Foxy

'Before I leave this discussion - I have to ask
are you pro capital punishment? '

In certain situations I believe it is appropriate. I think the progressives stance of opposing the death penalty but condoning baby murder is much more at odds than my belief.

You write

'Christians are supposed to believe in forgiveness, even
of an enemy. '

Mercy is better than judgement. Thats true. Jesus is speaking to believers on the individual basis. He did not condemn the Romans for hanging the thieves on the cross next to Him.

I do believe a nation has the right to put laws in place that will make a place safe for all to live. Basically in this nation we have rapist doing very short terms in prison, I personally know a man who only did 3 years for killing his wife, repeat paedophiles serving short terms for ruining many lives. . On top of that we kill millions of unborn babies often for convenience sake. We have no right to critize another countries laws.

Personally I believe the men put to death in Indonesia went straight to be with the Lord. It appeared by all accounts that they genuinely repented of their crimes and sins. In my opinion they are far better off than all those who have not repented and come to Christ. I know this is offensive to many.

Suse,

"I have no doubt some people do consider the death penalty before doing those crimes, but obviously not enough do because many are still committing the crimes!....Isn't that enough reason to say the death penalty is not much of a deterrent, or is that fact too hard to comprehend Is Mise?"

I'm glad that you agree with me that the death penalty is a deterrent, even if you do consider it to be not much of a deterrent.

Foxy,

Waiting!!

"What does capital punishment actually achieve?

That's simple!..:)....Less F..k-wits on the planet.

Runner...So your saying God is cool with drug dealers?...Some how I don't think so:)

Tally

'Runner...So your saying God is cool with drug dealers?...Some how I don't think so:)'

No Tally I am saying that God is cool with people who are forgiven because they have put their faith in Christ and turned from their sin.

Sorry Runner, I didn't read it right...thank you for the correction.

Tally

I've avoided getting too involved in this discussion because there's nothing I could say that I haven't said before. But what I will say (again) is that it's not so much that the death penalty isn’t a deterrent at all; more that it appears to be no more of a deterrent than LWOP. In many cases, however, offenders do not consider the consequences of their actions at all, or seriously miscalculate the risks when they do; so to that extent, it is accurate to simply say that the death penalty doesn’t deter.

For reasons that I've mentioned several times before on OLO, the deterrence effect that severity of punishment has on crime is statistically insignificant, only certainty and swiftness seem to have an effect.

If anyone's interested in deterrence theory and what the data actually says, then I would recommend reading some peer-reviewed literature on it because this is getting painful to watch.