"Pfft, LoL!
Ratzinger comparing Atheism to Nazis, considering his own and the Catholic Church's historic involvement with the Nazis, was pretty ironic..."

Yea even Christopher Hitchens had a few things to say about that:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_1R16j5gJE

@ C. M. Allen: "SeanBreen - "If a person is willing to inflict death, castration, mutilation or sexual violence on pedophiles, what makes that person any better than the pedophiles?"

1. They aren't doing it to children; 2. They are serving a social function in prevention; 3. They aren't doing it to children (yea, that one deserves to be said twice)."

Granted, the death penalty prevents future recurrence, but so do prison or scientific study in controlled high-security environments. If your argument is that capital punishment is warranted because it serves a social function in preventing consecutive offences by an already convicted pedophile, then it is equally as valid to simply impose life sentences in either a prison or a laboratory setting.

"Jeff - "Yeah public executions was not realistic, I bet Travis said it to make the drama effect and signifying the importance for a better punishment."

Au contraire; public execution is very realistic. I don't usually support capital punishment, but if there were incontrovertible evidence in such cases... yea."

Opinion noted but it is immoral to do so.
There are better and more efficient ways to inflict punishment of inhuman crimes. Death is irreversible and is unjust(mercy) for whoever is guilty and deserves worse.(thus impractical)

"incontrovertible evidence in such cases"
Nothing is 100% "incontrovertible evidence" since we know nothing for sure. Unless we have a system like "Minority Report" or something the chances are that we will always have a chance of mistake.(proven by history)
Even if there is 0.00000000000001% chance of punishing an innocent person capital punishment becomes immoral, because it is irreversible.

Yes to all you capital punishment supporters:

YOU ARE IMMORAL!!!!
GROW THE FUCK UP!!!

If someone raped a child for 20 years and you kill him for it, you did not inflict enough punishment for what he has done.
You are actually helping him avoid punishment by ending it, instead of being tormented by ridicule, shame, etc... for the rest of his miserable life.

Thus you are encouraging rapist to keep doing what they are doing, until they are caught since there is a painless death only if they are caught.
Some of them are so sick that would rather kill themselves if they don't rape something.
So instead KILL KILL KILL do some homework and check what these guys did, case by case.

IF, after that you do not come to the conclusion that death is a mercy for those people(thus unjust), YOU ARE IMMORAL.

You are basically agreeing with me on most things, some things we differ:

" I take the position that severe punishment is not an effective deterrent."
It is a well established(through history) to be a very effective deterrent if used with the right measure.
It depends on what your intentions are.

"A more sensible and effective deterrent would be to ensure that there are robust, strict human rights laws, as well as robust, strict inspections in places like schools, churches and other institutions where children are looked after, taught or held. Such things would help to prevent sex crimes in several ways:"

Punishment and prevention, etc... are complimentary for best results.
I see no reason to choose between them.
If you wish to claim otherwise present some evidence that without punishment but prevention, etc... only is enough.

"I recognize that what a child thinks is often discounted in our society. To me therein lies a perfect example of the difference between "ought" and "is". What is, isn't always what ought to be."

I disagree, children should not have a say even if they think they should, though their opinion should be considered for reference and context, and not ignored.(like what happens nearly always, children should be heard more often)

Children usually are too simplistic, self centered, lack knowledge and maturity to understand well all the implications.
If you wish to deny these well established conclusions, present some evidence of the contrary.

" In Texas, the death penalty is legal. Texas is also the state with the highest violent crime rates in America. In Iceland, the death penalty is forbidden. Iceland is the least violent country in the world."

Yes, we agree that the death penalty is not a good solution(I think I was clear on that :)), however one must not judge a country by just 1 law.
That is called a generalization fallacy, I know you did not do it on purpose but it needs to be pointed out.

Texas has major other flaws that are clearly more of a factor that influences this.
The main factor is education.
Lack of education leads to some crazy dogmatic beliefs and unreasonable people.
Second main factor is culture, it is hard to change well established ways of living from people that have been living like that for 100's of years regardless of how immoral that may be.(eg: try removing their guns :P)

"If, however, we ignore these and simply decide to beat, maim, mutilate, castrate, violate or kill offenders, we do nothing except eliminate the problem after it has already come to fruition and had the chance to do its damage. It achieves nothing of value to society."
No one said that we should ignore these, actually I agree that there is not enough effort being put into them.
That does not mean that one should consider the punishment as less effective though.
The punishment is not only for the person, but to stop institutions from helping those criminals.(eg church like the example I gave in my OP)

"Nothing of benefit comes from killing these people after they've succumbed to their respective mental deviations."

Yea, we agree, we try to help the mentally sick people just like we try to help Christians/theists.
That is why there will never be an atheistic crusade because we are sane enough to recognize mentally disabled people from real evil people with intent.

In a mature atheistic perspective, a christian is a deluded victim of a brainwashing abused childhood.
Mentally sick that needs help to understand how reality really works.
He was denied this basic knowledge(doubt) when he was a kid and replaced with immoral teachings of a totalitarian belief system.(dogma)

Nice discussion thus far, Thanks