People have been proven innocent by other means besides DNA.

zippy2006 · Jan 11, 2022

TLK Valentine said:
But impossible to answer meaningfully. You might as well invent an imaginary number.

My purpose is simply to demonstrate to you that your implicit "infinite value" premise does not hold (and as long as you refuse to give an answer and continue holding that false convictions preclude capital punishment I will continue to assume that you aren't wholly irrational and that it is the infinite value premise which grounds such an assertion).

Except I never said it was impermissible. I said it was a bad idea. The people that the government are trying to protect will only tolerate so much injustice -- and you can't expect their ratios to be as high as your own.

Fair enough. I don't think that sort of proportionality reasoning is incompatible with secular reason, as I've noted.

Hank77 · Jan 11, 2022

zippy2006 said:
It is true that in liberal societies the death penalty can incur large costs of litigation.

Democracy can be more costly, freedom is not free.

TLK Valentine · Jan 11, 2022

zippy2006 said:
My purpose is simply to demonstrate to you that your implicit "infinite value" premise

No such premise. Why do you persist with this false claim?

comana · Jan 11, 2022

Thera said:
If there is no religion, of what harm is it to condemn to death the innocent or the guilty? Either way, we know they will not re-offend, nor be a burden on our tax system. No criminal will bear any grudges, no wrongly convicted inmate will later sue the state. Would-be criminals will live in fear lest they fall foul of the law.

I don't think there is a valid non-religious argument against the death penalty.

Yeesh, that is a brutal point of view. With no religion, no afterlife the one and only life is all the more precious. The harm is taking a person’s one and only life when they are innocent.

As to the truly guilty, I still oppose the death penalty. Revenge serves no one. Putting them in prison till death removes them from society and that is enough.

Bradskii · Jan 11, 2022

durangodawood said:
Of course he can argue that society should hold itself to higher standards than murderer-morality. The argument is valid no matter who makes it.

He'd have to argue that we should hold to standards which he patently does not.

zippy2006 · Jan 11, 2022

TLK Valentine said:
No such premise. Why do you persist with this false claim?

So now you're not even going to finish reading the sentence before you post a response? I am nostalgic for those golden days when you read the first sentence and ignored the ensuing paragraph. Alas, in these new dark days you don't even read to the first period.

TLK Valentine · Jan 11, 2022

zippy2006 said:
So now you're not even going to finish reading the sentence before you post a response?

I tend to stop at the first falsehood... they're coming faster than usual these days.

zippy2006 · Jan 11, 2022

TLK Valentine said:
I tend to stop at

Where do you tend to stop at? McDonalds? Buzzed? Nothing?

Raika · Jan 12, 2022

Hank77 said:
Fact check/Is the death penalty more expensive than life in prison

Sorry, I don't trust any of these fact-checking websites... not saying that they're 100% false... just saying that I don't trust their sources.

From a non-religious perspective on the death penalty is absolutely necessary. If you were found guilty of murdering someone through DNA and forensic evidence then you forfeit your right to live.. It's just that simple. It's respecting the murder victim's family and it's an incentive to anyone else who's thinking of committing premeditated murder.

TLK Valentine · Jan 12, 2022

Raika said:
From a non-religious perspective on the death penalty is absolutely necessary. If you were found guilty of murdering someone through DNA and forensic evidence then you forfeit your right to live.

I'm not really sure what the reasoning is here...

It's just that simple. It's respecting the murder victim's family and it's an incentive to anyone else who's thinking of committing premeditated murder.

Really hope you mean "deterrent" here...

BTW, did you know that the violent crime rate in Texas is slightly higher than the national average, and they execute more criminals than any other state? Doesn't seem to be much of a deterrent.

Now, God only knows what the crime rate in Texas would be without the DP, but still, it's not exactly a ringing endorsement...

durangodawood · Jan 12, 2022

zippy2006 said:
...If I come upon someone who is in the process of carrying out a school shooting, take out my gun, shoot a bullet at the person, miss, and fatally wound an innocent bystander, I have not committed murder. You have effectively been pointing to the fact that I intended to kill while conveniently ignoring the fact that the person I intended to kill was the guilty one, not the innocent one. This has been a frustrating ...tactic. It is an attempt to paint someone as a murderer while explicitly ignoring one of the most important moral factors: intent.

You didnt have a plan to kill people. You just acted in self defense in the heat of the moment. There was no scheme planned out where you knew innocent people would die by your bullet. The situation was foisted upon you and you did your best to protect innocent life in the moment.

