Capital Punishment

[sceptic]

here's a lot of other stuff to wade through and I'll get to it eventually, but what's your standard for "work" if "life imprisonment with no possibility of parole" doesn't work? We put a guy in jail for the rest of his life, no one else is killed, how is this not successful?

 

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But that is not the case, some of them kill guards and inmates so it is not succesful, you can argue it is nearly succesful nearly succesful is not good enough to sway me from thinking that death would be 100% succesful in preventing that person from killing anyone else

 

an example of this would be a man or woman jailed and put in solitry confinement, they have the right to prison visits, people still find a way to conduct and influence others from inside jail.. and that could result in further deaths

[sceptic]

- That same someone has the right to make that decision.

- Someone has the right to carry out the act.

 

If the death penalty was voted in, someone would have the right to make the decision and someone would have the right to carry out the act

 

Just the same as we give rights to other people doing other tasks in the world, because we have rules in society that are generally accepted, we give the right to a judge to judge people, we give the right to a prison officer to incaserate someone for whatever time the judge has decided, we give the right for people to appeal against decisions

 

collectively (majority rule) we can give the right for someone to do what has to be done

[mike777]

here's a lot of other stuff to wade through and I'll get to it eventually, but what's your standard for "work" if "life imprisonment with no possibility of parole" doesn't work? We put a guy in jail for the rest of his life, no one else is killed, how is this not successful?

 

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But that is not the case, some of them kill guards and inmates so it is not succesful, you can argue it is nearly succesful nearly succesful is not good enough to sway me from thinking that death would be 100% succesful in preventing that person from killing anyone else

Agree, I think it is very common for murderers worldwide not just in the USA to harm/kill/rape,/ stab/attack/threaten others even after conviction.

 

Of course I think all of the above also happens to convicted murderers worldwide not just in the USA. Not sure how all of that may not be some form of torture but we seem to care little if at all about prisoners, raped or tortured NOT IN GITMO, but maybe that is another discussion.

 

I am from South Chicago and lived very close to where the killings happened and I remember Richard Speck and the sex tapes he made in prison. In prison he had all the drugs, party sex and taxpayer paid sex hormones he wanted. :)

As for all the student nurses he killed, well.......If you believe retribution has been banished from society ask people from Chicago about Speck.....

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Speck

[luke warm]

ok, i misspoke... i don't judge bundy at all... i judge (by that i mean that i try to understand rightly) myself so that i can see my need for salvation... if i don't so judge myself, God will do it for me

 

i'm not clear on this... absolutism in what sense? and as i said, i misspoke re: bundy or anyone else (except myself)

 

From my perspective, I believe it impossible to not judge others if you judge yourself against an absolute, universal right and wrong.

that's fine, we just disagree

But how can right and wrong be universal if it is not universally known and understood?

if you use 'universal' in the sense that they are 'objective', then i would argue that they can't be fully known or fully understood - but only because we as humans are limited in our knowledge of God...

if there is no evil there is no good... if there is no good there is no God

IMO, this is flawed logically

make your case

[TimG]

- That same someone has the right to make that decision.

- Someone has the right to carry out the act.

 

If the death penalty was voted in, someone would have the right to make the decision and someone would have the right to carry out the act

Legal right, sure. But, moral right?

[kenberg]

One result of being a mathematician is that you not only develop an appreciation of the power of logic, you also develop an appreciation of the limits of logic. Fundamentally capital punishment all comes down to what we see as the proper role for society when dealing with severe criminal activity, given all of our limitations in accurately assessing the truth of what happened, our view of ourselves, our trust in the legal system, and similar matters.

