The death penalty and abortion are at opposite ends of the spectrum for me. In one case we are talking about a person who hasn’t had a chance to function in society and in the other case were talking about someone who has proven they have no right to be a functioning part of society.

As for the whole effective tactic thing ma ma j, the comments you made were saying that if the death penalty was 100% effective it would still be off the table. If you would of said “even if it is 100% effective I would oppose because there is this other tactic that’s 50% effective,” then that would be a different question. I would still pick the 100% effective option but whatever.

And just an observation. It appears that the celeb’s who are against the killing of Tookie, didn’t have much to say about Terry Schaivo, stand up for assisted suicide, and are all about a “woman’s right to choose”. So their arguments don’t mean anything to me. They aren’t against it because they have a reverence for life. It seems that they just don’t believe in personal responsibility. I know that’s a big generalization, but I’m just talking about the few situations and comments that I’ve heard lately.

You and I may disagree in the hypothetical world in which such a case might be proven, but there’s not much point in discussing that.

If any other examples I bring up are not similar enough to matter, then I guess I don’t have much else to say about it.

How about one last example, just for the heck of it: we recently were discussing the abortion issue on another blog. I think that we both seemed to agree that since there is no clear answer to when “life” begins, that it is the right thing to do to avoid performing abortions. I don’t see why you can’t apply the same logic to this case: if it’s unclear whether killing someone will save a life in the future (and it is at least unclear, if not an unprovable assumption), then we must err on the side of not killing that person.

My logic is not flawed. You said when referring the to the death penalty as a deterrent that “I would oppose it even if it were 100% effective.” What would it mean if something was 100% effective as a deterrent? I interpret that as that the death of convicted criminals–child murderers in my example–would prevent the death of children in the future. Which make an unpleasant but easy decision for me to make. The other examples you brought up aren’t similar enough to make a meaningful comparison.

Also, I never said it is impossible to determine if the death penalty is an effective deterrent or not. I just said with the data available you can’t make much of a case either way.

Concerning the Roman government, do you really think that their motive in persecuting Christians was jusitice? I don’t. That is why I stated that governments have a huge responsibility in ensuring that capital punishment is implemented only to serve justice and not for any other motives.

Remember, I don’t think the death penalty is a good choice, for pretty much all the same reasons as you. However, I can guarantee you, with the prison ministries that are in place in the U.S., that every death row inmate has many opportunities to recieve the gift of God’s grace. I suppose if they lived their entire life out without being put to death, then they would have more opportunities, but people don’t die without the opportunity to recieve God’s grace. Even those who never hear any sort of presentation of the gospel can know of God through creation and their conscience.

I don’t think we are going to come to agreement on whether or not capital punishment is biblically justified, or on very many issues concerning the war. So concerning those paragraphs I will just disagree and leave it at that.