Why is murder wrong?

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
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Why is murder wrong? Lets drop the fear of God, worrying about going to hell, no karma problems and you are invisible as Gyges and will not be caught. In addition the legal laws have changed and murder is solely up to the discretion of each and every person. Why is murder wrong. Your thoughts?

Background conversation to this topic from a usenet group for atheists (quotes are condensed)

V writes:

“I mentioned here a few times I was Catholic for 50 years as well as using tools from Buddhism, but currently I am just a freethinking agnostic with no official ties to any religion.”

Anonymous Atheist writes:

“My experience is that people are rarely objective about themselves. (Agnostics are atheists without backbones, from another responder) I think you’re fooling yourself. I don’t think you have any ties to any particular religion because you want to be worshipped like a god yourself. The other gods are competition. You want US to be spiritual and to regard you with religious awe.”

V writes:

“Many atheist are blocked from viewing religion as a true freethinker and are bigoted to anything associated with religion? In the bible it says “Test everything; hold fast to what is good; abstain from every form of evil,” (1 Thess. 5:21) Does this wisdom not apply to us all whether atheists, agnostic or believer?”

Anonymous Atheist writes:

“So who’s bigoted to all that comes from religion? That quote is meaningless to me, I view “evil” as a religious (Christian) term, and I’m an atheist. There is lots in the Bible that I agree with. “Thou shalt not kill” is a good rule of thumb. I don’t think you need the threat of God to think that commandment is a good idea, nor do I think the Bible authors can take credit for that idea, but I agree with it. You have almost no ability to put yourself in another’s shoes.”

Thanks,

V (make)

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All moral statements are assertions of will, not statements of fact. Murder is wrong because I say it’s wrong. Or, since I’m sure you agree that murder is wrong, because we say it’s wrong.

We can argue reasons, I suppose. But in the end, all such reasons must rest on an ultimate subjective value judgment with no reasons behind it, just an assertion of will.

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Murder is the act of granting the human being his most essential existence in terms of his relation to the environment. In that existence, in death, the human being achieves supreme authentic appropriation. He expands in totality and intakes in completion, he becomes one with the environment by his own willing. This willing arises out of his biological mechanism. By manipulating his biology, when you do murder, you are manipulating his will as such. Your will against his, always, here and there where clahses of willing forces define existence and the relationship between existences, the existences and relationships within an existence.

To murder, in terms of will, is decadent. To exterminate your enemy out of your perspectival power, is petty will to power. Had all your enemies to killed, your fight is lost, your war is ended, your will suffers. It can no longer establish its authentic existence as before, when it was still able to exist in relationship with willing forces from your enemies. It used to thrive upon overpowering those forces, creating its existential difference. Now, it achieves existential indifference, since there is no more relation.

Similarly, as you biologically exterminate a person, you are essentially integrating the differentials of forces within his existential domain. It takes as easy as one stroke, one strike, or in any normal case a burst of physical outleash. This killing force from you acts as if an existential quintifier, that reduces, rather than hightens, your full relation with one being killed. As you dedifferentiate the differences within the enemy, he becomes a distinguished existential unit that most lucidly seperates him and the environment. Your will is lost in this seperation, even though your purpose is reached, your willful relational existence is diminished by the self anhiliation of the opponet forces.

Against an enemy, a worth enemy, the rightful way is to engage in warfare, where you acquire the oppurtunity to set your forces upon his, so that a difference of energy might be in place. This energy shall make a happy victor as well as a sad loser. This energy can only be gained by exertion of forces onto individual forces, not onto forces as a whole. It is simply to spell out the universe as a whole on paper, but it is difficult to master the universe and its beings in mind, because in the former case, one is existentially quintifying, and he achieves little differentiated existence in relation with the universe on paper.

Murder is wrong if it as done easily upon some incompetent foe. But, when we desire and act for gaining challenge and satisfying reward, murder is usually undesirable. Therefore, if you have to kill, then find somebody difficult to kill. Like George Bush, but not to kill him like a sniper, but to kill him by initiating and fighting a communist revolution. Or at least, manipulating a political factionising among the senate to such an extent so that a certain senators become incented enough to hire assassins. To kill with a borrowed hand, is a challenge that must be distinguished from killing with own hands. Therefore this strategy is included in the Warcraft, as an art, techne, along with other strategies which demand more creative forces, power, will.