 

It is unlikely to the point of impossibility that anyone will change his mind based on a philosophical debate over whether evil is or is not a religious term. I wasn't using it as such, but it was taken as such and so I can change my wording. I have changed my mind about capital punishment back and forth a couple of times over the years but it has been on the basis of items such as I mention above, similar to things mikeh and others have mentioned. My current view, going back I guess decades now, is that I favor abolition of the death penalty. I don't think it is a slam dunk, if that expression can still be used, but I think it is probably best. Sometimes I have put it as: I am opposed to the death penalty but in some cases I am willing to make an exception. Really that means I am opposed, because I won't be asked when the exception should be made and I am not ready to put such power into anyone else's hands.

[sceptic]

- That same someone has the right to make that decision.

- Someone has the right to carry out the act.

 

If the death penalty was voted in, someone would have the right to make the decision and someone would have the right to carry out the act

Legal right, sure. But, moral right?

depends, I am sure that I could live with myself if this were the case, so yes they would have the moral right also

[Winstonm]

if there is no evil there is no good... if there is no good there is no God

 

 

 

 

QUOTE 

IMO, this is flawed logically

 

 

make your case

 

 

"if there is no evil there is no good": first off, this asserts a causitive relationship when no such relationship is proven. Next, these are generalized terms that discount specifics - who or what defines evil and good? Because this is a generalized, non-proven assumption, what follows is based on accepting this flawed assumption, making the conclusion also flawed.

 

"... if there is no good there is no God": again, this conclusion is based on a faulty, non-proven causitive claim that good cannot exist without evil. This conclusion also prohibits other valid reasons for a God to be, i.e., there is a God who does not interfere; there is a God who doesn't care; there is a God who supports evil; there is a God who is neutral, while good and evil are man-made explanations; there is a God who allows without judgement the natural law of actions and consequences to operate.

 

I don't mean this as personal criticism as we all do this, but the construct of the argument appears to me as if a conclusion is believed (God and Satan exist) and an argument was created to support that conclusion. In my thinking, the better method is to start with a proven, verifiable premise and then see where that premise leads by logic.

 

Understand that this is simply IMO and not based on education in logic or argument theory - so my opinion and 5 bucks will get you a latte' at Starbucks.

 

It would be interesting to me to hear from someone well-schooled in logic and argument theory to chime in - any takers?

[kenberg]

A: If there is no evil there is no good

 

This has more the nature of an axiom than an argument. Axioms often contain undefined terms, so let's work with it. It would follow that we should all agree that never, under any circumstances, would we ever do anything good. The axiom, in the logically equivalent contrapositive form (If there is good then there is evil) , asserts that the existence of good forces the existence of evil. This is something of a paradox. If I do something good, it will cause the existence of evil. But then what I do isn't really good, is it.

 

B: If there is no good then there is no God.

 

This seems more logical, assuming that somewhere else we have the axiom that God is good. Again take the contrapositive: If there is a God then somewhere there is some good. Of course. If there is a God, and God is good, then there is something good, namely God.

 

You could vary this: Satan is evil, and if there is no evil then there is no Satan. Sure, since the existence of Satan, combined with the description of Satan as evil, shows that there is evil. Satan exists implies evil exists is logically equivalent to evil doesn't exist implies Satan doesn't exist.

 

 

It's possibly of interest (well, anything is possible) to note that the arguments here are a rebuttal (I don't say effective rebuttal) to the age old problem of reconciling evil and the existence of God. The usual argument goes: There is evil in the world. If God were all knowing, all good, and all powerful then He would know about this and, being all good, he would correct the situation. Therefore the existence of evil disproves the existence of God. In this counter-argument, God would ensure His own destruction by ridding the world of evil. As soon as evil disappeared, so would good (by axiom A) and the disappearance of good would then, by axiom B, force the disappearance of God. The bottom line here is that we must all suffer evil in order to preserve the existence of God.

 

My preferred summary on this argument from evil comes from Woody Allen in Love and Death: IF God exists we certainly have to call him an underachiever. But really my view is that it is all just word games. Ideologues of various stripes seem to be very fond of word games and it may be satisfying to catch them out in them, but it is ultimately pointless.

[Winstonm]

Thanks, Ken.

