Atheists do believe in right and wrong.  Do MOST atheists favor capital punishment for murder?  What does logic say should be done with the murderer?  Al Willis First this issue has nothing to do with atheism, you are taking a poll. I am responding to it as an individual who happens to be an atheist. I favor capital punishment Illinois _style_. This means tieing up the courts spending lots of law enforcement money and only executing one person in twenty years. That person was the mass murderer John Wayne Gacy who spent 14 years on death row and would have eaten himself to death faster on the outside. I oppose capital punishment Texas _style_ where you actually kill people. Thanks to victim-less crime laws we have the highest percentage of people in prison in the world. Even Communist China isn't close. So anything that ties up the system and wastes its money is good. Jeffrey Dahmer did the same kinds of things as Gacy and was put in the general prison population rather than get a death sentence. Life expectancy in the general prison population is shorter than on death row, even in Texas. Dahmer lived seven months. There is a slight connection between these opinions and atheism. I see that people live longer on death row than in the general prison population. As an atheist I live totally in the real world. In the real world capital punishment doesn't kill people it keeps them alive and at great expense. So I consider the pros and cons of keeping killers alive at great expense. Non atheists will either say we are getting an eye for an eye with capital punishment or we are taking life with capital punishment.

Atheists do believe in right and wrong.  Do MOST atheists favor capital punishment for murder?  What does logic say should be done with the murderer? Depends on your premises.

Atheists do believe in right and wrong.  Do MOST atheists favor capital punishment for murder?  What does logic say should be done with the murderer?  Al Willis It may also be interesting to find the answers broken down into regions. Would the UK result (where there is no death penalty) be the same as the US result? Personally I'm very much against capital punishment. It all seems to be _base_d on revenge which though entirely natural I believe has no place in a civilised society. A teacher of mine from the catholic school I attended once said that the basis of the differences between Judaism and Christianity lay in the 'eye for an eye' statement. That is, Christians do not agree with the sentiment. John Holcroft

Atheists do believe in right and wrong.  Do MOST atheists favor capital punishment for murder?  What does logic say should be done with the murderer? I dunno. What do redheads think of coffee? Key words: generalisation clue get _base_

Atheists do believe in right and wrong.  Do MOST atheists favor capital punishment for murder?  What does logic say should be done with the murderer?  Al Willis It may also be interesting to find the answers broken down into regions. Would the UK result (where there is no death penalty) be the same as the US result? I do not think capital punishment has a place in society.  they recently enacted  a death penalty here in new york, i voted against it.  murder, state sanctioned or not, is murder.  the death of one innocent person... randy

Atheists do believe in right and wrong.  Do MOST atheists favor capital punishment for murder?  What does logic say should be done with the murderer?  Al Willis I don't know about MOST atheist , but I am opposed to capital punishment because it is the rare case that we can know with 100% certainty that someone is guilty of the crime for which s/he has been convicted. On the flip side, I am also opposed to the insanity plea.  I believe anyone who would kill another person who is not an immediate threat, that killer is not entirely sane.