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Silly definition. humans get much pleasure out of others torture. You don't find it bizarre people are willing to pay large sums of money to watch Saw films- depicting their fellow man being disemboweled for entertainment.
Besides, other animals show just as much, if not more compassion both to humans and each other.
But using your definition, no it is far from humane. Even if it is totally painless, it still inflicts mental pain on both the victim, and his/her family.
Your responses to this debate made me suspect that your replies were not particularly thought out. This comment assures me that there isn't much to your reasoning.
The problem with whatisright's comment is that the executioner with the needle may have killed 6 to 1000 people but should not be put to death. The problem with your comment is a similar error, it lacks context and perspective.
The problem with whatisright's comment is that the executioner with the needle may have killed 6 to 1000 people but should not be put to death.
That's one problem. I pointed out another. If he thinks that anyone who kills others would need to be put to death by lethal injection, then we may as well kill anyone who has been to war and should be put to death, regardless of the fact that they were protecting our country.
If he thinks that anyone who kills others would need to be put to death by lethal injection, then we may as well kill anyone who has been to war and should be put to death, regardless of the fact that they were protecting our country.
The problem with his statement is the same problem with yours, context. You can't forget that wars have two sides and people in the middle. Often times they are all fighting. Sometimes they aren't fighting at all. Not all war vets have killed people. For the times that a vet did, I won't say it was cruel or inhumane, even if he used a brick. I'll say thanks.
My bad. I obviously meant the ones who had killed.
For the times that a vet did, I won't say it was cruel or inhumane, even if he used a brick.
Whether it was inhumane or not, is not for you to say. If the killing was done without compassion then it is inhumane. If you are compassionate when you kill someone, then you are inhumane, thus the act is inhumane.
Whether it was inhumane or not, is not for you to say. If the killing was done without compassion then it is inhumane. If you are compassionate when you kill someone, then you are inhumane, thus the act is inhumane.
Telling someone to not be stupid, is a fruitless endeavor.
But yes I knew what you meant and the fact of the matter is, there is no difference in taking the life of someone who kills for fun and taking the life for someone who has killed people protected their country. It's all inhumane.
so after all we been though. After 2013 years of people killing each other. You still think it inhumane. Even before 2013 years ago people were killing each other. Even when humans was first born. People were killing each other. You still think it inhumane.
I do not have time for this. I got to go to work inlike a hour here give my friend 10 mints I think he is done with his shower. he will argue with you.
u appur 2 thnk that humane and human mean the same thing and yet I told u that it doesn't, but you still continue to respond with the same misconception in mind.
You can clearly see how "humane" is spelled, but you keep misspelling it. You are trying to act is if you actually have bad grammar and don't know how words are spelled.
And you just completely ignore my responses and just submit some bullsht.
I don't really understand how it is inhumane to spare the lives of future victims. Or to bring closure and a sense of justice to the families of past victims.
It can't be inhumane to put terrible criminals to death, they gave up their human status. (minus the falsely accused of course)
You presume not only a legitimate legal system, but the infallibility of such a system. Even where a legitimate legal system is in place there is still the potential for error and the possibility of executing an innocent person.
Additionally, what exactly makes it right to kill another person as a penalty for them killing someone? I would contend that the assumption implicit in your conclusion is itself unfounded, if not outright incorrect.
The argument for the fallibility of of the system is probably the best argument against the death penalty. It's valid to want to keep 10 guilty men alive if it keeps you from executing 1 innocent man.
The reasoning behind the idea that it is right to take the life of a murderer comes from a particular view of rights. The murderer does not value life, when he acts on this lack of value, he forfeits his own right to life. He needs to be removed from society. Locking him away would remove him, but it also cost money. Since he doesn't value human life, and has acted in a way to surrender his own right to life, death is a valid option. This view of rights holds the death penalty as legitimate for certain crimes, but it also requires the system to be correct.
The argument for the fallibility of of the system [...] 1 innocent man.
I agree entirely; that was why I made it. ;)
The murderer does not value life, when he acts on this lack of value, he forfeits his own right to life. & Since he doesn't value human life, and has acted in a way to surrender his own right to life, death is a valid option.
