How do you know murder is wrong?

[moralist]

5 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

I might murder someone I knew was a murderer-rapist, for instance--of someone I loved. Someone might escape the law but fall prey to a vengeful relative. Now, tell me where the "wrong" is.

--Brant

That's not murder, Brant... that's justice.

 

"But if he struck his victim down intentionally with an iron object so that he died, he is a murderer; the murderer shall certainly be put to death.

If he struck his victim down intentionally with a stone in hand, which may cause a person to die, and he died, he is a murderer; the murderer shall certainly be put to death.

Or if he struck his victim down intentionally with a wooden object in hand, which may cause a person to die, and he died, he is a murderer; the murderer shall certainly be put to death.

The blood avenger shall himself put the murderer to death; he shall put him to death when he meets him.

But if he pushed his victim out of hatred or threw something at him with malicious intent, and he died,  or if, in enmity, he struck the victim down with his hand, and he died, the one that struck the victim shall certainly be put to death; he is a murderer. The blood avenger shall put the murderer to death when he meets him...

...If anyone kills a person intentionally, the murderer shall be put to death on the testimony of two or more witnesses; but no one shall be put to death on the testimony of only one witness."

 

Greg

 

[Wolf DeVoon]

10 minutes ago, moralist said:

"But if he struck his victim down intentionally with an iron object ..."

Argument from authority, doofus, a fallacy. You sound like Bob.

[Brant Gaede]

2 hours ago, Wolf DeVoon said:

Steve Mallory did the right thing, shooting at Toohey. Too bad he missed.

That was the pre-Objectivist Ayn Rand. There are many things in The Fountainhead that an Objectivist should not do but the good guys* did do. Rand did some things in her life that an Objectivist should not do. Objectivism was one of her weapons, however, if she needed to strike back.**

--Brant

*Gail Wynand was one of the good guys respecting this discussion, but he got his comeuppance

**"To Whom It may Concern"

[moralist]

36 minutes ago, Wolf DeVoon said:

Argument from authority, doofus, a fallacy. You sound like Bob.

"But if he pushed his victim out of hatred or threw something at him with malicious intent, and he died,  or if, in enmity, he struck the victim down with his hand, and he died, the one that struck the victim shall certainly be put to death; he is a murderer. The blood avenger shall put the murderer to death when he meets him"

 

So you disagree that's murder, Wolf. Fine with me. That's your opinion.

Greg

[Wolf DeVoon]

3 minutes ago, Brant Gaede said:

That was the pre-Objectivist Ayn Rand. There are many things in The Fountainhead that an Objectivist should not do. Rand did many things in her life that an Objectivist should not do. Objectivism was one of her weapons, however, if she needed to strike back.

--Brant

"To Whom It may Concern"

Nods. I remember it, and "From The Horse's Mouth"

Marrying Frank was pretty clearly an enjoyable ploy to gain U.S. citizenship, stay in America (my opinion). I liked Rand the harlot very much.

[Brant Gaede]

1 minute ago, Wolf DeVoon said:

Nods. I remember it, and "From The Horse's Mouth"

Marrying Frank was pretty clearly an enjoyable ploy to gain U.S. citizenship, stay in America (my opinion). I liked Rand the harlot very much.

I never doubted she went bonkers over him.

--Brant

[Wolf DeVoon]

1 minute ago, moralist said:

So you disagree that's murder, Wolf. Fine with me. That's your opinion.

Greg

FFS, you missed it by a country mile. I said that Argument From Authority is a logical fallacy. No comment about why murder is wrong.

[Peter]

Wolf refuted Greg’s medieval meanderings by writing: FFS, you missed it by a country mile. I said that Argument From Authority is a logical fallacy. No comment about why murder is wrong. end quote

Greg I hope you never quote scripture here again. That is such bull shit. Do you even come close to comprehending how stupid you are? Imagine a Muslim writing on OL quoting the Quran about chopping off head or hands, or mutilating a woman’s genitals. You might complain. Don’t you see? You are not using reason. You are using horseshit authority as proof. Not good. Lose your religion when arguing. It is not rational.

