Is killing another human being wrong?

[Kinsao]

I don't believe it's right for the purposes of 'revenge'. And anyway, I would much rather make them suffer by being locked up for a long time (though my preferences would no doubt be much stricter than the law!). But that doesn't mean I would necessarily be good and refuse the temptation to get revenge on a loved one... :-s

However, I think it could be justified in a case of suffering. Now, I usually do not agree with 'mercy killing' in a situation where the person is not in pain, or the pain could be alleviated, and I'm not talking about elderly or terminally ill people who want a nice injection. I mean if I was in the army, for example, and I had a colleague who had been horribly injured and they were in pain and I knew they could not live anyway, and there was not a chance of getting medical help within a reasonable timeframe, I would not hesitate to shoot them out of mercy.

 

[aroundtraveler]

Killing is allways a wrong decission.

 

[Hezam]

Killing is allways a wrong decission.

So simply,can someone tell me if killing Bin Laden is wrong ? or Killing someone who is about to kill you ?

 

[Tsuyoiko]

So simply,can someone tell me if killing Bin Laden is wrong ? or Killing someone who is about to kill you ?

I think killing Bin Laden is wrong because I don't think capital punishment is an acceptable form of justice. It's hypocritical to punish a person for killing people by killing them!

I think killing someone in self defence is understandable and impossible to classify as right or wrong. To know the difference between right and wrong a person must be of sound mind, and it's reasonable to assume that a person who's in mortal danger will act on instinct rather than rational judgement.

 

[aroundtraveler]

I think killing Bin Laden is wrong because I don't think capital punishment is an acceptable form of justice. It's hypocritical to punish a person for killing people by killing them!

I completely agree with you, Talion's law is one of the worst human action, it makes no sense and calls for more violence.

 

[Anchyyy]

I voted it's never right. I really don't know if I could kill anyone, even if were talking about self defense.

 

[RavenRockstar]

Im not sure if I can really call it right or wrong
It just is.
But if I was about to be raped or something, and I had a weapon with me, his *** is grass.

 

[Haruspex]

But if I was about to be raped or something

Haha, you don't need all that bollocks. If you were assaulted without a means to escape, you could easily kill in self-defence and claim that you thought that your life was at risk. Even if the lack of information wouldn't acquit you, the jury would.

 

[RavenRockstar]

More than likely ^^
Not that Im looking forward to it or anything, just saying that there are acceptable situations

 

[grayburst]

I would say it is justified to take another humans life in the following cases.

1. Self Defense or defense of a loved one.

2. Wartime, but then you get into the moral and ethics question of what is and is not a just war.

3. When a people or state execute a person proven guilty of a horrorible crime such as murder, but even here there are huge questions about 'right and wrong'.

4. It may not be right, but there are many cases in where small groups of people both compete over scarse resources for survival. Only enough for one group, so some one wins and some one loses. That leads to conflict and often killing.

This one of the deepest questions in all of Ethnics and no final answer yet.

 

[RolandtheHeadless]

In moral terms, some people simply forfeit their right to life. We've had a couple serial killers here in Alaska who deserved to lose their lives. I don't want to consider any possibility that they might ever be out walking the streets again, released by corrupt or bone-headed officials.

From a rational perspective, incarcerating these vermin for life makes no sense. It costs on the order of $80,000 per year to incarcerate a prisoner in the US. Government funds are not unlimited. We have better things to do with these funds, like maybe providing the free medical care that prisoners get to more of our poor and unemployed law-abiding citizens.

Because taxpayer largesse is not unlimited, governments have to make trade-offs in lives versus money all the time. The curve of the new highway will cause six deaths per year, some bureaucrat will calculate. It might have been reduced to three deaths per year, if only taxpayers had been willing to pay for a better, more expensive design.

 

[Haruspex]

I don't see how economic expediency would justify killing people. Also, I don't see how anything would justify not killing them. I think many of the people in this thread are trapped in the web of arbitrariness. Economic expediency can be a reason for causing death, it is not a justification. You are neither meant to take life, nor are you meant not to take it. The taking of life is a fact, the rest is just rubbish. It is nothing else but fact.

 

[grayburst]

I disagree vehemently, Derfel. Any of over a dozen major religions put marked and intense significance on the taking of a human life. People who live by any of those religions or ethics systems derived from them will never see the ending of a human life as just arbitrary or a simple matter of fact situation.

 

[RolandtheHeadless]

"So simply,can someone tell me if killing Bin Laden is wrong ?"

If I could find him in my sights, I'd be honored to be the one to squeeze the trigger.

 

[Haruspex]

I disagree vehemently, Derfel. Any of over a dozen major religions put marked and intense significance on the taking of a human life. People who live by any of those religions or ethics systems derived from them will never see the ending of a human life as just arbitrary or a simple matter of fact situation.

Does that really matter? Superstition hardly has the authority to make valid normative claims. Ultimately, if we discard all the fictitious shells concealing our reality, we find only one type of law: the laws of nature. And this type of law is self-enforcing. Any other claim or command is laughable in terms of authority.

 

[Arsenio Teun]

People like to live by set laws and set codes of ethics/morals but, their will always be contradictions. We must adjust to circumstance which is never the same. Laws need to be flexible. If you want to survive someday you may have to kill someone in defense. Death is part of life and sometimes is a last resort. I would feel no guilt or wrong killing in self defense.

 

[Revenant]

I would be very concerned if law enforcement started acting just from people's genetic predispositions, assuming that's what you meant by "predisposed". Even if someone has the genes of a psychopath (if such genes even exist), I don't think we can treat him like a psychopath until he starts to behave like one.
Phenotype is not completely determined by genotype, but is influenced by environment to varying degrees.