No, but it is a crime, and we are not talking about a crime. My description was much more objective, "a plan to kill grievous offenders for the sake of the safety and justice of society." You seem to be involved in using pejorative, emotionally loaded words in strange ways and then building arguments on that emotion (e.g. 'malice', 'cold blooded', 'murder', 'homicide')

Homicide in itself is not a crime. There are many non criminal sorts of homicide that happen. It is simply the killing of a human by a human. You will find this from wikip corroborated elsewhere: Homicide is an act of a human killing another person.[1] A homicide requires only a volitional act that causes the death of another, and thus a homicide may result from accidental, reckless, or negligent acts even if there is no intent to cause harm.[2] Homicides can be divided into many overlapping legal categories, including murder, manslaughter, justifiable homicide, killing in war (either following the laws of war or as a war crime), euthanasia, and capital punishment, depending on the circumstances of the death. These different types of homicides are often treated very differently in human societies; some are considered crimes, while others are permitted or even ordered by the legal system.

So what is not murder, on your conception? Is there any kind of killing that is not murder, and if so, why?

See the typical definition of homicide above. War or self defense come to mind as examples.

Regarding the central issue, you seem content with the claim "accidents happen" when I talk about people like Henry Ford, but then you seem to think that "accidents happen" no longer applies in the criminal justice sphere. When I drive a car or walk on the street I am at risk of injury or death. When I live in a society I risk being falsely convicted and fined, or imprisoned, or in some societies, killed. It does not follow from any of this that we shouldn't have cars or criminal justice systems.

The strange modern premise is present in your thinking, but more obviously present in @TLK Valentine's thinking. It is the premise that, "If it isn't perfect, then we should get rid of it altogether." But this is such a strange and unrealistic idea. Imperfect things can still serve good purposes. If they can't then we're doomed. We should not be asking the question, "Is it imperfect?" The question we should be asking is, "Is it too flawed to exist?" This is especially true when we are limited to secular reason.

And sure, you can just cling to the alternative of life imprisonment, but clinging to it unthinkingly, at any cost, will cause harm in the long run. And I think many cling to it unthinkingly. In any case, those who lived and live in societies that are not capable of enforcing life sentences often found that capital punishments, while imperfect, are more than justified in their existence; just as we have found that a criminal justice system, while imperfect, is more than justified in its existence.

With cars, as with train or horse transportation before them, we tend to view the dangers as part of life. Theres no intent to kill in their operation or development. I think the worst crime that can happen is negligent homicide where you build something forseeable as highly dangerous.

With capital punishment there is absolutely an intent to kill. Right up to the event, the goal is to kill that person. When we picked the wrong person, even if theres some wider goal in the background of killing just the correct people, theres still a cool, unpressured, non self-defense goal of killing that innocent incapacitated person.

For societies with literally no other choice than to execute people including some innocents here and there, well, social survival trumps all other moral considerations I suppose. But we're beyond pure survival mode and get to hold on to additional values. Pure survival admits a lot of unsavory things.

zippy2006 · Jan 12, 2022

durangodawood said:
You didnt have a plan to kill people. You just acted in self defense in the heat of the moment. There was no scheme planned out where you knew innocent people would die by your bullet. The situation was foisted upon you and you did your best to protect innocent life in the moment.

No; I had a plan to kill the shooter. I acted to defend others, not myself. In neither case is there a desire that innocent people should die, only the known possibility that they might.

Homicide in itself is not a crime. There are many non criminal sorts of homicide that happen. It is simply the killing of a human by a human. You will find this from wikip corroborated elsewhere: Homicide is an act of a human killing another person.[1] A homicide requires only a volitional act that causes the death of another, and thus a homicide may result from accidental, reckless, or negligent acts even if there is no intent to cause harm.[2] Homicides can be divided into many overlapping legal categories, including murder, manslaughter, justifiable homicide, killing in war (either following the laws of war or as a war crime), euthanasia, and capital punishment, depending on the circumstances of the death. These different types of homicides are often treated very differently in human societies; some are considered crimes, while others are permitted or even ordered by the legal system.

It is true that it does not need to be criminal per se, but it is potentially criminal in that it is the act of a private party that is investigated to determine whether it was lawful. We are talking about the act of the state in a civil execution, which is not a homicide.

See the typical definition of homicide above. War or self defense come to mind as examples.

Okay.

You're still ignoring the central issue of intent. If I fire that bullet and miss I have not committed murder.

With cars, as with train or horse transportation before them, we tend to view the dangers as part of life.

And we also tend to view the dangers involved in miscarriages of justice as a part of life.

...or else we set fire to cities, loot shops, and create a mountain of injustice out of a molehill of a mistake, because we are idiots.

Theres no intent to kill in their operation or development. I think the worst crime that can happen is negligent homicide where you build something forseeable as highly dangerous.

