Execution vs. terrorist attack on civilians - which is worse

[Anonymous]

I would like to hear what you think is worse - sentencing someone to death, putting them on death row and executing them, or making a sneak attack on an office building, killing thousands, and wounding some others?? I ask, cause I just saw part of some movie about Gary Gilmore, and had to turn it off. I felt that a death sentence and execution were worse (ie. creeped me out way more) than a terrorist attack on the WTC or other building. The death sentence dominates the condemnd's consciousness, and they wait till they die. Makes dying in a plane crash sound not as bad as before. I realized others might not feel this way, but hey, that's why we have moral relativism.

[OT]

Moral relativism is false. Here’s a proof:

Assume there are no moral absolutes. But the assumption that there is no moral absolutes is itself a moral absolute. Proof by contradiction.

[Griffin 1]

Terrorist attacks on civilians is worse.

[Hierophant]

kibber, your point is so weak and foolish that it doesn't deserve a fully reasoned response. Just retract it; I can't believe you mean it.

The limited and specific counterpoint would consider the plight of the person or people at the WTC who reasoned (correctly, with benefit of hindsight) that they would die if they stayed in the building, and so chose to jump off the building to a certain death.

Clearly, those people were put in a greater state of anxiety than Gilmour, and they were innocent, while Gilmour suffers/ed from his own guilt.

To compare the anxiety of one guilty person to the taking of 6,000 innocent lives? Go away, far away.

[Patience]

1) to me life in prison is worse than a death sentence.

2) the person on death row contributed to the outcome

3) if the real question is how would I want to die, if depends on how quickly I go from the the terrorist attack, or I am in so much pain I believe jumping a 100 stories is an option.

4) I don't believe truly guilty murderers awaiting death feel about it the same way we might

[Intents]

The death sentence is imposed by society as a lesson upon a human with the hope that others will be less likely to commit acts to end in similar situations. To me, Kibbers was making a point of reference comparison of the person committing others to die, and came to the point of trying to weigh: What is a colder act, to assassinate somebody (or efficiently thousands in a swipe, by its nature an act of surprise) or to grind the wheel of justice exceedingly fine and slowly with what may appear to some a sense of sadism thrown in with the actual extraction of life. The solution to me is that we have banded together as a society to impose death because we do not know a better way to totally stop what we determine as the presence of totally incorrigible evil. On the other side, a terrorist is taking it upon himself to impose death and has not taken the civilized step of first including us in his society before such imposition. If your philosophy is tilted toward anarchy then this latter constraint bears weight and the former constraint is viewed with a cynical eye of suspicion.

[Hierophant]

"Hang me, oh hang me, so I'll be dead and gone (3x)
I wouldn't mind your hanging, boys, but you wait in jail so long.
Lord, I've been all around this world."
(From "I've Been All Around This World"

The wheels of justice do not grind slowly and sadistically so as to increase the punishment. Rather, the wheels grind slowly out of our great concern for justice, that a man should not be falsely put to death.

[Caffeine Junkie]

Here we go again.

Moral relativism is usually just an end-around having to make the hard choices in life.

If one side effect of capital punishment is that a murderer actually feels bad about his impending sentence, well, I'm pretty sure I can live with that.