[helene_t]

There is evil in the world. If God were all knowing, all good, and all powerful then He would know about this and, being all good, he would correct the situation. Therefore the existence of evil disproves the existence of God. In this counter-argument, God would ensure His own destruction by ridding the world of evil.

Is this a joke? The premise was that good requires evil, presumably because good is defined by it's contrast to evil.

 

Sliced bread would still exist without the Gerber convention. Maybe we would perceive sliced bread differently because it would no longer be contrasted with Gerber. Maybe a benevolent god created Gerber for us to appreciate the relative goodness of sliced bread. But a god that created holocaust for the same reason would hardly be benevolent.

[Winstonm]

Is this a joke? The premise was that good requires evil, presumably because good is defined by it's contrast to evil.

 

I have trouble with this premise because I can't determine if it is a causitive relationship - evil creates good - or a correlative relationship - good and evil exist and move in relationship to each other.

 

If the determination of good and evil is relative contrast, it seems more likely to be a correlative expression, meaning an assumption that the terms are valid, but their values change in relationship to each other - which would seem to argue against absolutism.

 

However, by saying 'without evil there can be no good" suggests to me a causitive relationship - one is required in order for the other to occur.

 

The end result - again, to my untrained mind - is a statement of causation (good requires evil) argued as a correlation (because of the relative contrast).

[kenberg]

There is evil in the world. If God were all knowing, all good, and all powerful then He would know about this and, being all good, he would correct the situation. Therefore the existence of evil disproves the existence of God. In this counter-argument, God would ensure His own destruction by ridding the world of evil.

Is this a joke? The premise was that good requires evil, presumably because good is defined by it's contrast to evil.

 

Sliced bread would still exist without the Gerber convention. Maybe we would perceive sliced bread differently because it would no longer be contrasted with Gerber. Maybe a benevolent god created Gerber for us to appreciate the relative goodness of sliced bread. But a god that created holocaust for the same reason would hardly be benevolent.

Maybe not exactly a joke, but sort of. The assignment was to consider the logic of

 

the non-existence of evil implies the non-existence of good

the non-existence of good implies the non-existence of God.

 

My view is that the whole argument is not to be taken seriously but that if it is, then apparently God cannot destroy evil without it leading to his own destruction.

 

I went from a fairly religious childhood to a non-religious adulthood. Considerations such as this played no role whatsoever in my transition. Nor do I think that they play any role in the views of my Christian friends.

 

On the other hand, I can imagine that the argument that was presented: "If there is no evil then there is no good, and if there is no good then there is no God" might very well have been used by overly logical theists to counter the overly logical argument that the existence of evil is incompatible with the existence of God. Thomas Aquinas, for example, had a weakness for misused logic.

 

The point I want to stick with is that you get nowhere, neither towards God nor away from God, with this sort of analysis. And you certainly don't resolve the issue of capital punishment this way.

[helene_t]

Tx Ken. That's what I thought, tx for confirming. I agree with all that. I am sure my religious friends have better reasons for their believes, also.

[luke warm]

"if there is no evil there is no good": first off, this asserts a causitive relationship when no such relationship is proven.

as in many such cases the 'evil' and 'good' i speak of are metaphysical, or transcendent, much like logic itself... however, if one denies that evil exists (or its counterpart), not much can be said about it... the discussion stalls in the quicksand of subjectivity... such and such is good here but not there, or now but not then... this is evil here and now, but not there an then, etc...

A: If there is no evil there is no good

 

This has more the nature of an axiom than an argument. Axioms often contain undefined terms, so let's work with it. It would follow that we should all agree that never, under any circumstances, would we ever do anything good. The axiom, in the logically equivalent contrapositive form (If there is good then there is evil) , asserts that the existence of good forces the existence of evil. This is something of a paradox. If I do something good, it will cause the existence of evil. But then what I do isn't really good, is it.

imo this is the same misunderstanding winston has of the matter, that of a causative link... your contrapositive asserts that the existence of good forces the existence of evil... this is not necessarily so, i haven't claimed it to be so, and it is (imo) neither logical nor intuitive to believe it to be so... assume for the sake of argument the axiom "God is good" to be true... it seems self-evident to me that God could have created any number of worlds without evil... that he didn't (to my knowledge) only points to the sufficiency of *this* creation for his purposes

B: If there is no good then there is no God.

