[Vulcan]

Originally Posted by AR_Six

This is kind of silly. Support it how? In principle, or in proposing that it be law in Canada?

To start with, and this is an aside, obviously your entire position is premised on it being morally wrong (and far on the "wrong" end of that spectrum, if a spectrum exists) to kill people. Probably most would agree with that. That said, most would also intuitively say there are circumstances where it isn't wrong to kill someone (self defence, soldiers in war being the two obvious examples). In order to make your point cogently you really need to define the parameters of the moral statement "it is wrong to kill people in this situation", and tell me the basis for that statement.

Let me put it to you this way. For these purposes, assume everything else is equal - cost, humane methods, the system - this is a moral issue. The central argument against capital punishment is that it is morally wrong for the state to kill people. This implies that we have placed some moral value (I use the term value in the algebraic sense more than the ethical one) on the act of killing. I.e., some acts the state can take are more morally "bad" than others, and killing a guilty person is so bad that we can't tolerate it, so we shouldn't do it. In other words, X (capital punishment) is morally worse as an option than Y (any other punitive measure we might currently employ). This implies that there are alternatives that are less morally wrong. This is where I have an issue: I'm not convinced that it's less morally "wrong" to put someone in a cage and keep them locked up until they die in prison, than it is to put them to death.

In order to take the position that capital punishment is so far off the radar of modern society you need to be able to take the position that it's utterly morally reprehensible compared to the alternatives. On what basis are we saying that X is worse than Y? I would put to you that not being convinced of the truth of "X is worse than Y" is not an indication that a person is an idiot.

In other words, put up. You don't get to just call everyone else idiots without backing your position.

or it just feels right not to do it.