As a UK citizen I've often yearned for the restoration of the death penalty since our country is now awash with convicted murderers and paedophiles and who would be better of out of the way and our jails are full to bursting. To my mind there is no real justification for not having it and in terms of people's belief systems regarding the existince or non-existence of God I have formulated the follwing two scenarios which negate objections to capital punishment:
1. You are an atheist. In your belief system humans are basically automata, i.e. sophisticated machines, which have evolved in a Darwinian existential mechanistic world. You cannot object to the death penalty because, in effect, disposing of a criminal in such a way is equivalent to chucking a faulty PC (or mac) in the trash (or reycling some of its components).
2. You are a theist. In your belief system there is an omniscient, benevolent God. You cannot object to the death penalty because the soul of the executed moves on after so-called death to reside in heaven/hell and/or be re-incarnated, therefore no real loss has taken place.
One of the classic objections to capital punishment is that in the case of a misscarriage of justice, there can be no redemption for the executed. However, I refute this objection in case 1) Ok so we accidentally threw away a good PC, no big deal. In case 2) The omiscient Lord will restore justice to the executed by lovely term in heaven and/or a nice embodiment in the following incarnation.
OK so there's one more case, that of agnostics, however I suggest that cases 1 & 2 cover all the bases, since an agnostic is simply someone who hasn't decided whether case 1 or 2 applies.
Supporters/Objectors. Ok there are a few ground rules
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You may not cite legislation or scriptural text in support of your case. Legislation is a man-made artifice and has no bearing on this argument. To be fair to atheists, scriptural text should not be used either.
Prejudicial statements like 'it's inhumane/brutal/uncivilise
d etc' will not be considered either, unless you can show in what way it is inhumane/brutal etc.
Arguments such as 'Well you wouldn't like it if it happened to you' are also inadmissable, this is not about what I like, it's about what is best for society.
Please state your conviction i.e. 1 or 2 when presenting your argument.
