Thanks. As I said, death for petty "crimes" like adultery. The blasphemy one brought a smile, in remembering the stoning scene in Life of Brian, which I watched again on telly the otgher night :-)

>Not agreeing, but just pointing to some references:
>
>http://www.religioustolerance.org/exe_bibl.htm
>http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/1974
>
>
>>>>>>Justice too often is about revenge rather than anything else..
>>>>>>
>>>>>>The death penalty is babaric regardless of the form. In that sense the US is totally backward to any other western country.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>"Thy shall not kill"
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>It's actually "Thy shall not murder".
>>>>
>>>>If you're talking of the 10 commandments it's actually "Thou shalt not kill". "Thy" means "your" as in "belonging to you, singular".
>>>
>>>Yes. I stand corrected.
>>>But the the word "kill" comes from a Hebrew word "ratsach", which means "... killing without just cause...". So more accurately the modern day scriptures are translated to say "Thou shalt not murder".
>>
>>Fair enough but either you're saying that execution is killing WITH just cause (which negates your argument vs capital punishment), or without (which makes it murder anyway).
>>
>>Or do the scriptures allow capital punishment by these words? (I know they were well into stoning people to death, for instance, for petty "crimes" like adultery or pre-marital sex)
>>
>>I'd've thought you were arguing against ANY form of killing.