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Moral standpoint on life


Retrac

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Ok I had a very interesting conversation during lunch and I want to see what you people think of this. This is going to be kinda long so sorry if it's intimidating.

Where does morality stand on killing people? We say killing is bad. People that want to kill other people are insane and evil. Well my friend said "I want to kill people. Because if he didn't then the people he would kill would kill other people. You wouldn't be here if we (we being people not my friends and I) didn't kill people." 

Well I would like to break this down into 3 parts. 1. The fact that we say killing is bad. 2. If we didn't kill people those people would kill other people. 3. We wouldn't be here if killing never happened.

1. The reason we say killing is bad is because of morals. Which are decided by society. Why does society say killing is bad. Is it the fact that you are ending another humans life? Well why do we say that's bad but it's ok to kill animals? You could say that animals don't have a conctiouse but in a way they do. Otherwise they wouldn't be able to adapt to their surroundings. They can't adapt as fast as we can and they may not be as evolved as we are but they can adapt. Maybe we say killing is bad because of religion. Because some powerful force that we can't see says so. Now I am a member of the church of Jesus Christ of Latter- day saints. So I believe in god and Jesus and the fact that there is something bigger over us. Now I do have some interesting views on that but I won't go into them. If you want to hear that rant PM me Back to my rant though. So if we say that god or some other being says killing is bad is that why we don't kill?

2. My friend said that he wants to kill people because if he didn't kill people those people would kill other people. While that might be true. Does it say its right. And what is right and wrong. Again back to religious views. So rather then say more about right and wrong I'm going to ask what would you do if someone held a gun to your head. You could kill them or they could kill you. I think most people would choose to kill the other person but I could never kill someone else. I would choose to die. I mean it's my life, the one thing I have control over. I could chose ot die right now BUT THATS A BAD CHOICE SUICIDE IS BAD TALK TO SOMEONE IF YOU ARE DEALING WITH THIS. But now if someone said I had to choose between killing someone or my friend dies then that would be hard for me. Either way someone dies and I would go insane from moral greif. So and its this endless paradox unless there is a time limit then they would probably both die and I would go more insane from moral grief.

3. If we people didn't kill other people we wouldn't be here. What if the only reason you were born is because your great great great great grandpa got killed and forced your grandma to get remarried and have your great great great grandpa or something like that. It's a fair point.

So I'm not supporting killing but I want to hear your thoughts on this.

 

Edited by Retrac
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I think you’re putting this a little bit more binary than you need to. It’s not as if the only way to prevent Person A from killing other people is for Person B to kill Person A. This is basically the reason we have these things called Prisons. I can think of nearly no situations where it would be absolutely necessary to kill Person A. Maybe nobody knows Person A is planning a murder, so Person B can’t put him in jail before he does. Well, in that case Person B also wouldn’t be able to kill Person A, because he still would have no idea. Basically the only scenario I can picture where it is absolutely necessary to kill Person A before he can kill other people, is some sort of cliche scene from an action movie. And that doesn’t really happen. 

TL;DR: 99% of the time it isn’t necessary to kill a potential murderer, because if you know they are planning a murder, you can just put them in jail. 

Regarding point number 3, I think it’s somewhat pointless to wonder about that. Really it’s probably pointless to argue the morality about anything that has already happened, because we can’t change it anymore. Sure, it’s quite possible that you are only alive because someone killed someone else generations ago. I don’t really think that that’s an argument for saying that killing is ‘necessary’, or whatever your friend was saying there. How would that affect the present if everyone unanimously agreed that killing people in order to make other people be born was ok. There’s no way to predict how killing any given person will affect who is born generations from then. 

TL;DR: Wondering about the morality of actions generations past is most likely useless, as time travel isn’t a thing and we can’t change them.

And for point number 1, that’s getting into the basic question of where the source of moral authority comes from. Most religious people would say God, certain things are bad because God says so. Most non-religious people believe that certain things are bad because of Social Utility. If someone is dead, that person cannot contribute to society anymore. And that’s bad. There’s also the fact that killing someone will make other people sad, and that’s also bad. 

TL;DR: Moral Authority either comes from God, or whatever is best for society as a whole. 

Edited by Danex
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I know I am not going to put this into words very well and I may seem to not make sense. Sorry.

This part struck me as slightly strange

6 hours ago, Retrac said:

My friend said that he wants to kill people because if he didn't kill people those people would kill other people.