I contend that that forfeiture is an assumption, and one which is inconsistently applied. For instance, if it were true that one forfeits the rights they violate then those who have committed assault or battery should have no right to the physical safety of their person. Yet most legal systems expressly secure those rights for the incarcerated.
He needs to be removed from society. Locking him away would remove him, but it also cost money.
More accurately, society ought to be protected from violent offenders. This being the baseline, incarceration does serve that objective which renders execution more a matter of financial expediency or emotional gratification; neither of the latter seems an adequate basis from which to derive an argument for the humaneness of execution.
This view of rights holds the death penalty as legitimate for certain crimes, but it also requires the system to be correct.
Most views of rights presented in defense of the death penalty rely upon the false supposition of infallibility; it is not an especially unique flaw with this particular rights argument.
if it were true that one forfeits the rights they violate then those who have committed assault or battery should have no right to the physical safety of their person
Incarceration is a general forfeiture of rights in general resulting from the lack of value of some rights in particular.
Most views of rights presented in defense of the death penalty rely upon the false supposition of infallibility
This may be true, however I think it's odd that as our means of collecting and analyzing evidence becomes less fallible (DNA), opponents of the death penalty use this reduced fallibility to argue even harder against it.
Incarceration is a general forfeiture of rights in general resulting from the lack of value of some rights in particular.
You are sidestepping the issue. Your argument was that by killing one loses the right life. If that logic were true then the right violated would be the right lost. An assaulter does not imprison a person, and so the appropriate response by the logic innate to your argument would not be imprisonment but a reciprocal assault.
This may be true, however I think it's odd that as our means of collecting and analyzing evidence becomes less fallible (DNA), opponents of the death penalty use this reduced fallibility to argue even harder against it.
I am not entirely certain what your point is here. The system will always be fallible; it is a human construction. That it becomes less fallible is not the same as saying it is infallible and that an innocent person may not still be sentenced to death. DNA is not required for conviction and sentencing, nor is it always a guarantor of guilt, so while there may be clear cases there will always be those with room for error.
Financial expediency. I remain curious as to your thoughts on this as the primary basis for justifying execution.
I don't see why it wouldn't be human. Using the topic of prisoners getting lethal injection; if they are a threat to society, lethal injection is more quick and painless than hanging, decapitation, or electrical shock (electric chair). It is also less of a mess.
I'm going to agree that it is humane by comparison. Though the other side makes a valid point about mental anguish, I think the anguish would be greater if they thought they were going to feel a great deal of pain.
It's painless, it ends it there and then, if you're going through so much pain that you feel you have to (unless it's mentality problem), then it's the quickest way to have it. Humane? I think it's more of mercy killing.
But lettuce does not think. You can not take the life away from something that can't live a life. Living is an action and actions are controlled by thought processes.
In mentioning the ability to think you are referencing sapience. So I can assume your argument is that to kill anything with sapience, or to end that sapience is inhumane.
Plants work every day to reach the nutrients they need to survive. Some plants even have simplistic communication methods. It sounds like taking a life isn't what you are concerned about, but rather taking a life that you see as similar.
I guess lethal injection for a comatose patient would be ok?
Plants work every day to reach the nutrients they need to survive.
What they do is no different than what gravity does. It's just part of the natural processes of the universe. Plants have no free will/ choice in the matter. They don't "work".
I guess lethal injection for a comatose patient would be ok?
No. There's still a chance that the patient will come out of the coma and continue their life.
A vine is creeping across the lawn toward the post. I remove the post. The vine retreats. That may not mean consciousness, but it is definitely more than gravity.
Me arguing against you for lethal injection is gonna have me hugging trees pretty soon.
Yes it is. He was just doing his Job. You could have knocked him out with a brick or something and then saved the person who he was about to torture. If you accidentally kill him then well...accidents happen. But purposefully killing someone would be inhumane.