 

This seems more logical, assuming that somewhere else we have the axiom that God is good. Again take the contrapositive: If there is a God then somewhere there is some good. Of course. If there is a God, and God is good, then there is something good, namely God.

 

You could vary this: Satan is evil, and if there is no evil then there is no Satan. Sure, since the existence of Satan, combined with the description of Satan as evil, shows that there is evil.  Satan exists implies evil exists is logically equivalent to evil doesn't exist implies Satan doesn't exist.

 

It's possibly of interest (well, anything is possible) to note that the arguments here are a rebuttal (I don't say effective rebuttal)

i'd say that to call them rebuttals of any stripe is an exaggeration

to the age old problem of reconciling evil and the existence of God. The usual argument goes: There is evil in the world. If God were all knowing, all good, and all powerful then He would know about this and, being all good, he would correct the situation. Therefore the existence of evil disproves the existence of God.

and of course i know you aren't arguing this

In this counter-argument, God would ensure His own destruction by ridding the world of evil. As soon as evil disappeared, so would good (by axiom A) and the disappearance of good would then, by axiom B, force the disappearance of God. The bottom line here is that we must all suffer evil in order to preserve the existence of God.

again, this does not follow... it assumes that because God (good) exists, evil must exist and that without evil, good (God) ceases to exist...

Ideologues of various stripes seem to be very fond of word games and it may be satisfying to catch them out in them, but it is ultimately pointless.

i don't know if i should be offended by this or not... i will pretend i'm not

There is evil in the world. If God were all knowing, all good, and all powerful then He would know about this and, being all good, he would correct the situation. Therefore the existence of evil disproves the existence of God. In this counter-argument, God would ensure His own destruction by ridding the world of evil.

Is this a joke? The premise was that good requires evil, presumably because good is defined by it's contrast to evil.

that wasn't my premise... but if evil does exist, how does one know it? how is it measured?

I have trouble with this premise because I can't determine if it is a causitive relationship - evil creates good - or a correlative relationship - good and evil exist and move in relationship to each other.

why must it be either of those two?

If the determination of good and evil is relative contrast, it seems more likely to be a correlative expression, meaning an assumption that the terms are valid, but their values change in relationship to each other - which would seem to argue against absolutism.

 

However, by saying 'without evil there can be no good" suggests to me a causitive relationship - one is required in order for the other to occur.

 

The end result - again, to my untrained mind - is a statement of causation (good requires evil) argued as a correlation (because of the relative contrast).

the purpose of 'without evil there can be no good' was aimed at those who deny that one or the other, or both, exist... if, as some here have said, evil does not exist then good does not exist... now for the ones who say neither exists, there is no problem... all acts are morally neutral, there are no "good" or "evil" acts, only those with which we agree or disagree

Thomas Aquinas, for example,  had  a weakness for misused logic.

philosophers, on both sides of this issue and throughout history, have honored aquinas as a thinker of note... i feel safe in saying neither you nor i will ever approach his reputation, nor the clarity of his "misused logic"

[Winstonm]

the purpose of 'without evil there can be no good' was aimed at those who deny that one or the other, or both, exist... if, as some here have said, evil does not exist then good does not exist... now for the ones who say neither exists, there is no problem... all acts are morally neutral, there are no "good" or "evil" acts, only those with which we agree or disagree

 

I see. The way you stated it initially read like a statement of fact. But I am still confused, as you follow the statement, "without evil there can be no good" with this:

 

imo this is the same misunderstanding winston has of the matter, that of a causative link... your contrapositive asserts that the existence of good forces the existence of evil... this is not necessarily so, i haven't claimed it to be so, and it is (imo) neither logical nor intuitive to believe it to be so...

