Kenneth Smith ‘struggled for life’ for 22 minutes in nitrogen gas execution: Updates
www.independent.co.uk
Witness Reverend Jeff Hood told reporters he saw a man ‘struggling for their life’ for 22 minutes as Smith became the first US death row inmate executed by nitrogen asphyxia

“Kenny just began to gasp for air repeatedly and the execution took about 25 minutes total.”

Pretty compassionate way to kill a person.

Once again, the Law in the south is brutal.

  • ricecake
    16·
    11 months ago

    No fan of Christianity, but it is pretty consistently stated that the old testament is basically the old religions book.
    Kinda like how Islam and Christianity have a common origin, but don’t follow the same religious text.

    The story being that the deity of the abrahamic faiths has issued a series of different holy books and prophets for different eras, with the new one obsoleting the previous one.
    Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Mormonism. Each says the previous was valid, but they get the new word of God and the old ones were true, but now the old rules are gone.

    So it’s actually internally consistent for a Christian to say the Torah doesn’t apply, which is basically what the old testament is. Similar to how we don’t latch onto Islam saying the old and new testament are obsolete, and only the Quran is true now.

    There are plenty of examples in each of the chunks to point out the cruelty inherent in all of them without having to fall back to the “old canon”.

    • proleEnglish
      61·
      11 months ago

      No it’s not internally consistent. Sure, that’s what many modern Christians who recognize just how problematic their god and religion are and want to selectively ignore the parts they don’t like, will try to tell you. But it’s bullshit.

      As I said to another Christian in this thread…

      Jesus himself stated:

      17 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. 18 For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished.

      That’s Matthew 5:17-18, and if you ask me it’s very clear

      • ricecake
        11·
        11 months ago

        In context and less shit translations, it’s pretty clear that he’s saying he’s fulfilling the prophesies and the promise of the old covenant, not that literally he’s changing nothing.
        In the same context, you have him saying that the entirety of the law is to love your neighbor as you love yourself.

        Or, more bluntly from the same story:

        Before the coming of this faith,[a] we were held in custody under the law, locked up until the faith that was to come would be revealed. 24 So the law was our guardian until Christ came that we might be justified by faith. 25 Now that this faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian.

        I have now googled more Bible shit than I care to to cite my dim recollections of religious history studies.
        Tldr, Jesus supposedly came to fullfil the promise of the old testament via a vis the relationship between man and God, and to replace that covenant with a new, more chill covenant with less shellfish and more love.

        And, this is important to your point, a lot of flaying people alive for failing to obey their slave masters or properly worship God. You don’t have to cite the old bit of the book, that they believe is obsolete, to find gnarly shit that makes it not look great.

        It doesn’t feel too ridiculous to me that religions that came about in the same area would reference each others texts, but aren’t beholden to be responsible for their content. 1000 years of telephone was not kind to that translation.