Random Questions

In our Doctrine, it states that "We oppose the use of torture and cruel or unusual punishment, including the death penalty." Now what I wonder is why?
In my opinion, the death penalty is blasphemy in the sense that we have no right to kill another living being. What is your opinion on this matter? I would like to know!

We kill each other all the time, for a variety of reasons. That said, my personal issue with the death penalty is how often it has been applied to the innocent. Sometimes I think it is a way of silencing people and burying an unpleasant story wherein someone got away with it by placing the blame on someone else. Also, some people are willing to believe the worst and do the worst to other people simply because of who they believe the person is, meaning they deserve to die even if they didn't commit the crime, so no foul(see xenophobia, racism, etc).

I can agree that someone is a horrible person and the world is better off without them, but I also think I would rather blind someone than kill them, which in most cases removes their ability to hurt others.

My personal opinion is that no rational reasonable person would support the death penalty (my apologies if anyone does here, but it's how I feel). I won't write too much otherwise you'll have a rant from me, but the death penalty is used more often on those of lower economic status, has been applied to the innocent, and quite frankly it smacks of hypocrisy to commit the very crime they are being punished for.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kz__qGJmTMY

I watched this video in Adult living today, and the checklist of how you know your values hit me. So I thought I would share this with you too!

I think that it partly depends on one’s views of the penal system. Is it punishment or a place to rehabilitate? If rehabilitation is the goal we have done a sad job over the years on whole. If it is punishment… still not working. And one can see that by the amount of repeat offenders.

In my opinion, the sad reality is that the penal system is just someplace to store people during an interim we call justice so that society as a whole doesn’t have to deal with them. But that is beside the point I think.

If the penal system is there to rehabilitate, it should be a pretty forgone conclusion that a dead man can learn nothing. If for punishment, then I have no issue with the death penalty so long as it is 100% certain the person is the guilty party.

Life is sacred. Each life embodies a connection to the eternal. The spirit, which resides in each life is not secular but rather dedicated to its own existence and maybe even the eternal force which it is bound to and a part of. This life, being a part of the eternal, is bound by the universal laws, principles and doctrine rather we realize/accept it or not. Nowhere is it written that the body cannot die or be destroyed. The part that is sacred returns to the whole, the eternal. All the death sentence does is end the corporeal existence, the life. It does not destroy what is sacred. And by that, I have no issue with the death sentence as a means of punishment so long as it is confirmed well beyond reason that the guilty party bares the guilt.

All that said, just because I have no issue with under the right circumstances does not mean that I endorse the implementation of it in all the current circumstances. Furthermore, just because I do not believe in the widespread use of the death penalty does not give me right to enforce my beliefs over those that would govern themselves and make their own laws and punishments to abide by.

I could go one and on but I figure I’ll leave it at this and give others a chance to get riled up LOL :laugh:

If you look at other countries and how they deal with those they call criminals, you will find there are some who do not take the lives of those who are most dangerous. Instead, they work towards rehabilitation and psychological diagnosis. In those countries, they work towards improving quality of life, not taking life just because they can.

For all the freedom United States shouts about, it is quite a violent country compared to more liberal - humane - countries. For instance, Netherlands: because they take care of their population they have lower crime, low prison population, and prisoners are treated like human beings instead of animals.

The prison system in America (for instance) is not about fixing the problem or lowering crime. It is about using people who society has decided are too much of a problem to care about. In America, "if they do crime they deserve the miserable time" ... which makes the criminal worse and crimes more frequent as they go in and out of the system that labels them for life.

Capital punishment, in the American eye (not all Americans, obviously) is the same ... killers deserve to die after being miserable and abused in the system for a while. We create the problem and then 'fix' it with extreme measures. So, for me, Capital Punishment is cruel and inhumane and unnecessary.

At what point is revenge justifiable? How badly does someone have to hurt a member of your family before you feel justified in killing them? The death penalty exists because we cant be allowed to just take revenge. There bas to be an official system in place of investigation and trial before the sentence of death is handed down. My only objection to the death penalty is that wealthy people escape it even when they are guilty and poor people get stuck with it even when they are innocent.

I wont give examples unless i have to but please, unless you really want to have your feelings hurt by learning about some horrible, real life events, please don't argue with me on the point that there are people who have inflicted such torturous suffering upon others that they have forfeited their right to another chance. There is a point where someone should die for what they have done. Civilians cannot be allowed to take that sort of justice into their own hands. Thats why we have a death penalty.

I am sure some people are justified, especially as the system stands. But what I believe about all this is that if people were taken care of in the first place, they would not resort to such crimes. And in going to jail/prison where it's a jungle and each person is in constant survival mode from other prisoners AND corrections officers, they become worse when they are released.

With that said ... at this point I do not think things can be fixed. We live in a world where PTSD and mental illness and abuses of various kinds are passed on from generation to generation. Millions grow up to reflect what they have been taught about life when younger. Some come out quite angry about life and find the only relief is hurting other people. Mass shooters come to mind when I think about this and about capital punishment. It's a hard line to walk and say "let's help this person who just shot up a school", and "put them out of society's misery". I am not a god to make that decision on that person's life decisions.

dwagoonie wrote: ... what I believe about all this is that if people were taken care of in the first place, they would not resort to such crimes.

And perhaps if she hadn't worn a short skirt on that night, things would have gone differently for her.

As much as I agree that in general a sufficiently tame society would do well to grow in such a way as to not drive a vast fraction of her people into the sort of desperation that might push them to commit atrocities, I am struggling to interpret blaming the actions of an individual on said society as anything less or better than victim blaming, even if we are ready to acknowledge that the perpetrators in question are themselves victims of a grossly flawed system that left them with their sickness brewing inside of them well past boiling point. No matter how rosy things get, there are miserable and desperate and sick people everywhere and most of them live and die without leaving much of a mark on history. The few who do went out of their way to acquire the means and to carry through their awful deed.

While, again, it is fair and necessary to ask just what drove them and what the rest of us can do better in future, it is also acceptable, in my humble opinion, to place some, if not a majority of the blame, on them, too.
That being said, however, this is all assuming that finding whom to blame or not to is a reasonable use of our time. It is entirely possible, so I assert, to ponder what could be done to make things better in future without first asking whose fault any incident must have been. And on the outset capital punishment is not all that obviously unhelpful in this regard. There wouldn't be much of a debate around it if a case couldn't be made either way, and I think this much we can appreciate even if our own stance is firmly on one side of that issue and not the other.

Blame is a term thrown around a lot these days. I am not a psychiatrist or sociologist, or even a criminologist. The observations i stated are based on the point of view of looking in from the outside. It is an umbrella- boanket generalization. The whole picture of how humanity presents itself. From the detailed view of individuals it may appear different, but we are all still a part of the whole.

I blame no one, and yet the criminal and the society are both to "blame".