 

This seems to imply that good or evil can exist without the other - but isn't that a validation of the same claim others' have made that one or the other or both do not exist?

 

If you are saying that both are real but have no causitive or correlative relationships, then the claim that "without evil there can be no good" is invalid, isn't it?

[kenberg]

Luke, what's your view on the point that I gave the most emphasis to: All this debate about "if there is no evil there is no good" and whether evil is a religious concept or not is pretty much beside the point. Let me clear about what I mean by "beside the point".

 

I have, over my life, changed my mind about many religious matters. I have changed my mind, a couple of times, about capital punishment. But I have never given a moment's thought to issues such as "if there is no evil there can be no good". I just don't find it useful at all, whether it is true or false. Actually I doubt that it is even meaningful. We can disagree about Aquinas, but even if I were to become convinced that he is brilliant it would not change my mind about capital punishment.

 

So I am interested in whether we have agreement or disagreement about some of these issues being a blind alley, no matter how they are resolved. For example, Aquinas has, as I recall, five proofs of the existence of God. How ever many there are, I read them once upon a time. I didn't think any of them had any merit at all. But that's a long way from saying that as a result of reading his flawed proofs I gave up on the existence of God. That's not at all the way it happened. Not for me, and I would strongly guess not for most people. Believers may find the proofs convincing, they already believe. No one else finds them convincing. No minds are changed.

 

On another thread, there is a discussion about a book called "The God Delusion". I stated there that I couldn't imagine reading it. Even if he has sound arguments, I don't care. He and Aquinas can spend eternity having a great philosophical debate. I'll have some wine. I would be willing to place a bet that it would be hard to impossible to find anyone who changed his mind about God as a result of reading this book.

 

Minds do change, but not that way.

[helene_t]

But I have never given a moment's thought to issues such as "if there is no evil there can be no good". I just don't find it useful at all, whether it is true or false. Actually I doubt that it is even meaningful.

Meaningful or not: As it is discussed in this thread, it has little meaning to me. The problem is that we need to know what we discuss before we can discuss it.

 

As a child I would complain about the weather in november. Then my mother would say that it needs to be bad weather once in a while for us to appreciate the good weather.

Alternatively she might have said that some physical law dictated an average temperature of 13 degrees so for it to be 18 degrees in july it needs to be 8 in january, or that if it were five degrees hotter overall our physiology as well as the physiology of plants and animals would be adjusted accordingly so that we would still only be able to swim in the sea in july-august and still need warm socks in november, and birds would still fly to Africa in september.

 

If she had said either of later, she would need to refer to some scientific evidence (geophysical or biological, respectively) and her opinion might change in the face of new evidence. As it was, she was referring purely to the aesthetic aspect, it had nothing to do with geophysics or biology.

[Winstonm]

I think Ken hit upon it - we all tend to find the logic in that which we already believe, and see the illogic in that which we do not accept. Logic can only change viewpoints if it is unassailable and encounters an open mind.

 

Solid wood is hard.

Tree trunks are solid wood.

Tree trunks are hard.

 

The Soft Tree-Trunk Society would have difficulty assailing this logic. If they are thinkers instead of believers, they may even morph into The Hard Tree-Trunk Society.

 

However, I have no knowledge of The Hard Tree-Trunk Society's views on capital punishment.

[helene_t]

Solid wood is hard.

Tree trunks are solid wood.

Tree trunks are hard.

 

The Soft Tree-Trunk Society would have difficulty assailing this logic.

They would of course agree with the logic, but they would dismiss either of the premises.

 

Anyway, I don't care about arguments for the existence of gods since it's a personal thing, no reason to be bothered about other people thinking differently.

 

I do care about arguments for and against death penalty since that is an issue that must be resolved at the level of society so it does matter what other people think.

