Demeaning someone else's point of view in order to prop up your own casts a shadow on your knowledge about the issue. Expecting someone to bandwagon because you present yourself as an "authority" on the issue is a fallacy that you should know to avoid if you are the philosophy expert that you say you are. Have some humility if you are trying to educate someone else who is less knowledgeable on the topic.

Secondly, suggesting Wikipedia as a source for others to use hardly speaks to your own credibility as far as research is concerned. A professor would have a field day with those references. If you're going to use an encylopedia, try Princeton or Stanford addendum.

Philosophy is not dead because we need to evaluate old questions under the new light of our era. These include evaluating how our conceptions of knowledge are changing in an era of rapidly flowing and continuously amassing information, the construction of identity through the multiplicity of anonymous accounts online, the ethics of statistical arbitrage and high frequency trading in futures markets, conceptions about understanding about the splitting of our attention through multi-tasking, the use of red-herrings in political arguments to persuade the public, etc. Philosophy is far from dead. The new era is dawning

The presumptions on the other side lead me to take the opposing view. It is false to say that any self-proclaimed believer blindly believes and therefore doesn't take the concept of God seriously. The questions pondered by atheists and the religious are different in nature. Whereas the atheist takes the concept of God seriously when deciding whether to accept or deny its existence (rejection of God based on rationality, or lack of quantified certainty/probability), the believer must come to terms with the uncertainty and wrestles with it daily. Read Kierkegaard if you would like to see the scope of seriousness that believers take to the concept of God

This is a really easy answer. The principle of identity is a=a. Theft is theft. Your questions addresses whether the intentions of an act can erase the act. The answer is no. The intentions are subject to a value assessment (good/bad), but the act of taking someone else's property cannot be overridden by any intention. A nation cannot intervene militarily in another country, and after having removed a violent dictator, conclude that they didn't intervene.

The death penalty should not be used more often.

I have issues with the way this debate is being framed. What constitutes the "good life" in prison? The removal of civil liberties? The micro-management and control over movement, time, space, work, leisure? It seems that you are begging the question here. Is the "good life" in prison, the lack of lethal injection?

It is not the Court's responsibility to punish. It is their responsibility to remedy violations and rehabilitate individuals. While you may be inclined to appeal to emotion in the case of murder, the legal system should refrain from any such failings as it can lead to disastrous circumstances where the law is used as a medium for vengeance. The slippery slope to extra-judicial rulings is something to be avoided.

The margin for error is too large to institute the death penalty at all, set aside more often. The amount of people over the years that have been vindicated through DNA evidence is staggering. Even if the number of people absolved of blame is low, my point is this: If one person is sentenced to their execution and it is later proven that they were innocent, how do we remedy the Court's violation of condemning an innocent person to death? Who has the authority to do this? One person is one person too many.

For those claiming the death penalty is a deterrent: One needs to show the direct causative link between the instituting of the death penalty and the decrease in crime levels less the noise in the data. And after that, one needs to describe how one's grievances are dealt with if the state screws up and gets rid of the wrong guy. My vote is no: Not at all, definitely not more often.

Post links to the studies verifying that an increase in the use of the death penalty is an effective deterrent. Trying to bolster a weak argument with the supplement that there are statistics to support your claim is not definitive.

This can be a slippery-slope to extra-judicial rulings which are beyond the realm of what is just.

Moral hazard does not follow the removal of the death penalty in places that had previously adhered to it. Its effects as a deterrent are minimal