I would much rather see justice done methodically than as an emotional response. If it is his job, or he was coerced into his situation, or some other crazy circumstance then maybe he shouldn't be killed at all. Let alone with a brick to the head. However, if he is a sadistic psycho then there is no room for him here. Send him on his way with a nice sterilized needle.
Some people don't have anything technically wrong with them, they are just bad. The chances of the brain dead patient waking up is more than curing many sadists.
There are people who are bad people. It's not that they are ill, it may be that they were raised to be that way, but they have no desire to change. That would make them incurable.
What data? Gosh let me just go write a thesis for this stupid argument. I don't have any, neither do you. This is an opinion about the nature of lethal injection. Shall we go ask all the folks that had it done to them if they were in pain or scared? Timothy McVeigh was smiling.
You haven't even used the provided definition correctly, what would we do with data?
Nope. I'm simply using the definition of the word and it's not a word that can be rightfully used in an opinionated way. Just like you can't use "burrito" in an opinionated way.
You can call a T.V. remote a burrito, but that does not make it a burrito.
This is an example provided by the Oxford English dictionary in the entry at the top of the page. You are saying that killing is inherently inhumane. That is not the implication of the dictionary entry. I provided the definition at the top, you haven't provided one at all.
The death penalty was halted in 1972 after the Supreme Court ruling in Ferman V Georgia found the death penalty to be cruel and unusual which violates the 8th Amendment. This decision was reversed four years later in Greg V Georgia when they came up with lethal injection.
It may be an appeal to authority, but I'll take the Supreme Court as a valid authority. Since they found it to be humane enough, so will I.
These are assertions, and regardless of whether or not your opponent has made assertions of their own, you still have not validated them. Perhaps debaters should not generally have to provide evidence of their assertions (I do disagree), but at the point where you expressly reference chance or probability you are implying a knowledge of data rather than mere opinion. You have spoken less from opinion and more from an asserted knowledge; it is entirely reasonable for someone to ask you to substantiate that claim to knowledge. If you have actually done the research to substantiate your views and are not in fact bullshitting your argument, then citing that data is hardly comparable to writing a thesis.
With respect to your assertions and fallacies. You seem to be of the opinion that murderers are all "sadistic psychopaths", whereas not all are diagnosable as either sadistic or antisocial (note: psychopathy and sociopathy have both been consolidated in the DSM under antisocial personality disorder). By conflating the homicidal with the sadistic and psychopathic, you imply that they are mutually interchangeable terms which they are not. You also imply that sadists and antisocial personalities should categorically be put down as they have no place in society; was that your intention?
The idea that the homicidally violent are incurable, even if currently founded, is not an inherent truth. Curability is contingent upon knowledge, and the phenomenon of homicidal violence is a relatively poorly understood field (as are human psychology and mental disorder generally).
Finally, people are not just simply "bad" without reason. Human behavior is a consequence of biological disposition and environmental exposure. To penalize a person with death for actions perpetrated as a consequence of factors outside their control is arguably inhumane. Further, the absence of a diagnosable condition does not mean an individual is not ill. Illness is itself is a label identifying dysfunctional aberration of the human body and mind; homicidal violence is certainly such a form of dysfunctional aberration.
Some people are just bad. There are whole cultures that find it necessary to stone a family member for getting raped. These people aren't ill. Since it is ingrained in them, they wouldn't want to change. I know this is a bad example for a possible crime over here, but it illustrates how someone can be wrong in the worst way without being ill.
I'm not of the opinion that murderers are "all sadistic psychopaths", but some of them are.
If it is true that the homicidally violent are not currently curable, then it is inherently true until a cure is produced.
This remains an assertion. Arguing that some cultures stone rape victims to death is a poor example, not only because it conflates de facto social punishment with individual criminality but also because it does not actually substantiate your claim. Illness is a term which, in its proper application, indicates a state of non-health or dysfunction. Certainly, an argument might readily be advanced that the aforementioned cultural practice is symptomatic of a social illness. However, it does not prove that the culture or people are inherently bad.
I'm not of the opinion that murderers are "all sadistic psychopaths", but some of them are.