 

And here your/Ken's point holds as well, I'm afraid. People often refuse to accept arguments that go against the desired conclusion. It becomes black-white: either all valid arguments are in favor of death penalty (or abortion or nuclear power or ACBL system regulations or whatever) or all valid arguments are against.

 

Of course, in a heated debate there is no reason to help the opposition by putting forward arguments in their support. But if this leads to one dismissing their arguments for one's own thought process, not only for the purpose of the debate, then it can be difficult to adjust one's opinion in face of new evidence.

[luke warm]

imo this is the same misunderstanding winston has of the matter, that of a causative link... your contrapositive asserts that the existence of good forces the existence of evil... this is not necessarily so, i haven't claimed it to be so, and it is (imo) neither logical nor intuitive to believe it to be so...

 

This seems to imply that good or evil can exist without the other - but isn't that a validation of the same claim others' have made that one or the other or both do not exist?

 

If you are saying that both are real but have no causitive or correlative relationships, then the claim that "without evil there can be no good" is invalid, isn't it?

not if God *is* good, winston... it's obvious that he could have created any number of worlds, or none at all... assume none... he creates none yet he (good) still exists

 

and 'without evil there can be no good' was meant in the sense that if you, me, we, deny the existence of evil we also deny the existence of good

what's your view on the point that I gave the most emphasis to: All this debate about "if there is no evil there is no good" and whether evil is a religious concept or not is pretty much beside the point. Let me clear about what I mean by "beside the point".

i agree with it to the extent that such discussions are more important, or at least fun, to some than to others

 

fwiw, aquinas was brilliant (and i hope you agree that the fact that you disagree with him doesn't make him less so), and i respect even more the earlier thinkers... the earlier, the closer to originality... time for work

[jtfanclub]

The person who suggested that anyone who thinks capital punishment must also be in favor of torture etc. is insulting . I cannot imagine anything more repugnant as then indeed you are lowering yourself to the very lowest level of humanity, if indeed you can still claim to the term, imo.

 

However, examp;es such as have been given should not be allowed the right to be a societal burden ...we have others in society who are needy and who are not being looked after. When the hungry, the old, the crippled, the children, the mentally, physically and emotionally infirm who do NOT commit horrific crimes are all being taken care of, then put the resources left over into trying to rehabilitate these people.

 

Until then, I think when there is NO question re their guilt, to put them in jail for the rest of their lives is stealing resources from people who are suffering and imo much more deserving of society's help than people who DELIBERATELY act in such extremely antisocial ways.

So talking about torture of those people who are indisputably 'pure evil' is insulting and repugnant.

 

On the other hand, talking about killing people because it saves money, nothing repugnant about that.

 

My point was that there are two reasons given to be in favor of the death penalty. One argument (deterrence and punishment) works just as well for torture as for death. The other (killing the undesirable to save resources for the desirable) is in my opinion far more repugnant.

 

If you kill people who are 'pure evil' to spare resources for children, then why should the line be drawn there? There's lots of people who aren't useful to society, why shouldn't we kill them too? How about the mentally ill who are unable to survive on their own and have no real hope over ever living outside of an asylum? They spend far more resources than the prison for life cases, they're a danger to their guards, and they're of no use to society. Should we kill them too? How about child molesters? Should we off them, rather than risk putting them back into society? People in persistant vegetative states? People living in nursing homes who will never get out of bed again?

 

Killing people for the sake of an efficiency, even when we're talking about murderers, is still a horrible, horrible concept.

[Winstonm]

not if God *is* good, winston... it's obvious that he could have created any number of worlds, or none at all... assume none... he creates none yet he (good) still exists

 

and 'without evil there can be no good' was meant in the sense that if you, me, we, deny the existence of evil we also deny the existence of good

 

I don't follow this reasoning, but that's O.K. Regardless, it doesn't affect the man-made decision to enforce capital punishment or abolish it.