Now I lay me down to sleep . . . I pray Zeus my soul to take . . . if I should die before I wake . . . I pray Apollo . . . or Allah . . . or L. Ron Hubbard . . . my soul to take. What disgusting rubbish. If we were back in an ice age you would be one of the first to die. Why? Because you are not rational. As John Wayne said, "No more, religious horse shit, mon sewer." 

Peter    

[moralist]

3 hours ago, Wolf DeVoon said:

FFS, you missed it by a country mile. I said that Argument From Authority is a logical fallacy. No comment about why murder is wrong.

Now that would all depend on What the Authority is, Wolf.

Those words are either true or a lie. Since your no comment is such a cowardly evasion worthy of a secular liberal, I'll ask you directly.

Which are they? True or lie? Or are you just like Bob, and you don't know why murder is wrong either?

Greg

[moralist]

2 hours ago, Peter said:

Greg I hope you never quote scripture here again. That is such bull shit.

Ok, Peter... you made it perfectly clear you regard that definition of murder as being a lie. That's your own opinion and you are welcome to it.

It's also clear I disagree with your stated opinion. I think it's a practical working definition of murder as well as prescribing a proper response to it..

Greg

[anthony]

21 hours ago, moralist said:

The ability to choose as well as the ability to be aware of what we choose and it's just and deserved consequences is what allows us to know we are accountable to the objective reality of a moral code of behavior we did not create. Our actions can only either agree or disagree with that objective moral reality... but they can never change that objective moral reality.

What's morally right will always be what's morally right. What's morally wrong will always be what's morally wrong....

...and each of us chooses either to agree... or to disagree with It.

And if you or anyone else here is wondering why I'm so down on Bob, the reason is he made the wrong choice. I have no respect for people who make wrong choices. America is basically a decent nation because is was originally founded on Judeo Christian moral law... and Bob only behaves because his government tells him it's legal... not because he knows what's right or wrong. This behavior is only possible for individuals who have chosen to avoid self awareness.

If Bob was in WWII Germany, he'd be gassing Jews because his government told him it was legal. If he was in an Islamic terrorist country, he'd be cutting heads off of infidels because Sharia law told him it was legal. And if he was in a cannibal tribe, he'd be eating someone else's brains.

Sad to say Bob's parents mindfucked him, and he never grew out of it to become self aware and morally self reflective adult.  Instead he embraced the mindfuck, and is actually proud of it.

Liberal governments love people like Bob who choose to not to be self aware, because they make such excellent bureaucratic employees. The amoral secular liberal education system in America has only one purpose... to produce amoral secularists like Bob who will serve the State by doing whatever they're told...

... as long as the State tells them it's legal.

Greg

.

Greg,

The phenomenon is so widespread I think of it as a mind-plague, and the germs have been spreading for a long time. I have the view that Government(s) is actually not the direct cause. Yes it is a secondary initiator, but the State is symptomatic of the general ethics and of the manner that a sizable proportion of people think and have been thinking, or emoting, more like. Through State education the plague has been sifting down from lecturers in universities for decades. They in turn picked it up from published "post-Enlightenment" intellectuals, and they from several philosophers going back a few centuries. The ideology is that pernicious that it has affected the art world, another secondary and powerful source. This very broad 'philosophy' or mix of philosophies behind this, goes by the name Post Modernism. Here's the biggest masked threat to western civilisation which has partially enabled other more obviously blatant dangers from some countries and radicalism . My very simplistic explanation is people lost their minds and a moral compass when their religious belief began waning. They've chucked out the baby and the bathwater, the soap and the tub -everything of value - and ended up with a cynical and agnostic skepticism approaching the fat zero, nihilism. These intellectuals are that smugly smart and educated as to be totally dumb (I've known some). And another seeming paradox, such a person is often so blinded by science he can't see reality - for himself - especially the reality of man and his mind; result, he's given up his individually centered morality. Me, I save my disgust for those who know full well what they are doing to infect and manipulate people's minds to some end, and I don't think Bob is one. I believe he is quite the innocent in that scheme of things. 