I don't think it's entirely up to the genes, and I know that in a log of cases environment has a lot to do with it.

There's a woman that can sense from talking to a child whether that child will develop schizophrenia or not. Is thar useful? Might be. Or perhaps not yet useful. At least the child can avoid doing things that increase the likelihood of developing schizophrenia.

Certainly I think a lot of parents would want to know if their child was a psychopath, a sociopath, or had less control over their emotions. I don't think initial interventions need involve law enforcement, rather things like CBT or (not keen on making this a common intervention) medications.

 

[Jncocontrol]

It's never right to take a life of another. Regardless of what they did. Only way i feel to really punish a person is life in Prison, Then death of the chair or a lethal injection.

 

[Wannabedamned]

Yes, there are times when it is right.

I answered with the above. I believe in like for like, or life for life if you will.

If a serial killer\murderer is captured, he should be put to death.

If I am being threatened by someone with a knife, in my eyes I have a right to do anything to survive. I have 1 life in this world, And I'll do anything to protect it.

 

[Yukiko chan]

How many people do you know at best? Hundreds. How many people are there in the US? 300 million approximately. Saying the majority are ignorant is a bit too judgmental. Besides, there is no official, widely-used way of measuring 'ignorance' and so your notion of 'ignorant' may differ from others' notion of 'ignorant'.

Not only that. Even if he had a well-formulated and accurate definition of "ignorance", there's still the problem of getting an adequate sample of the population he's referring to (i.e. Americans). Since his conclusion is merely based on personal experience, not on a scientifically conducted survey, chances are that it would be biased by his own social preferences and tendencies. For example, if I'm an evangelical Christian, and have a tendency to meet like-minded people, my statement "most people here are ignorant" may be only representative of the people I've met the most, i.e. evangelical Christians (no offense, this is just an example that I chose quite randomly). It could be possible that I judge people of other ethnic or cultural backgrounds as "ignorant" only because I had very little contact with them, which in this case, would be a problem of the method: even with a clear definition and a good sample of people from the society where I live, I made my judgment of "ignorance" based on very slim data that I collected during my daily 10 minutes at the bus stop, or through occasional social contacts with acquaintances, or even based on prejudice and unreliable sources.

 

[Yukiko chan]

I disagree vehemently, Derfel. Any of over a dozen major religions put marked and intense significance on the taking of a human life. People who live by any of those religions or ethics systems derived from them will never see the ending of a human life as just arbitrary or a simple matter of fact situation.

Like Derfel said, from a purely scientific standpoint, human death is just a natural phenomenon, a fact, like any other (drinking water, throwing a tv out of the window, sleeping, etc...), and as such it could be described in terms of matter and energy exchanges and transformation. Saying that killing a human being, which is no more than creating a causal chain that would lead to the death some human being (actually we do create such chains all the time inadvertently by our slightest actions), is inherently wrong is as delusional as the beliefs that had generated that idea. I don't think there's anything that we may call as "inherently something", even if that something is a true/false judgment. Any form of judgment is based on a system of thought and morals which is totally independent from the object being judged*. Which is to say that our consideration of killing a human being, for instance, as morally wrong, is merely conventional; though the dominance of monotheistic morality, and its pretension to universality and absoluteness, tend to give a different impression to many people.

Anyway, I do consider human life as sacrosanct, even in the case of a mass murderer. The fact that someone took other people's lives on purpose doesn't make his/her life less valuable, I think. That's of course my intellectual side speaking. Under some conditions, my "irrational" "impulsive" side may take the lead and kill a human being...

 

[mohamed]

) For that cause We decreed for the Children of Israel that whosoever killeth a human being for other than manslaughter or corruption in the earth, it shall be as if he had killed all mankind, and whoso saveth the life of one, it shall be as if he had saved the life of all mankind. Our messengers came unto them of old with clear proofs (of Allah's Sovereignty), but afterwards lo! many of them became prodigals in the earth. (32) surah al-maeda

so killing is not good we always have an option but if he was wan't to kill you or one of you'r family you have to defend off him

thanxs

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

The only case where i agree with killing someone;

1. Humane euthanasia: If someone has a terminal illness and wants to die with dignity rather than die slowly suffering greatly for months or years knowing there is nothing that can save them, then i agree with this.

2. In some cases of self-defence (but very few).

But i disagree with;
1. Capital punishment/the death sentence. Two wrongs don't make a right.
A person might be a terrible human being, but they may still have a mother/father/brother/sister etc who loves them and so i do not think that the family of the offender should be punished for the offenders crimes by having their relative killed.
Mistakes have also been made in the system too, and once you execute someone you can never bring them back to life.
Keeping people on death row is also an incredibly slow & expensive process, which usually ends up being more expensive than simply locking the person in question up in a standard prison for life. In western society death is also considered the easy way out (i agree with this), and i also think it is more civilised to punish people via prison sentences rather than to use physical violence/aggression/killing etc to punish them. I do not believe in "an eye for an eye" (its a very flawed & simplistic concept).

 

[Axelle]

In my opinion no one has the right to take away someone else's life...not even when it is a criminal who commited a lot of wrong things...I voted for never right

 

[RolandtheHeadless]

Is it rationally possible to be an atheist and also believe that human life is somehow sacred? Why would a human life be worth more than a fly's?

On a different tack, does anyone know if Japan has ever executed Asahara? Or are they still dragging out the process?

I do think that keeping a capital criminal alive for so long with a death sentence hanging over his head, through endless appeals or whatever process, is cruel and inhuman punishment.