A satisfyingly authentic relational existence for you, lies in a good kill, a sophisticated means by which the killed achieves his complete authentic appropriation. When you look at the prize of your doing, you feel power gained, only if that prize is hard begotten. Think of that prize as a corpse, or anything.

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That’s a “leet” answer if ever I saw one. Nuff said in this thread!

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Murder is a bad decision because it is detrimental to you.

ilovephilosophy.com/phpbb/vi … 3&start=50

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Murder like all sin is essentially wrong because it is a purely selfish act of putting your desires before another’s life and acting on this terrible deed. This is the opposite of Love and has no place in society for obvious reasons and causes much strife and pain to all who loved the murdered, as well as society as a whole.

The very idea that someone needs to ask this question is quite disturbing, I’m starting to get a glimpse of what this society might be if some of the nihilist forum members here were running things. Not necessarily talking about the OP as I have no idea what he meant.

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Yeah, the idea that anybody would ask any questions at all is quite disturbing, don’t you think?

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Debating on rather Murder is ok is what’s disturbing. Some basic things should be taken as an obvious right or wrong.

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The entire premise of philosophy is that there are no questions that should not be asked.

10

Murder is wrong only when it is inefficient.

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You really can’t see past judeo-christian morality, can you? Interesting…jotes notes on notebook. Go on, kingdaddy. How does that make you FEEL?

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Is this a new way to disagree, I have no idea what you mean. If there is a hole in this logic or truth, then why don’t you point it out?

What specifically is wrong with this statement?

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So would it be wrong to murder a man who was about to massacre dozens of children?

So you think it’s selfish to disfavour others because of your own desires? mmm, that sounds rather similar to your glorious opposite, Love!

…Sheesh you MUST be Christian.

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I’ve got time…

Christian morality is not objective morality. What Christians consider objectively immoral, is moral to the Muslims, or Buddhists, or Rastafarian’s, or pretty much any non-Christians. What would the world be without judo-Christian morality? Hmm…A different place. A place a Christian would probably find immoral.

Kingdaddy,
You mistake Christian immorality with amorality.

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Take it this way, is it wong to steal. If it is then you can’t murder me because my life belongs to me, so don’t take it. If you are comming back with the whole anarchy thing then nothing is wrong to you so I just hope you don’t murder me because I like to live.

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No its not, that is the very definition of Love, I agree however that no one seems to fully operate in this but that doesn’t make it impossible only rare. There are acts that many humans engage in that is purely selfless, like a mothers Love for her child in many instances or proper charity where you give without expecting anything in return an don’t try to control what you gave.

BTW, morality and conscience does not come from judo-Christianity, if it did these deeds and ideas would not have existed before Christ, yes?

The Golden rule in all hearts is where this comes from and those who remove or override this natural feeling and the guilt associated with it when we violate it are simply defective people that are usually separated from society.

You took it out of context, I clearly said that selfishness was the opposite of Love and that is purely objective, if not then please show me why. Love is about others, you cannot Love in a vacuum, and selfishness is about self, so they are in fact opposites.

Because it breaks the Golden Rule as I said earlier. The Golden Rule is not subjective, it is completely universal and all humans know this in their heart at one point in life, even if it is just for a little while. If you wish to argue against this you need to show some examples or logic as to how this Golden Rule must be learned. Everyone I know (including my self) realizes that if I don’t like it done to me, then it is not right to do to someone else, usually this realization comes to a human around puberty or sometimes a bit later regardless of teaching.

There may be a tiny few cases where there is some evidence of someone not having this conscience or moral law instilled, but I would contend that in their heart they did actually know the difference between right and wrong at some point or they must simply be deformed and defective and not a normal human. These few cases do not invalidate this natural inherent conscience and moral law, you must be taught to go against them.

Abnormal humans don’t count as evidence against.

No I don’t, I mistake nothing about these obvious ideas that nearly every human on earth agrees with regardless of religion, the problem is the big anti-Christian chip on your shoulders that is causing bias.

