why do we kill people who kill people to show people that killing people is wrong?

Question

Something I think could get a lot of good answers from

Answer 1

To let others know of the consequences that may befall them.

Answer 2

Because we are human and humans are pretty dumb sometiems. We can do a lot of amazing things but we can't seem to understand that capital punishment is not a deterent. Life without any chance of parole - and doing hard labor....now THAT is a deterent! A lot of these bozos that go around killing WANT to be dead....so capital punishment is worthless. It's like telling a suicide bomber that if they set off the bomb - they might be killed....duh.....they know that. Capital punishment doesn;t work. It just makes people feel better. I admit - when Ted Bundy got the juice - it did feel good. But I also would have felt good seeing his sorry self cracking rocks for 50 years until he keeled over and died of exhaustion.

Answer 3

I don't think that is the real reason. Take the war on Al Quaida (let's forget the politics and pretend that the U.S. is in Iraq for this reason). No one ever said the nation is doing this to teach the world that terrorism is wrong. We are doing it to stop them from killing more people. There is justification in this. People bent on killing the innocent to prove their point can not be allowed to continue because we fear that killing them would send the wrong message.
If your question is more about the death penalty, then here is another opinion.
Again, it is not about teaching a lesson to others. It is about being punished for your actions. There are crimes in this world that, if you commit them, you should be prepared to give up your life as the punishment. I believe that and also believe that without that deterrent, murder would be more prevalent then it is now. (before you say "How could that be?", think about it, as bad as it is, it could be a lot worse.)

Answer 4

Retributive justice system. It's juvenile. Eye for an eye justice, I believe. Certainly not in turn the other cheek!

Also, if you want to enforce zero tolerance with respect to some act, killing is the ultimate way to enforce it. That the "some act" itself happens to be killing, fine, so be it.

And moreover, given the feelings of the survivors of murder, to them it might hardly seem fair that their loved one is dead while the killer still is alive. Eye for an eye again though. Wanting their loved one alive is not at all the same as wanting the killer dead. It's revenge. That it is legal is savage. Maybe it in fact deters some crime. I do not know about these things very much.

Answer 5

Good question.
What I always found fascinating about the death penalty debate is how many of the 'christians' that I know are pro death penalty.
One woman I talked to about it had something interesting to say when I suggested that a disproportionate number of criminals executed were minorities. And I also suggested that based on odds alone, some of the executed surely had to be innocent of the crimes they were accused of.
Her christian response was "God wouldn't let that happen if he didn't want to, so they must be guilty of SOMETHING even if it wasn't the crime they died for."

Its barbaric that so called 'civilized' societies still partake in vengeance killings.

Answer 6

Ha-ha; that was beautifully nailed.

Some pro-DeathPenalty entities we have to share our air with, by law, are going to say the same old Old Testament stuff about the ‘eye-for-an-eye’ thingy whilst they completely forget they’re supposed to be following the god-man who rose like a phoenix to take much of the known world by storm through the actions of his head of sales - Paul.

Much of Atheist Europe has done away with the DeathPenalty cos it's barbaric, makes a monster of the courts as well as the button pusher and, serves as absolutely no deterrent.
All the DeathPenalty does is serve as Revenge but, didn't someone say: "Vengeance is mine; I will repay."?

I just love the way those xians cherry-pick the Goat Herders' Guide to the Galaxy
.

Answer 7

Killing people who kill should eventually eliminate people who kill, which would kill off the killings, including those killings for killing.

Answer 8

Everything has a root in the "an eye for an eye" system. We execute murderers for vengeance, but also as a warning for others who might follow in their paths. I mean, in truth, if it wasn't illegal, many people would probably go and murder their enemies. But by having the consequence of death for that crime, people think twice and there aren't 40 pages of obituaries in the newspapers every day. Death scares people. It isn't until the threat of death is put over your head that you begin to realize that what you want to do is insane. We don't necessarily do it to show people that it's wrong, we do it to scare them and warn them not to do it, and that that is not an honorable thing to do. It isn't necessarily to say that killing is wrong, just that since it isn't really a great thing to do, you're going to face consequences.

Answer 9

FANTASTIC QUESTION!!!

i think it is sick and hypocritical the way we execute people for crimes. a prosecuter calmly and deliberetly plans out an argument for why another human beings life should be taken away. the prosecuter makes a fortune doing this. meanwhile a husband has killed his wife out of passion because he found her cheating on him. who is sicker here?

i say the prosecuter.

THE DEATH PENALTY IS WRONG!


....WOW, every single other person that answered is all for the death penalty and in some cases worse. it goes to show how sick human kind is. We have not moved on step beyond thinking the world is flat or the salem witch trials.

if any of you ever commit a crime i would be the only one here to have compassion for you.

Answer 10

First of all, who is the "we" you are referring to?

The moral principle of individual rights is the fact that each human being has a right to his life, to his property and his freedom to pursue happiness.

If all humans subscribed to this principle, which is based on logic and not on mysticism, there would be peace in the world.

There is only one moral justification for the use of force: self-defense. When your life, your property, your liberty are violated, your use of force is justified.

A moral government has fundamentally only one purpose to exist: the protection of the rights of the individuals. All other rights and purposes that voters have allowed the governement to have are actually violations of their own individual rights.

For example, goverments should stay out of religion and economics. No moral government should make laws based on this or that religious belief. Similarly, no moral government should make laws that control the pocketbooks of its citizens. Free thinking and free market are part of the individual right of one's liberty to pursue happiness and to owning one's property. Even in our country, voters have given politicians the power to promise privileges for one group of people by stealing from another.

Answer 11

We don't kill people to show that killing is wrong. Everyone in his/her sane mind knows that murder is a horrible crime and very wrong. We kill people to exact the ultimate punishment when that is handed down by a jury or court. Ultimately, the murderer had merited having his/her life forfeited by having taken someone's life.