When paired with

6 hours ago, Retrac said:

But now if someone said I had to choose between killing someone or my friend dies

Your friend is a potential killer due to the first quote and so in the scenario is it wrong to kill your friend because he might kill someone else?

And so you fall into this pattern that anyone would kill someone. This is against our nature as living beings. We cannot willingly end the Human race.

So why kill someone because they have the potential of killing?

That is like stopping a bad thing that has a chance of happening with a bad thing that is happening.

Another thing I would like to throw out. Did anyone read Speaker for the Dead? The piggies kill because that is how their society always has been. They do not see it as wrong. They see it as an honor to be killed. We as humans have grown up in a society where killing is frowned upon (cause face it, do you want to be killed?) and so, we see it as wrong.

Basically, Killing is wrong, why? What purpose does it serve? What good can killing do? only bad. When you kill, it may make something seem better, but in reality and the broad picture, the outcome was negative.

I think my thoughts were all over while writing that and will not make sense. Oh, well. Sorry about that. It probably sounded better in my head.

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Sounds like OP wants to take an ethics paper :)

Would I kill someone to stop them killing me or an innocent-other-than-me?  I don't know.  It's very circumstantial.  If I had reason to believe that the killer would go on to kill other people, I'd like to think I would kill them to prevent further harm to others.  If I thought they'd kill me only, and then kill nobody else, maybe I wouldn't?  I dunno!

Edited by Snorkel
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9 hours ago, Retrac said:

1. The reason we say killing is bad is because of morals. Which are decided by society. Why does society say killing is bad. Is it the fact that you are ending another humans life? Well why do we say that's bad but it's ok to kill animals? You could say that animals don't have a conctiouse but in a way they do. Otherwise they wouldn't be able to adapt to their surroundings. They can't adapt as fast as we can and they may not be as evolved as we are but they can adapt. Maybe we say killing is bad because of religion. Because some powerful force that we can't see says so. Now I am a member of the church of Jesus Christ of Latter- day saints. So I believe in god and Jesus and the fact that there is something bigger over us. Now I do have some interesting views on that but I won't go into them. If you want to hear that rant PM me Back to my rant though. So if we say that god or some other being says killing is bad is that why we don't kill?

This is very messy, so a lot of my critiques will be to point out that you need to be focused. 

First, what are you defining as killing? This is a complex question, you should narrow it down to whether you mean "cause death either accidentally or on purpose" or "murder". That will help with your moral question (i.e. the morality of accidentally killing someone could be different from premeditated murder) 

 Your adaptability sidetrack is odd. By that argument, bacteria, viruses and plants would all be subject to the "is it moral to kill them" question since they all adapt to their surroundings... often faster than we do! But you won't find many that will argue that they are conscious.

Speaking of consciousness: this is always in reference to human consciousness when one says they can't/ wouldn't kill someone. It's a recognition of humanity, not some nebulous emergent property of sufficiently complex nervous activity of a centralized brain. In other words, an animal's consciousness and thoughts would be completely alien to us aside from some base desires it shares with us. So stick first with human consciousness and deal with the morality of killing animals as a separate question. 

Other than that, read your David Hume. 

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2. My friend said that he wants to kill people because if he didn't kill people those people would kill other people. While that might be true. Does it say its right. And what is right and wrong. Again back to religious views. So rather then say more about right and wrong I'm going to ask what would you do if someone held a gun to your head. You could kill them or they could kill you. I think most people would choose to kill the other person but I could never kill someone else. I would choose to die. I mean it's my life, the one thing I have control over. I could chose ot die right now BUT THATS A BAD CHOICE SUICIDE IS BAD TALK TO SOMEONE IF YOU ARE DEALING WITH THIS. But now if someone said I had to choose between killing someone or my friend dies then that would be hard for me. Either way someone dies and I would go insane from moral greif. So and its this endless paradox unless there is a time limit then they would probably both die and I would go more insane from moral grief.

Like I said before, this is messy, but I'll point out you defeat the point "if we do not kill someone they will kill someone else" with your statement later on that you could not kill someone even if they threatened your life. This causes your "moral grief" in the second thought experiment because a friend would die because you could not kill. This even though the "cost benefit analysis" demonstrates someone would die in this scenario, so why not the aggressor which would be the "preferred" outcome? 

In this case, you are not treating the aggressor as a moral agent, rather taking on all the fault and his decision as your own. In both your cases, two people are making two moral choices: you are choosing not to kill and the aggressor is choosing to kill. You are responsible for your own choice, not his. 

