Hellish methods in response to hellish actions.
“An eye for an eye...”
What you are seeing is neither diabolical nor bestial, but proportionate. Posters are thinking of punishments that fit the crime. The problem is that the crimes are so beyond what ordinary people can conceive, that they grasp for punishments beyond what they conceive.
But these are natural, normal responses to unimaginable evil. They aren't bestial or demonic.
That being the case, Jesus abrogated the law of retaliation, and although the starting place for His disciple may be the imagining of cruel tortures, it isn't the proper ending place.
After working through the anger and rage that are justly provoked by this cretin's actions, the proper conclusion is that a just punishment would be something like death by hanging - swift, a minimum of fuss and muss, and certain.
But that's where folks, one hopes, get to after some reflection. It is not necessarily where folks will, with justice, begin.
Imagining horrific tortures for baby rapists is merely an attempt by regular folks to balance the scales.
My old Uncle Mike used to ask, if someone who commits the murder of an innocent can justly be executed, what should be the penalty for someone who commits two such murders? Or who commits mass murder? Do we execute the miscreant more than once? Is not justice lacking if the fellow who murders one receives the same sentence as the fellow who murders many? Old Uncle Mike was a wily fellow.
But he had a point. I've often thought that there would be a certain justice in sentencing a mass murderer to multiple almost-executions - a partial hanging, or a partial electrocution, just to the point of death, for each victim. That would be a more mathematically-precise application of justice.
Thus it is, with a child rapist, that if execution is just for less heinous actions, what should befall the one who commits acts so heinous as to beggar the imagination of the ordinary sinner?
The difficulty with that approach is that if fails to observe the limitations of human existence, and it attempts a utopian resolution to the problem of criminal justice. It aims for perfect justice, which is not to be found in this life.
But it is wrong to label as “demonic” or “bestial” the reaction to attempt to make the punishment fit the crime. Better to label these attempts as “ultimately futile,” and “in need of further reflection,” and “in the final analysis, unjust.”
sitetest
I didn't say the Law of Talion ("eye for an eye") was bestial or demonic. I said abominable tortures shared around by FReepers for mutual enjoyment, is demonic.
Certainly, any person properly and justly angry at a child-rapist, may feel a further tempting impulse from his irascible nature to devise hideous tortures. Dante's multiplex imagination supplied a lot of this for his Inferno.
However, indulging the irascible appetite in this manner --- enjoying the idea of certain kinds of tortures --- is corrupt, just as corrupt as indulging one's erotic appetite by fantasizing sexual gratification with children, broadcasting one's proclivity to lust after children, or even enjoying the idea of gratifying oneself with children.
Giving in to an irascible passion is corrupting to oneself, and to anyone else who has a part in the fantasy of torture: either by applauding it, seconding it, further elaborating it, or even tolerating it without rebuke.
You spoke well when you said Better to label these attempts as “ultimately futile,” and “in need of further reflection,” and “in the final analysis, unjust.”
But the fantasy of torture also needs rebuke. Otherwise people pursue their unclean thoughts in public, without shame, to the corruption of our online community and the peril of their souls.
We all need nothing so much as to be "transformed in the renewal of our minds."
Romans 12:2
Do not conform to the pattern of this world,
but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.
Then you will be able to test and approve
what God’s will is—
his good, pleasing and perfect will.