GOD AND CAPITAL PUNISHMENT
No one can deny that capital punishment is evil except when it is the only way
to stop a killer killing any more. But then it is not capital punishment but
self-defence. To say that capital punishment is always wrong then does not have
anything to do with forbidding killing in self-defence.
John Paul II stated that capital punishment is morally right when it is
absolutely necessary to destroy someone who will kill others. That is not
capital punishment.
God takes life which implies he can authorise us to do it. Belief in God then
endangers opposition to capital punishment. Even if it just opens up the
possibility that there is a being who could reveal that it should be carried out
to promote the belief is to promote murder in its capital punishment aspect. To
refuse to enlighten believers is to make it more possible for capital punishment
to return big time. Believers in God cannot use the only real reason for
rejecting capital punishment, that since humans should be happy their lives must
be worth more than happiness so life is an absolute value and should never be
destroyed. For the sake of men and women, we reject God as an abomination.
The Bible says that God himself commands capital punishment and records his
words making it clear that heretics, apostates, worshippers of other Gods,
adulterers, women who are not virgins on the wedding night, homosexuals, those
who curse father or mother or God or the priests are to be put to death. He
said that these should be put to death by stoning or burned to death. These
commands were done purely because of Israel’s conviction that it should obey
God. It wasn’t about protecting society at all. The Bible refutes toads who say
that murdering in the name of religion is impossible and blame modern killers
who kill on religious grounds of using religion as an excuse.
Evil Christian defender Norman L Geisler in The Case for Faith (Lee Strobel,
Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 2000) states that we don’t have the right to
take life for we didn’t create it but God has the right for he created it (page
168). He argued that you can cut down your bushes in your own garden but nobody
else’s because the bushes are yours so God owns our lives and can take them as
he pleases. He says this in response to those who say that God commanding
killing in the Bible proves it is an evil book and unworthy of belief.
The first reply to Geisler is that to say God has the right to command us to
take life for life is his to take is to say that men have the right to kill if
belief in God bids them to. That is what it amounts to. In the Bible, the
prophet Samuel gave Israel a message from God to erase by killing the nation of
Amalek, men, women and children and flocks and all. And we see no evidence
looked for that this man was indeed a prophet. The command was carried out. It
was Samuel who was obeyed for how do we know what if anything was communicating
with him and issuing the commands? People like Geisler are pure bigots
underneath the charm.
The second reply to Geisler is that making life does not give you the right to
destroy it when you want. Even if you made it, the life doesn’t belong to you
but to the being that you gave life to. We are not like mere bushes we are
people. Making life gives God no authority to take it away. To say that your
life doesn’t belong to you is to say you have no rights over it. This is the
demeaning implication of belief in God for people like Geisler have no other
excuse for explaining how God can have the right to command killing or kill.
The third reply to Geisler is that atheists then must claim the right to kill
their children since they must believe they make life. So for God to have the
right to kill we must give it to atheists too!
The fourth reply to Geisler is that human life comes before religious beliefs
and if God endangers respect for human life he shouldn’t be believed in. Geisler
stoops so low as to say that when God commanded the extermination of the
Amalekite children and babies that he was doing them a favour for babies that
die go to Heaven (page 169, The Case for Faith). So killing babies to save them
isn’t intrinsically wrong.
The fifth reply to Geisler is that some believers are convinced that God speaks
to them and doctrines such as his only encourage them to think God may want them
to kill. There are thousands of such deaths every year.
Finally he says that the people of Amalek were totally evil unlike any nation
today so you can’t assume that we have the right to attack any nation to rid the
earth of its evil. He says God was right to get Israel to destroy them for they
had four hundred years to repent and never bothered and they would have
destroyed Israel. He doesn’t tell us that Israel considered itself the people of
God and didn’t make any effort to convert other nations. He doesn’t tell us that
the Bible never says the people of Amalek were that bad. And he doesn’t tell us
that it is wrong to destroy another nation entirely on the basis that it would
destroy yours for it might never do it and the people of Amalek had hundreds of
years to attempt to destroy Israel and didn’t. And when Israel had the power to
destroy it so easily Israel then was attacking a weaker nation. Therefore an
attack from the people of Amalek was just not going to happen. Here we have a
case where the commonsense rule that you don’t wage war except in self-defence
is opposed by the Bible and the religionists who are mad enough to want it taken
seriously.
Some believers will object to capital punishment on the grounds that God said,
“You shall not kill”, which proves nothing for it was said in the context of a
book that commanded capital punishment of the worst kind for nearly everything
so “You shall not kill”, just means don’t murder. The other killings were
believed to be not murder because they were God’s will. The word murder means
illegal killing. The commandment actually supports capital punishment for it
does not say you shall not kill but you shall not murder and what murder is or
is not is spelled out in the rest of the law of which it claims to be a part.