 

Another basic problem I have with capital punishment is that it is the ultimate power granted to the state - and history shows that whatever power is granted to the state is ultimately misused. It could be argued that even now capital punishment is being misused due to the imbalance in executions between whites and non-whites.

 

And you can't undo death.

[luke warm]

not if God *is* good, winston... it's obvious that he could have created any number of worlds, or none at all... assume none... he creates none yet he (good) still exists

 

and 'without evil there can be no good' was meant in the sense that if you, me, we, deny the existence of evil we also deny the existence of good

 

I don't follow this reasoning, but that's O.K. Regardless, it doesn't affect the man-made decision to enforce capital punishment or abolish it.

that's true, but remember that some were offering up 'evil' as a reason for CP... now from within the christian worldview i can somewhat understand that as a reason (though i disagree with CP itself)... from a naturalist POV i can't understand 'evil' as justification at all, in's nonsensical to me

[mikeh]

not if God *is* good, winston... it's obvious that he could have created any number of worlds, or none at all... assume none... he creates none yet he (good) still exists

 

and 'without evil there can be no good' was meant in the sense that if you, me, we, deny the existence of evil we also deny the existence of good

 

 

This post illustrates what I think a number of other posters have missed: that for people such as Lukewarm, the concepts of good and evil are, it seems to me, concepts that have an existence beyond being merely descriptive terms. 'Evil' lives... it can possess people and cause them to do terrible things. It represents the antithesis to good... it smacks of Satan while 'good' smacks of God.

 

Thus believers can tie their recognition of these concepts to the existence of the god. They can argue, sincerely, that a refusal to recognize this inchoate but real 'evil' as some kind of force in the universe, is a denial of god.

 

And so it is. I do deny recognition of 'evil' as some spirit or force that will pervert the mind of any human. Lukewarm's logic depends upon an unproven and unprovable major premise: that god exists. Deny that illogical and (nowadays) irrational premise, and the argument falls away.

 

Is this relevant to the notion of capital punishment?

 

I think it is.

 

When we approach abhorrent behaviours from the belief that such behaviours represent the presence of a malign force, we will respond in an irrational manner. In particular, we may stop (or never begin) trying to understand, from a scientific perspective, why that individual or group of individuals acted in that manner.

 

Take the guards at the concentration camps in WWII. Who can doubt that much of the behaviour of those guards was 'evil'? Who can doubt that the 'Final Solution' was not 'evil'?

 

But if history, including recent history, teaches us anything it is that ordinary people can do horrific acts if the scene is appropriately set.

 

If we simply say that Himmler and Hitler were 'evil', we foreclose a proper understanding of how people like that come to behave as they do and how an entire civilized nation can become obedient to their socio-political theories.

 

In a similar, altho lesser, vein, if we take the child-raping killer of infants and call him evil, how does that help to prevent the next child-raping killer? How does it help psychologists and psychiatrists, called in to examine or treat a young boy identify the factors in his makeup or environment that will perhaps later cause him to perpetrate such acts?

 

I suspect that we, as a society, are a long way from an adequate understanding of what goes 'wrong' in such people, and when, if at all, we can intervene in someone's life so as to divert these people from committing such acts.

 

But we are never going to get there at all, if we merely label such aberrant behaviour as 'evil' in a religious sense.

 

And the killing of a person because of he is 'evil' in a religious sense allows us to justify killing anyone our religion deems evil no matter what act or acts the person did. It was not too long ago that witches were killed. Doctors have been murdered by religious people convinced that the doctors were evil.. why? Because they carried out legal abortions.

 

When we allow the irrational superstitions of religion to control our behaviour towards non-conformists, how and where can we draw the line?

 

BTW, in the foregoing I recognize that many religionists are against the death penalty on religious grounds, so I don't want to leave the impression that I think most religious believers are blood-thirsty retributionists nor do I think that many today would countenance killing suspected witches :) My point is that we shouldn't consider religious concepts AT ALL in the way in which we treat criminals.