[kahljorn]

I'd see an acid blinding sentence to be a deterrent for, say, a theft crime, or something akin to that. I don't think a potential murderer or acid blinder would be doing much rational thought before their crime, since even a life term in prison should be enough to turn your average sensible person away from such things. I guess there are going to be exceptions, obviously.

Except that, like you mentioned, they have a culture of men owning women and being able to do whatever to them and get away with it. In case it's not clear what that's an exception to, it's an exception to: 1) they don't use rational thought (rationally, in their minds, they can do whatever they want to women.) 2) that it won't be a deterrent; in reality, now people will realize that women are protected by the law.

I'm looking at it from a perspective of how it affects society. It stops circulating violence if you kill the violent - but only the ones you kill. The rest of society just learns to deal with it's problems violently.

By the same argument you could say that, when you lock people up in prison, society learns how to deal with its problems by kidnapping, taking away rights and freedoms, and ignoring problems.
Besides, locking somebody up in prison for life is as much/more heinous than just executing them humanely.

And again, it doesn't keep the violence from circulating in society: 1) they can get out of prison.
2) violence still circulates in the prisons; people who are in those prisons for non-murder related convictions will get out, after having been exposed to that violent atmosphere (which, according to your argument will have some kind of an effect on that person); those peopel will then get out and circulate further violence in society (because they were not in their for murder). Plus prison employees will be exposed to it, which again, by your argument, will have some kind of affect on them, and they will be circulating around in society.

also the atmosphere of violence within a prison has to be far worse than in actual society. So decent people could easily be totally corrupted by it.

You know I will just ask you: What is the point of keeping somebody alive who you don't want to/cant have anything to do with society? that's like saying you shouldn't pull the plug on terry shiavo because it creates a society thats solves problems with violence

But I think that we as a society, and Iran as a society, shouldn't be living up to such a person's values.

It's not about living up to their values. It's about living up to your own values: treating other people with respect and decency. In this case, it just happens to mean blinding someone with acid.