From: rush@eggneb.astro.ucla.edu (Brian Rush )
Subject: Re: An End to the Sanctity of Human Life Argument
Organization: UCLA Dept of Astronomy
Date: 30 Dec 92 09:08:05 PST

In article <1992Dec30.091103.12132@wetware.com> drieux@wetware.com (drieux, just drieux) writes:
>sbooth@lonestar.utsa.edu (Simon E. Booth) writes:
>] In article <1992Dec28.075957.19167@wetware.com> drieux@wetware.com (drieux, just drieux) writes:
>] >sbooth@lonestar.utsa.edu (Simon E. Booth) writes:
>] >
>] >] I read this and was sickened by it.  All I've got to say is that's what
>] >] the death penalty is for.  I honestly hope those three killers get the
>] >] gas chamber, no appeals.
>] >]
>] >] Call me crude, but something must be done.
>] >
>] >thanks simon, I was often confused about
>] >your commitment to the sanctity of all human life....
>] 
>] This is precisely why I feel that these murderers should be executed.
>] 
>] Simon
>] 
>
>thank you again simon for clarifying that you 
>do not hold to the sanctity of human life as
>some matter of intrinsic value.

Boy, every time you post you show an incredible lack of ability to think
logically!  The fact that people who strongly believe in the sanctity of
human life are pro capital punishment can be explained in several ways
(with or without religious references) but they are all along the same
lines as this:  I believe in the sanctity of human life.  God gave each
person life in His own image in a valuable state that is on a completely
different plain and uncomparable to the life that animals have. This
life is so important that two (many, but I'll mention only two here)
things can be concluded:  (1) everyone deserves a chance to live and
thus noone should take that chance away from them by an abortion;  (2)
the thought of someone committing a cold-blooded murder is so bad that
(i) as strong a deterent as possible should be in force to make people
not want to do so (and I can't think of one better than capital
punishment, and the facts overwhelmingly show that it does work
extremely well as a deterent) and (ii) as sad as it is that someone must
die, execution is the only punishment comparable to murder and (iii) it
is not inconsistent with the sanctity-of-human-life view that there are
cases where a life can be taken, but just that it needs great
justification, and there is none greater than that someone murdered
another.

The argument that pro-sanctity-of-human-life advocates change their tune
and don't care about the murderer's life is not accurate.  I would
always think that it is a sad thing for him to die and wish it could have
been otherwise, but I look at him in light of the fact that he took
another life.  Like I said above, it takes great justification to take a
life, and murder is one.  Noone can say that a mother saying "oh, it
will make my life inconvinient" or "he will grow up poor and unwanted"
can be classified as great justifications for an abortion.


Besides, you could look at it in a completely economic way:  in societies
where capital punishment is executed quickly and consistently for murder
the number of murders that are thus prevented by this effective deterent
greatly outnumber the number of executions.  Even in american, where
capital punishment is in reality hardly a fact, the numbers are about
equal.  Just ask any law enforcement official.  I was told directly by
Gates' former assistant chief that this is true in LA.

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