braces_for_impact

Article here

Religion is enlightenment? Religion is the source of all morality?

Sometimes your caught up in your own little world and you forget how barbaric the world is...

Amen-Moses

No doubt the guy who presses the button for the lethal injections or pulls the lever on "ole sparky" says the same thing.

Which do you use in your state btw?

Amen-Moses

braces_for_impact

I'm sure he most likely does say the same thing. Isn't that half the problem?

A bit off topic, is there one button, or do several people push buttons to start the event?

In any case, whether by sword, gun, or button, the end result is still the same, and it's still barbaric.

scigirl

From what I've heard about lethal injections, there are thee needles - one with saline, one with KCl and one with Na Pentabarbitol (the last two are deadly). The people don't know what's in the needles - so their "conscience" is safe. Seems strange to me, if the death penalty is ok to do.

scigirl

seebs

Seems mentally unbalanced to me. I am terrified of that... I'm not sure which scares me more, the attempt to protect the consciences of executioners, or the fact that it works.

yguy

Agreed. It's a psychological trick to deny responsibility. By contrast, in the OT, the whole congregation stoned the offender to death, affirming their agreement with and responsibility for the verdict. Perhaps the closest we could come to that in this era would be to have the judge and jurors close switches wired in series so as to close the relay that sets the process in motion.

scigirl

Whoah, I actually agree with yguy, is the world ending?


Seems to me that if we are going to have the death penalty, it should be more like this. Letting them sit in a cell for years on end until they die seems cruel and unusual punishment, not to mention expensive. And if it's right - than why the secrecy? I think Albert Camus talked about this issue in one of his books on the death penalty - anyone read it?

Of course I'm against the death penalty for many reasons, which I don't' wish to discuss here for fear of derailing the thread.

scigirl

Undercurrent

My understanding was that at least in some cases there were two buttons, and only one was connected to syringes. Both were pressed sumultaneously by two different people, each of whom could rationalize that maybe they pressed the button the didn't work.

I'd also heard that in every firing squad, a random gun is loaded with a blank, so that every firing squad member can pretend they had that gun.

I think most of these things are there, not to protect the conscience of the executioners, but to remind them that what their doing ought to be an unpleasant duty of the state, and not circus of vengence that public stonings can turn into.

Harumi

The executioner really reminds me of those Nazi soldiers who were prosecuted for shooting babies and such. When asked why they did it they just say it's because someone ordered them to and that makes it all better. It wasn't them who did it, it was the officer.

This guy's just replaced "officer" with "god".

For crying out loud, what is wrong with people and taking a bit of responsiblity?

yguy

Hey, even a stopped clock is right twice a day, right?