On Faith: The morality of tweeting the death penalty

Photo courtesy of the film "The Life of Brian"

It isn’t which side of an issue that the media takes that's the problem with society, but rather which issues the media takes that is the problem. This week, the Washington Post’s “On Faith” has decided to discuss the morality of tweeting rather than the morality of the death penalty. This week’s topic is: The executioner's tweet.

Utah Atty. Gen. Mark Shurtleff tweeted last week's execution of convicted killer Ronnie Lee Gardner. "I just gave the go ahead to Corrections Director to proceed with Gardner's execution. May God grant him the mercy he denied his victims," Gardner wrote in one of his controversial tweets. On Faith panelist Mathew N. Schmalz characterized the tweets as "play-by-play commentary" and wrote that "tweeting death trivializes life."

Was the attorney general wrong to use the popular social media tool, or religious language, to describe an execution? With all our technology, are we losing sight of our humanity? Should matters of life and death be reduced to a tweet?

Tweeting death doesn’t trivialize life, killing people rather than taking the time, money, and effort needed to overhaul our penal system to actually rehabilitate criminals trivializes life. Of course this all comes down to religion. On one hand, we have the Abrahamic religions of the Bible in which God advocates killing by stoning for just about every offense including working on Saturdays and on the other hand there is godless humanism which treats all people as being capable of learning and changing. 

We have a society held hostage by a two thousand year old collection of fictional stories. Humans have come a long way since the days of an eye for an eye and yet Jesus preached that heretics should be brought before him and executed (Luke 19:27).  Of course Christianity in particular is all about death. Based on the Bible, execution isn’t even enough of a punishment nor is it enough of a deterrent. Oh no, according to Christianity, people are all evil sinners and will all go to Hell to be tortured for all eternity… unless you swear your loyalty to Jesus of course.

With that type of belief system, it really is no wonder that America still has the death penalty and that the biggest controversy the Washington Post can come up with isn’t whether or not such a system of justice is actually just, but rather whether or not technology is being used for evil by tweeting about death. Some how science is the bad guy here and not the system of belief, which advocates this type of barbaric stoning… or in this case firing squad for a crime committed 25 years ago.

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On Faith Series:

On Faith: Do animals have souls and rights?
On Faith: Religion and the oil spill
On Faith: Sarah Palin’s feminism, faith, and abortion
On Faith: National day of prayer and masturbation
On Faith: Can religion handle sex?
On Faith: Is the media biased against the Catholic Church?
On Faith: Is the Pope above the law?
On Faith: What is heaven like?
On Faith: Disbelief in the pulpit
On Faith: Catholic Church’s attempt to blackmail Washington fails
On Faith: Is proselytizing overseas religious freedom or coercion?
On Faith: Should religion have a role be in U.S. foreign affairs?
On Faith: Should the president be a religious figure?
On Faith: Does God allow Haiti to suffer?
On Faith: Media biased against Christians?
On Faith: Free speech vs. God
On Faith: Religion’s Impact 2009
On Faith: Climate change a moral issue?
On Faith: Good News -- Oral Roberts is dead
On Faith: Just war or holy war in Afghanistan?
On Faith: A crèche in the White House?
On Faith: Swiss ban on Islamic minarets
On Faith: holidays or holy days?

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Atheism 101: The Purpose of Life
Atheism 101: The Nature of Good and Evil
Atheism 101: The Problem of Evil
Atheism 101: Is the Bible the inspired word of God?
Atheism 101: The anti-intellectualism of religion
Atheism 101: Why has Christianity demonized nudity, sex and sexuality?
Atheism 101: How to respond to the lord, liar, lunatic argument?
Atheism 101: Does it take more faith to be an atheist?
Atheism 101: What came before the Universe?
Atheism 101: How to respond to the ex-atheist
Atheism 101: Refuting Presupposition Theology
Atheism 101: Refuting Dispensational Theology