The more religious you are the less compassionate:

Originally posted by robbie carrobie
no one has the right to deprive another of life, regardless of the circumstances. Life is
sacrosanct.

Not even in self-defense?

Originally posted by SwissGambit
Not even in self-defense?

nope, not even in self defence, you can debilitate your assailant, but you cannot kill
them, otherwise its accidental manslaughter.

Originally posted by robbie carrobie
nope, not even in self defence, you can debilitate your assailant, but you cannot kill
them, otherwise its accidental manslaughter.

So, hypothetically speaking here, i'm walking home one night and am attacked by a couple of 'youths'. In the resulting melee i manage to get off one punch which connects firmly with one of my attackers jaw, as a result he is knocked unconcious and falls to the floor striking his head on the concrete pavement. He dies as a result of his injuries, where would that scenario put me in your view?

Originally posted by Proper Knob
So, hypothetically speaking here, i'm walking home one night and am attacked by a couple of 'youths'. In the resulting melee i manage to get off one punch which connects firmly with one of my attackers jaw, as a result he is knocked unconcious and falls to the floor striking his head on the concrete pavement. He dies as a result of his injuries, where would that scenario put me in your view?

you have committed involuntary manslaughter.

Originally posted by robbie carrobie
nope, not even in self defence, you can debilitate your assailant, but you cannot kill
them, otherwise its accidental manslaughter.

Not in my country, it isn't.

That's a bit too pacifist for me. It is the assailant who truly lacks respect for the lives of others; as the initiator of force, he is to blame for his own death.

Originally posted by SwissGambit
Not in my country, it isn't.

That's a bit too pacifist for me. It is the assailant who truly lacks respect for the lives of others; as the initiator of force, he is to blame for his own death.

hmm, is there not a case recently and although i do not know the details, Zimmerman I
think it was, where a young man was killed by someone acting in apparent self
defence, when in fact, his alleged assailant was unarmed. Clearly such a stance is
open to abuse.

Originally posted by robbie carrobie
you have committed involuntary manslaughter.

What do you think should happen to me if the above occurred?

Originally posted by robbie carrobie
you have committed involuntary manslaughter.

The underlying issue here is the religious sanctity of life, we have sanctified human life to the tune of 7 billion plus, sanctified it so much we may starve to death, people are in fact starving to death right now. That's how sanctimonious religious people are. Sanctify us to death.

Originally posted by Proper Knob
What do you think should happen to me if the above occurred?

I dont know what is prescribed in law, that's for the judiciary to decide. In ancient
times in Israel you could run to a city of refuge and state your case before the people
and who, satisfied that it was accidental and you had no ulterior motives, you could live
and work in that city unmolested.

Originally posted by robbie carrobie
no one has the right to deprive another of life, regardless of the circumstances. Life is
sacrosanct.

What life?

An ant is more complex and capable of feeling than an embryo.

The pet hamster more capable of feeling or thought than a foetus.

Is it wrong to kill a plant, that's life.

How about microbes?

Are you guilty of the genocide of bacteria and viruses caused by your immune system?



No person has the right to commandeer another persons body for use as a life support
machine without the free, express, and continuing permission of that person.
Even if it did not risk the life of the body being commandeered. (as carrying a pregnancy
to term and giving birth most certainly does)

And an embryo or foetus is not a person, just a dumb bunch of cells that maybe possibly
someday might become a person.



And taken in the wider context your statement is morally indefensible and abhorrent.


Even if you value each and every human life as being equal you still can't reach this conclusion.

Say a small gang of terrorists took control of a airliner and were flying it towards a packed
Olympic stadium with 80,000+ people inside.

You are flying (or in command of) the Typhoons and ground to air missile batteries set up to
defend the stadiums.

You have a choice,

Shoot down the airliner killing the people inside (the terrorists and any passengers that happen to be on-board)
and possibly causing fatalities on the ground depending on where it crashed.
(ideally you intercept over the countryside, but even if its over high density housing the likely population density
is vastly lower than the density of people in the stadium)

Or you don't shoot it down and the terrorists fly the plane into the stadium and cause an atrocity that makes
even the 9/11 attack seem small.


