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The poster was letting me know that the death penalty was not murder and therefore was OK and righteous in Gods eyes.

I cannot even recall what I said to start it, but I do not believe the death penalty is proper and I don't think it will be around much longer. Perhaps no longer than abortion on demand.

Well IMO (from Bible teachings) the death penalty is a valid response to some actions.

Tell me this. I don't know you, even if you are male or female. But if you have (or hypothetically have) a child and someone grabbed your child and started the process of killing him or her, what would you do?
If you had to kill the person to stop him from killing your child, would you do it? And would that be murder?
Or the properly applied "death penalty"?

The Bible (being as that is the authority we are using) differentiates between the two to the n^th degree.

You see, that changed the commandment to "thou shall not murder" and therefore justified the death penalty.

That is right.

The point I am getting at here is that there is a difference between murder and killing. The killing of zygotes fetuses babies is the killing of the innocent, the death penalty is the killing of the guilty.

But God has instructed men to kill innocents (at least by our standards) before. This is one area that invalidates using scripture in a discussion on abortion policy.

Well, that flies in the face of what I have come to believe.

No, I believe self defense is appropriate now, and I even have determined that it will take some time to get away from using the death penalty, but let me explain how I came to this conclusion as briefly as I am able.

When the state takes the life of a convicted felon, the original intent was to deter crime.

I no longer believe this to be working as a deterrent.

Secondly, it cheapens life. It makes it(killing) OK by state sanction.

I believe it is also too easy. What did the criminal suffer. What will he/she ever know now about the pain they inflicted on others.

If everyone learned to respect life, there would be no killing.

Respect is taught by example.

This is far from a perfect world. It could be better, and it will be.

But I made the choice to begin and I lead by example. Social changes and morays take time. A great deal of time to learn, change and adapt.

God is patient and so am I.

Many on this idiotic thread have totally misrepresented my patience as indifference.

I assure you, that is not the case. But, I do not need to convince them of any sincerity, because this is a really stupid thread.