The law is a unit and the context of the commandment shows it was not an
absolute ban on taking life. How Christians can quote that command today and
ignore the implicit approval in it for the capital punishment laws of the Bible
shows either lack of thought or hypocrisy.
The fact that capital punishment has been abused and mistakes made like
executing the wrong person do not prove that it is wrong. It only proves it
should only be employed when absolutely certain. The Bible God advocated capital
punishment on very little testimony and gave no rules for testing a testimony so
to even say you need to be totally sure before you can put a person to death is
heresy. Religion has to go for the sake of the lives of murderers. There is a
real danger that the law might at some stage accept only “God fearing”
Christians or whatever into juries on the grounds that they are holier than the
rest of us. The godly alone were counted as valid witnesses under the Jewish law
so they have the scriptural backing.
The doctrine that death is our come-uppance for sinning is official Church
doctrine. (And you will find it supported in the following references: Handbook
of Christian Apologetics page 247/Radio Replies Volume 3, Question 675/Catechism
of the Catholic Church, 402).
St Paul, whose writings are infallible sources of doctrine for all
Christians, wrote that all mankind is sinful and that is why all mankind dies.
He answered, in his letter to the Romans (5:12), those who doubted that all
people are sinners by reminding them that all die and that babies die because
they are born in a state of separation from God on account of the sin Adam
(their representative and the representative of all humanity) committed. So God
has sentenced everybody to death because of sin.
Even Jesus supposedly had to die because he took the guilt of humanity on his
innocent self. This forbids Christians to rule out capital punishment unless
they can prove that God said he will do it himself from now on – which he never
clearly said. Had he intended to he would have stated it unmistakeably. And
again if capital punishment is right and we forgo it over God that is still
fanaticism. It is still fanaticism but less serious if capital punishment is
wrong because we are against it because of God and not the reason that it is
wrong then that is vicious and arrogant. It means that we will refrain from
capital punishment not for people but for religious belief. That is still
fanaticism. It means that one cannot object to people having a religious belief
that commands them to murder. If you cannot condemn them for hurting people then
there is nothing more to be said.
The argument that Jesus’ paying the death penalty for us means we don’t pay and
the law should not make us even if we commit murder is a complete laughing
stock. The law of the land can’t ban capital punishment just because of Jesus.
The law has to be secular and practical. Nobody believes that Jesus’ suffering
for sin means that we can rob banks and not be entitled to punishment so why
should capital punishment be any different?
God has no need for death and must only inflict it as a punishment for sin. He
could call people into an elevator that takes them to Heaven when their time is
right instead. People find the suggestion that death is punishment for sin
distasteful. God must want us to gloat about death for when he punishes with it
he ignores the good a person may have done. The good doctor who saves loads of
lives could be treated worse than the cold-blooded murderer. This tells us that
God’s punishing is focused on the evil that a person has done instead of the
good. Belief in God certainly reduces the revulsion we should feel towards death
and considering the value of the person as being of supreme importance the
belief has to be dropped. Even a miniscule of reduction is too much considering
the dignity of the person.
Since death is punishment it must be vulgar and indecent and unfair and sinful
to mourn the dead or to care when anybody is murdered. The true believer will
only care about the fact that the murderer committed the crime and killed the
person instead of leaving God to do it and not about the actual murder or death
itself. All will bother him is that God’s toes were tread upon or that the
murderer had a sinful attitude.
To say that death is a punishment for sin is to insult us all because it means
that though one might mourn for the death of a loved one, one still believes the
person deserved it and withholds some or much sympathy. The death is willed and
condoned. Even when it is a needless death this is true for you may disapprove
of the timing of the death but still you see the death as punishment. Or one can
partly condone what God has done in sending death which is bad too. It means you
will and condone the evil because of God to the extent that you see the death as
punishment. You are willing evil on a person all because of a being you know
nothing about and that is totally vile.
To say that God is right to kill is to automatically affirm that God should be
loved with all the heart and soul and mind and any good you do for others is
really done for his pleasing and not for them at all. It shows that the prayer,
“All for thee my God, all for thee”, is a logical follow-on from theism.
Therefore to believe in God is to say that nobody else should mean anything to
you but him and that is diabolically harmful and seeks to destroy the joy in
life and make a debt of death. The wife wants her husband to hold her and love
her for herself and not for God and who in their right mind would want anybody
that fails to do this?
Even if belief in God posed only a slight threat to the preservation of life it
would have to go for life is absolutely valuable. It is foolish to say life
comes first if pro-death attitudes in any form or to even the slightest degree
are going to be fostered so they have to be eradicated. Anyone who loves God
insults my life and I will take it personally. Life is so important that every
little evil we do or tolerate when we could correct it contributes to making
some people commit suicide for evil breeds evil. If you love life then hate
belief in God.
Conclusion
Obedient Bible-believing Christians must support capital punishment. And not
just for murder but for crimes like heresy and homosexuality and many others.
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