There are two groups of people who are against employing the death penalty on the monsters who rape young children. First are the people who are generally for the death penalty but limit it to murderers, and second are of course the people who are against the death penalty in all situations. Thus, to adequately illustrate why this position lacks intellectual ground on which to stand, each group deserves its own response.

Those that are generally pro-death penalty for murder largely agree that child rapists deserve death. But they refuse to include child-rape in the litany of death-penalty crimes because if it is, they argue, then child rapists have no incentive to not murder the child they are raping; they will murder the child in order to dispense with a potential witness, they claim. While this is not a frivolous argument, it ultimately fails.

Granted, it makes sense in the abstract that a person would not engage in certain behavior if he knows he will be punished more severely. But does it make sense for an adult to rape an 8-year-old little girl? It seems to me that the violent rape of an 8-year-old requires a far more deranged mind than even the mind that murders. So, I think, this deterrent effect, specifically in this context, is an idea that can only exist in the abstract. This is not to say that capital punishment never deters crime. It surely does. But there is a stark difference between a person contemplating murder and being deterred by capital punishment, and a person actually committing the violent rape of an 8-year-old girl and being deterred by capital punishment to not murder the helpless victim. 

This argument fails on a pragmatic level as well. If we give this argument merit, we necessarily open up the flood gates to use this type of shallow argument against all types of punishments; we would create quite a slippery slope. Imagine, there will be those that argue that otherwise just punishments should also be discarded merely because administering these punishments will not adequately deter criminals from doing worse, or more, crimes. For instance, some will argue that we should not even allow the legislature to make the punishment for the rape of an 8-year-old a life sentence, because then, if that rapist sees a car in the driveway, they have no incentive not to steal it; or we should not make the punishment for second-degree murder life-in-prison, as this criminal will then have no incentive not to rape a few people before he is caught.  No -- this argument is too superficial and easily misapplied for it to become a viable part of our nation's jurisprudence, and should be quickly discarded as such.

All the same, the second group's problems are far worse. When this argument is employed by those that are anti-death penalty and wish to keep all murderers alive, they saddle themselves with a very heavy load of intellectual dishonesty. In an ironic twist, these people have argued before countless courts that the death penalty does not deter. They then passionately claimed that because of this lack of deterrence the death penalty should be discarded even in cases of murder. But now, in another disingenuous attempt to remove the death sentence from the arsenal of tools we have to combat crime, they are arguing that it in fact does deter murder. Do they not need to choose a side? 

So while I can appreciate at least the first group's reluctance to employ the death penalty against child rapists, I submit that even they have neglected to focus on this issue correctly. As a result, let's start giving these child rapists their just desserts.  

Some atheists disingenuously attribute all the horrors of the past to people's religious convictions even though, historically, everyone—from the secular-minded Hellenists to the religious fanatics—treated human life with disdain. So if all people engaged in atrocities why is religion blamed for history's evils? Is it not more likely that the  inherent deficiencies in the human condition are to blame?

The critics of religion bolster this assault by pointing us to all the bad things religious people did in the past -- while, of course, ignoring the relatively greater atrocities committed by secular societies like the USSR and Mao's China in the more recent present. Yet, at least the honest ones among them admit that, for instance, many if not most of the current countries that help people are religious in both origin and practice, i.e. the U.S. But they just say that is what religious people have become recently. They therefore argue that since religion has a dark past, it is a bad ideology, and we should discard it in the present.

So, the question is whether this is an intellectually fair way to couch the issue? Isn't this the same as looking at a well-mannered adult and screaming at the parents for their bad parenting ideology; yet, the only things you point to for proof are these children's selfish and bad behavior as a kid? Merely because an ideology does not immediately render a young society civil, does not, in any way, mean that it is a bad ideology. Indeed, much like a child can take life too seriously, so, too, any ideology, religious ones being no exception, in their youth, may have taken themselves too seriously. 

In the final calculation, the only way to know an ideology's potential to fashion a virtuous society is to look at the end result, not the misgivings of its youth. For that reason, instead of immaturely mocking our Father's ideology by pointing at his children's youthful indiscretions, thank him for the way his ideology has shaped the relatively well-mannered society that we now take for granted.