I am quite glad to hear it, and the primary reason I made the distinction is because I consider myself a mental health and illness advocate. The implication of that is that I oblige myself to identify inaccurate and potentially misleading statements about particular disorders. It was less an argument, and more an observation. We need not discuss it further I suspect.
If it is true that the homicidally violent are not currently curable, then it is inherently true until a cure is produced.
That is a fairly substantial "if" to begin with, and while the conclusion drawn from that supposition is fair I would qualify it. However, this argument attempts to justify execution of the homicidally violent on the basis that they may not currently be curable. The problematic uncertainty of the premise aside, this is effectively an argument that due to our own relatively undeveloped knowledge of the human mind and behavior it is right to execute those in our society whom we cannot help. Perhaps this is true, but I do not think you have provided the analysis to warrant that conclusion.
The cultural example may have been a poor one for the topic, it was simply meant to illustrate that a person can be murderous without actually being sick. I have gotten off track from the topic. The fact that I agree with the death penalty has little to do with how humane I think it is or isn't. So I will concede that lethal injection is most likely not humane. I don't however find this to be reason enough to discontinue it.
An important distinction, and one I made in a response elsewhere before reading your clarification. You may feel free to disregard that point where I made it as you clearly recognize the difference on your own accord.
Testing on them would be profitable. Which means it would also be profitable to falsely accuse innocent people so that you have more test subjects. I think testing is a bad idea.
It really depends on the context and the crime. Some states have adopted the death penalty for certain crimes against children. These states saw a drop in such crimes though there isn't a significant decrease in other types of crime as a result of the death penalty.
The idea of the death penalty as a disincentive to crime is valid for some types of criminals but not for others. In order for the disincentive to be taken seriously, the actual punishment must be carried out.
I would have to see the research from which I presume you are drawing your observations. Such conclusions are frequently misrepresentations of correlation as causation.
You further presume that the relative (and questionable) disincentive for a crime is an adequate justification for the taking of another human life. That the punishment must be enacted to secure the purported benefit of the disincentive is not an innate justification for the overall necessity of the disincentive itself. I would argue that this is an especially difficult justification to make where non-fatal crimes are concerned, given the innate disproportionality of the sanction.
I would have to see the research from which I presume you are drawing your observations.
It was a lecture. So I'm afraid I have no source to site.
That the punishment must be enacted to secure the purported benefit of the disincentive is not an innate justification for the overall necessity of the disincentive itself.
If it can be found that the death penalty is actually a disincentive to particular heinous crimes, it justifies itself. It can be argued that the disincentive isn't effective, but if it is then what else needs to be said? At least until there is a more effective disincentive.
I guess the flip side to this question is this; given a particularly terrible crime, what is the justification for not killing the perpetrator?
It was a lecture. So I'm afraid I have no source to site.
Then I am afraid I cannot take it on face.
If it can be found that the death penalty is actually a disincentive to particular heinous crimes, it justifies itself. It can be argued that the disincentive isn't effective, but if it is then what else needs to be said? At least until there is a more effective disincentive. I guess the flip side to this question is this; given a particularly terrible crime, what is the justification for not killing the perpetrator?
You have still neglected to provide evidence for your claim that deterrence is actually effective. Harsh punishment is not correlated to, let alone causally linked with, a decrease in crime. This is borne out by the fact that the U.S. has the largest prison population in the world and one of the highest rates of government executions, yet still has a relatively high rate of crime when compared to other countries with more lenient laws and no death penalty. Moreover, internal variation within the U.S. itself indicates that the South has higher violent crime rates than the Midwest and New England areas, despite having the preponderance of state executions. (Source 1,Source 2,Source 3,, Source 4)
Making the mighty assumption against the evidence, then, that a disincentive is created by implementing a particular punishment also does not create an immediate sanction for its use. If your logic were accurate, we might suspect the death penalty to be an effective deterrent against car theft too since the gains are seriously outweighed by the risk of execution. Yet few would likely support implementing the death penalty for car theft. The only other qualifier you provide is that it is a logical option for "particularly terrible crime"... but there is no objective bright line for identifying what fits that standard.