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Humans on earth agree with many things. Philosophers are a subcategory of humans that analyze what is, and why is-. It’s obvious that we care about each other. Why is that do you think? You say it’s because of some Golden Rule that’s apparently innate in all humans. I say we care about each other because we care first and foremost about ourselves, and I go further to say that selfless(love?) is a delusion. You need to take a trip to a non-Christian country, or better yet, a non-theist country, and see the human animal. You’ll very quickly realize that, like all other animals, man’s primary instinct is to survive. It’s not love thy neighbor, selflessly. We’re all hustlers. We always look to gain something in every occasion. Be it psychological or physical.

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I am always skeptical of conceptions like that, in which a term is sufficiently fluid to be all-encompassing and make counterexample impossible by definition. There is a strong, and morally significant, distinction between having a “psychological need” to help someone else, and having a “psychological need” to help oneself. Saying that altruistic acts are done to satisfy one’s own “psychological needs” is not refuting the concept of altruism but defining it out of existence. One may legitimately question the utility of that, as of any, definition.

This much is true. I agree that Kingdaddy is here mistaking mere consensus for objective truth. But in my opinion, you went too far the other direction in refuting him.

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Like most generalizations, “murder is wrong” is MOSTLY true, but not exclusively true.

Of course, morality is subjective, so my above statement really depends on the base moral foundation. I’m a huge fan of utilitarianism - very few people give it a fair treatment, and most instead opt to dismiss it for bad reasons.

From a Utilitarian perspective, murder is usually wrong because killing someone deprives them of the happiness they would have had, and the happiness they could have caused others. Murdering a solitary individual would be wrong; murdering a father would be worse.

But the exceptions to this are obvious. It would be for the greatest good to murder Baby Hitler in his crib. There are many people whose untimely deaths would be for the greatest good - dictators are probably the best examples. Even now it would probably be for the greatest good if Bush and his cabinet were to be assassinated. Kim Jung Il, of course, should die. And so on and so on.

So murder - usually wrong, but not always. Really depends upon the situation.

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I already explained what Love is, not sure how you missed it since I even gave two real world examples of pure selfless Love, both of which you ignored as if they were never mentioned. I cant help it if you cant grasp what the majority can see and already know.

Love is just like proper charity, it’s giving without expecting anything in return. Which is a purely selfless act. What’s to misunderstand?

This is your pitiful selfish projection, don’t project this upon the entire human race just because of your bad intent, not everyone is like you. I already gave you two perfect examples and you claim that their not so. Have you ever seen anyone give anomalously to someone where they have nothing to gain? I have, and do quite often, sorry you can’t see any good in humanity and thank God we are not all like you.

No, yet again you project your bad intent on all of humanity, we are not all like you. I’ve done many things for my friends and don’t give any thought if or what they would do for me and I’m sure I’m not the only one.

You didn’t read what I wrote, everything you responded back to with questions of my meanings were plainly stated, yet somehow you missed them all.

One more time, just for you. The Golden Rule is that feeling and conscience in your heart that tells any normal human that it must not be right to do if you wouldn’t like it done to you.

Already clarified Love above for the second time so that should be sufficient. Now I will clarify what I mean by selfishness in the context that I was using, even though it should be self-evident as that is the purpose of the context I gave.

When I say selfishness in opposition to Love I mean the selfishness of stepping on someone else to serve yourself. Murder is the example I was using for the context and Murder is different then killing in case you didn’t know. Murder is always about self and when you kill someone for gain who did not threaten your life the mass consensus calls it Murder and it has always been considered wrong by the majority of humans at any point in known history.

I hope the above statement finally clears this up even though I plainly outlined it earlier, you just missed it.

Now that it is crystal clear for third time I hope you can muster up a good counter of how this Golden Rule that nearly all agree upon can only be learned. Don’t know about you, but I could tell what I would or would not like done to me early on and knew before I was taught why it was bad because of this feeling that we call conscience. When kids are young they are often just told, “No” or “Don’t” but never why, yet most can figure out why without being taught why.

I am well aware of the human animal, it’s the first step to salvation and it should humble you to a point of realizing that you are no better then any human that has ever been. But we are more then flesh and bone, life is not biology and this is proven. If your still proud and ego driven after this realization then you are lost forever and will be separated in the after life from those who do realize this.

It is this choice mechanism that changes everything about the human animal and cannot be predicted as the variables are too many. If we had no choice in what we do and how we react then what you are saying about humans being just like an animals would be correct, but then we wouldn’t be pondering this of discussing it if that were true.