There is no intent to kill the innocent in either case. They are the same. In each case lethal force is being wielded without an intent to kill the innocent. Besides, it is much easier to kill someone with a car than with capital punishment.

With capital punishment there is absolutely an intent to kill. Right up to the event, the goal is to kill that person. When we picked the wrong person, even if theres some wider goal in the background of killing just the correct people, theres still a cool, unpressured, non self-defense goal of killing that innocent incapacitated person.

No, that is false, and here we arrive at your dubious moral equivocation. You are effectively claiming that because my bullet hit an innocent person, I was therefore intending to kill that innocent person, and that I am a murderer.

When someone convicts a suspect who they believe to be guilty of a capital crime, they do not have the requisite intent to kill the innocent. This is true whether or not the person is innocent. Similarly, suppose you kill someone on the basis of self-defense, but it is later shown that the person was not attempting to harm you. It turns out you were mistaken. This fact does not mean that you acted with an intent to kill the innocent, or that you are a murderer.

Your logic here is pretty wild. You keep claiming that intending to kill an innocent person who one believes to be guilty is the same as intending to kill a person who one believes to be innocent. The ironic thing is that it is precisely these sorts of emotionally-driven, dubious equivocations that lead to immorality and injustice.

For societies with literally no other choice than to execute people including some innocents here and there, well, social survival trumps all other moral considerations I suppose. But we're beyond pure survival mode and get to hold on to additional values. Pure survival admits a lot of unsavory things.

This isn't a valid argument. "Survival" always trumps the additional values, so you can't claim that the additional values invalidate survival-driven initiatives like capital punishment. That's sort of the point of the thread at this stage.

Belk · Jan 12, 2022

zippy2006 said:
My purpose is simply to demonstrate to you that your implicit "infinite value" premise does not hold (and as long as you refuse to give an answer and continue holding that false convictions preclude capital punishment I will continue to assume that you aren't wholly irrational and that it is the infinite value premise which grounds such an assertion).

Fair enough. I don't think that sort of proportionality reasoning is incompatible with secular reason, as I've noted.

Can you explain this "infinite value" premise? Not certain what you mean and how it applies.

Bradskii · Jan 12, 2022

zippy2006 said:
You keep claiming that intending to kill an innocent person who one believes to be guilty is the same as intending to kill a person who one believes to be innocent.

I think it might be better to look at it slightly differently. The person who throws the switch to carry out the death penalty only knows that someone else has found the prisoner guiltly. And that is generally the view of 12 people who have heard two competing views on the crime and have decided, beyond reasonable doubt, that one of them is true. Very few people have heard all the details. And no-one really knows exactly what happened except the person in the dock.

But none of the people involved in the execution would likely concern themselves over innocence versus guilt. They just have to kill the guy. The system's attitude to him is reduced to a simple process once the death sentence has been given. Keep him fed and watered until such time as the sentence is due to be carried out (sometimes years after the.sentence has been proclaimed) and then...kill him.

So it's not that anyone involved thinks they may be killing an innocent person (although they might). It's that they're going to kill him anyway, whether he's innocent or not.

zippy2006 · Jan 12, 2022

Bradskii said:
I think it might be better to look at it slightly differently. The person who throws the switch to carry out the death penalty only knows that someone else has found the prisoner guiltly. And that is generally the view of 12 people who have heard two competing views on the crime and have decided, beyond reasonable doubt, that one of them is true. Very few people have heard all the details. And no-one really knows exactly what happened except the person in the dock.

True.

But none of the people involved in the execution would likely concern themselves over innocence versus guilt. They just have to kill the guy. The system's attitude to him is reduced to a simple process once the death sentence has been given. Keep him fed and watered until such time as the sentence is due to be carried out (sometimes years after the.sentence has been proclaimed) and then...kill him.

True.

So it's not that anyone involved thinks they may be killing an innocent person (although they might). It's that they're going to kill him anyway, whether he's innocent or not.

Yes. Are you agreeing or disagreeing with the sentence of mine you quoted?

I think durangoda is claiming that there exists some agent who ultimately intended the killing, whether that be the person who conceived the criminal justice system, or the democratic polity itself, or some other person or group of people collaborating to bring about the system which wields capital punishment.

The simplest example is the guy who was the architect of the system itself. Was he intending the executions of the guilty or the executions of the innocent? I think it's pretty obvious that he was intending the executions of the guilty, and that he would have done everything he could to make sure that no innocents are executed.

Death Penalty - Non-Religious Arguments

If I were not allowed to make any religious arguments, then I would say:

Capital punishment is rationally impermissible

Capital punishment is rationally justified

None of the above, but capital punishment remains permissible because that is its default status

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