 

Well I would like to break this down into 3 parts. 1. The fact that we say killing is bad. 2. If we didn't kill people those people would kill other people. 3. We wouldn't be here if killing never happened.

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3. If we people didn't kill other people we wouldn't be here. What if the only reason you were born is because your great great great great grandpa got killed and forced your grandma to get remarried and have your great great great grandpa or something like that. It's a fair point.

Existence simply is. If you didn't exist, you're not going to be around to regret it. 

Besides, as a Mormon, you believe that everyone existed beforehand as spirits and were promised a chance to inhabit bodies as part of God's Grand Plan. It wouldn't be much of a Grand Plan if some of these spirits couldn't be born into bodies because the right people weren't killed at the right time. 

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I have a lot to say about this, but can't really say it well because I'm typing with a single finger on a Kindle.

I'd suggest doing some research into the Middle East. Things like kill and capture, night raids, civilian casualties, refugees, bombings, things like that.

It will raise a lot of ethical, moral, and religious questions.

[Deleted tangent about religion.]

I'd also recommend checking out Scythe by Neal Shusterman. It's not the best, but in terms of questions and ideas it raises about death, it's pretty thought provoking.

And Frankenstein, maybe The Phantom of the Opera. At what point is someone considered human, or worthy of love?

Les Miserables is super good with regards to who deserves to die. Mainly between Javert and Jean Valjean, but it can also be addressed with other conflicts.

I know a lot about modern police work, as well as other really random stuff, if you can't tell. I think about things like this all I'd the time, and definitely have some conclusions I've drawn. I'd love to have this conversation with more details while I'm on a computer. So if you'd like, you can PM me, but I don't really want to get too in-depth on this subject on a public fourm.

And now it's 12:30. I need to be awake in 7 hours. Yay.

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First off thanks to everyone who responded, it really opened up my mind a bit. And given me a lot to think about.

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20 hours ago, Danex said:

you can just put them in jail. 

 

See jail is a good option but people can still do bad in jail. People get killed in prison all the time. 

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10 hours ago, Orlion the Platypus said:

First, what are you defining as killing? This is a complex question, you should narrow it down to whether you mean "cause death either accidentally or on purpose" or "murder".

 

Sorry I'm a very messy person. I'm all over the place and get sidetracked a lot. I define killing in this situation as ending someone's life with the intent of ending their life or the intent of causing physical pain.

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13 hours ago, Chasmgoat said:

We cannot willingly end the Human race.

 

You say we can not willingly end the Human race. To this I say Nuclear warfare. But aside from that on something that has actually happened. Adolf Hitler willingly tried to kill off some of the human race (Jews) just based off of their religion. 

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12 hours ago, Snorkel said:

Sounds like OP wants to take an ethics paper

 

I really like ethics, morality, and right and wrong. Unfortunately the closest I can get to learning this in school is my sociology class. But I have done a great deal of research on my own. 

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10 hours ago, Orlion the Platypus said:

In this case, you are not treating the aggressor as a moral agent, rather taking on all the fault and his decision as your own. In both your cases, two people are making two moral choices: you are choosing not to kill and the aggressor is choosing to kill. You are responsible for your own choice, not his

 

I am choosing not to kill. But if you chose not to kill someone and because of that choice someone died you, you may as well have killed them. Sorry again if this is all over the place. I'm A.D.H.D and sometimes don't think things through. So I understand if I am not conveying this very well.

I don't know what happened to the quote boxes sorry.

Edited by Retrac
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15 minutes ago, Retrac said:

You say we can not willingly end the Human race. To this I say Nuclear warfare. But aside from that on something that has actually happened. Adolf Hitler willingly tried to kill off some of the human race (Jews) just based off of their religion.

I meant as a whole. Yeah, It did not quite make sense in the topic.

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Personally, I have a rather simple view on the topic. Killing is bad, but it's not the worst thing you can do. 

If a person has committed crimes before, a serial killer for example, do they deserve to be killed in exchange? No. No matter how improbable, and no matter how undeserving they may seem, a person's way of thinking is subject to change until the very moment they die and they deserve that chance. If they change, the challenge of doing good in a world where people don't let them even try to do good because they judge them based on their past will be punishment enough. 

However, if you're in a life or death situation and the only way to get out alive, or for your loved ones to get out alive, is by killing, protecting those lives should be your priority (including your own) and no one has a right to blame you for it. 

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