Now we are taking it as a given for the purposes of the argument here that all lives are of equal value.
I personally think that this is nonsense and value the lives of the people being attacked over the lives of those
doing the attacking but for the purposes of this argument we can stick with all lives being valued equally.

So killing the people in the plane (even if it's a cargo plane with only the terrorists still alive on-board) has to be
a moral negative.

However not killing the people in the plan also has a moral negative outcome in that thousands of innocent people
will die and/or be injured. Including of course all the people in the plane.


To not conclude that the only moral choice here is to shoot down the plane is to conclude that the thousands of
people on the ground are collectively of equal value to those (at most) few hundred on the plane.

In other words you must value those thousands of innocent people as being individually worth less than the lives of
the individuals in the plane.


Which is in violation of the starting premise that all lives are valued equally.


To believe that it is never morally acceptable or right to kill is to value Hitler or Stalin over the millions of people they
caused to die.

To believe that it is never morally acceptable or right to kill is to value the life of a serial killer or mass murderer over
the lives of their victims.


If you can stop and capture these people without killing them then of course that is preferable to killing them.

However it is not always possible to stop these people without using lethal force.

Originally posted by sonhouse
The underlying issue here is the religious sanctity of life, we have sanctified human life to the tune of 7 billion plus, sanctified it so much we may starve to death, people are in fact starving to death right now. That's how sanctimonious religious people are. Sanctify us to death.

if so say so it must be true. You sound like the RJH of materialists.

Originally posted by robbie carrobie
I dont know what is prescribed in law, that's for the judiciary to decide. In ancient
times in Israel you could run to a city of refuge and state your case before the people
and who, satisfied that it was accidental and you had no ulterior motives, you could live
and work in that city unmolested.

What would happen to me if i didn't run to another city?

Originally posted by robbie carrobie
hmm, is there not a case recently and although i do not know the details, Zimmerman I
think it was, where a young man was killed by someone acting in apparent self
defence, when in fact, his alleged assailant was unarmed. Clearly such a stance is
open to abuse.

A person must have a reasonable fear of imminent bodily harm or death in order to have the right to use deadly force in self defense in most US states.

If he cannot demonstrate this at trial, he may find himself convicted of manslaughter or murder.

Originally posted by googlefudge
What life?

An ant is more complex and capable of feeling than an embryo.

The pet hamster more capable of feeling or thought than a foetus.

Is it wrong to kill a plant, that's life.

How about microbes?

Are you guilty of the genocide of bacteria and viruses caused by your immune system?



No person has the right to commandeer another pe ...[text shortened]... them.

However it is not always possible to stop these people without using lethal force.

Life is life whether you seek to term it such or not is none of my concern. My stance is
Biblical and religious. Attempts to define life as feeling, unfeeling, complex/simple,
conscious/unconscious, are irrelevant as your jump in logic from human to bacteria.
My stance is crystal clear, life is sacrosanct and no amount of hypothetical and
imaginary scenarios, references to airline dramas or moral positives/negatives can
change it. You justify killing anyway you like, but dont involve me in it, get far far far
away from me man! I mean it.

Originally posted by Proper Knob
So, hypothetically speaking here, i'm walking home one night and am attacked by a couple of 'youths'. In the resulting melee i manage to get off one punch which connects firmly with one of my attackers jaw, as a result he is knocked unconcious and falls to the floor striking his head on the concrete pavement. He dies as a result of his injuries, where would that scenario put me in your view?

That happens surprisingly often.

There is a difference between asking how it is treated morally and legally.

Moral values and Laws are related but not interchangeable they do different things.


Robbie could very well be correct in saying that legally that would be classed as involuntary manslaughter.

However this doesn't tell you anything about the morality or otherwise of your action.



As an example of a moral dilemma your scenario doesn't really work because you didn't intend to kill
the person it was an accident. It is a foreseeable possibility that if you hit someone they might die as
you described, however what you were trying to do was defend yourself and to stop them attacking you.
You were not trying to kill the person it wasn't a concious choice.


The moral dilemma robbie is posing here is more about situations where you do actually decide that the
best option is to intentionally kill someone.