The reality is that particularly heinous and violent crimes are generally non-responsive to retroactive punishment because those committing them do not think ahead to the consequences, do not believe they will be caught, or do not care about what happens to them. In some cases, especially with instances of sexual crimes, the crime is a consequence of identifiable mental illness which expressly means that the most effective action is increased mental health resources, not prison and executions.
You ask why we should not kill a criminal for committing a "particularly terrible crime". My response in short is because the action is not a consequence of free will, that execution does not deter crime, that there are more effective actions available, and that in carrying out an execution we are undermining the very right to life which we claim to hold in such high esteem. Additionally, it is an altogether different question to ask why we should not execute criminals and whether that execution is humane. Even if we should execute them, the act may remain categorically inhumane.
All human action is a consequence of biological predisposition conditioned by environmental exposure. This includes all actions which have been, are, or could be punishable by state sanctioned execution. To kill another human being for actions beyond their control is inherently inhumane.
All human action is a consequence of biological predisposition...To kill another human being for actions beyond their control is inherently inhumane.
Predisposition is not the same as predestination. This seems to be more a debate over free will. If it is, there's not really more to say since the people in government are predisposed to carry out death sentences and all of it is beyond out control.
My argument was not one of predestination, as that is theological, but of secular determinism. I am not arguing the non-existence of free will but presenting it as the framework behind my argument on the particular issue of lethal injection. I can divorce my arguments from a framework no more than you can.
Your conclusion regarding the predisposition towards execution is premature and over-simplistic. Thinking that free will is a mythical non-reality is a causal variable capable of differently affecting human thought and action. We do not control what response we have, but there is no reason to presume that a continued preferentiality for executions given that altered variable. In fact, as our awareness of human cognitive processes and behavior has developed the death penalty has become more constrained and in some places wholly abolished. More specifically, many legal courts have begun to introduce considerations for criminal insanity as a consequence of research indicating that such conduct is not under the control of the criminally convicted.
My argument was not one of predestination, as that is theological, but of secular determinism
That's true, though the same practical conclusions can be drawn from either.
as our awareness of human cognitive processes and behavior has developed the death penalty has become more constrained and in some places wholly abolished.
This for many reasons other than science. Don't make the correlation causation mistake.
many legal courts have begun to introduce considerations for criminal insanity as a consequence of research indicating that such conduct is not under the control of the criminally convicted.
I guess this is my point. Our justice system is based on the idea of free will. If we conclude it does not exist, how do we justify holding anyone responsible?
That's true, though the same practical conclusions can be drawn from either.
I make the distinction to make it expressly clear that I do not believe that we have any destiny; there is no purpose to our existence.
This for many reasons other than science. Don't make the correlation causation mistake.
I never asserted causation, but identified a correlation as a prospective basis for concluding that the two may be related. I am curious, though, as to what you might consider these nebulous "other reasons" to be. I am unfamiliar with arguments against the death penalty not somehow grounded in our developing knowledge of human neurobiology.
I guess this is my point. Our justice system is based on the idea of free will. If we conclude it does not exist, how do we justify holding anyone responsible?
That our system is premised upon a false presumption is innately problematic. That we should have to revisit our response to crime and criminality is not. Responsibility does become irrelevant, but compassionate accountability remains a practical consideration. Rather than continuing to approach crime from the ineffective and purely reactive angle of punishment and retribution, we are able to finally evaluate those actions which will actually protect and benefit both individuals and society. Proactive mental health services and behavioral interventions become prioritized, and incarceration is a final resort taken when other options are exhausted. Incarceration ceases to be the go to reaction, and it further ceases to be a matter of punishment. Care need not be cruel or retributive. We are not punishing the individual, but holding them separate for their well-being as well as that of the general public.
Beheading by guillotine is technically the least painful means of killing someone. Its quick and if there is any pain associated with it, you'd be in pain for less than a fraction of a second. When you really think about it all "modern" execution methods: lethal injection, electrocution, and poisonous gas are very sadistic by comparison.