[BaalChatzaf]

1 hour ago, anthony said:

and manipulate people's minds to some end, and I don't think Bob is one. I believe he is quite the innocent in that scheme of things. 

"Bob" is a moral secularist.  "Bob"  buys Jewish ethics 105 percent. "Bob"  does not buy spooks, ghosts, spirits and demons. "Bob" thinks the world is made of matter and energy operating along the lines  described in physical laws. 

[BaalChatzaf]

15 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

I might murder someone I knew was a murderer-rapist, for instance--of someone I loved. Someone might escape the law but fall prey to a vengeful relative. Now, tell me where the "wrong" is.

--Brant

From a psychological p.o.v.  there is not a thing wrong with righteous anger and in extreme cases righteous homicide.  But such things are condemned by Law.

 

[Brant Gaede]

1 hour ago, BaalChatzaf said:

From a psychological p.o.v.  there is not a thing wrong with righteous anger and in extreme cases righteous homicide.  But such things are condemned by Law.

I didn't know that. (Sarcasm)

Interesting you've capitalized "Law."

Greg sure has your number, but you did all the convincing.

--Brant

 

 

[BaalChatzaf]

17 minutes ago, Brant Gaede said:

I didn't know that. (Sarcasm)

Interesting you've capitalized "Law."

Greg sure has your number, but you did all the convincing.

--Brant

 

 

Without Law we are ruled by Whim or Decree.  Don't knock it. 

[anthony]

2 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

Without Law we are ruled by Whim or Decree.  Don't knock it. 

Strange to your jungle survival mindset, there are many who don't respond to whim, are oblivious to decree and can't murder under any circumstance, Law or no law.

[Peter]

Anthony wrote: Strange to your jungle survival mindset, there are many who don't respond to whim, are oblivious to decree and can't murder under any circumstance, Law or no law. end quote

Nor would I murder. The definition of murder is concise and if you take a life for no logical or legal reason you are committing murder, not justifiable homicide, and a rational legal system would punish the murderer. And there are times when rage, or irrational thinking make a person think they are doing what is necessary and that is why we have governments to intervene. (and why we have loony bins.)

There are cases that make violence a retaliatory act without *stretching* “murders” meaning. A police officer in the performance of his duties may shoot a lawbreaker under numerous circumstances. And a civilian can act morally and legally when violence is a necessity.

Here are two cases I wrote a while back. Neither instance should be a crime.

Case One. You are lost on a desert island. You see a fellow islander abduct your child or spouse. You later capture the kidnapper but the child or spouse is nowhere to be found AND the kidnapper says your loved one is buried alive and has a limited time to breath. If you don’t come up with his ransom demand now, he will allow your loved one to suffocate. You, the parent or spouse, do not have the amount of the ransom. Would you use torture to extract the location of your loved one from the kidnapper?

Case Two. Intelligence sources are sure a dirty atomic manufactured in North Korea and given to a Syrian refugee in the United States is set to go off in Manhattan. The authorities have the Syrian terrorist at Manhattan Police Headquarters. He boasts the bomb is set to go off in three hours, which leaves little time to evacuate yourself or the inhabitants of Manhattan to avoid destruction. “Allah is great! All you infidels are going to die!” he screams. You have a way of extracting information, using a drug that will make the terrorist talk, but the drugs will cause the terrorist to die a horrible death at a later date. Would you administer the drug? 

Jules Troy wrote: You don't extend your hand to a rabid dog and expect to pet it.  You just shoot it. end quote

Care to come up with a third case? It is not unreasonable Ba'al or Moralist, to insist a holy book or doctrine not be used as a logical argument.

Peter

[BaalChatzaf]

3 hours ago, anthony said:

Strange to your jungle survival mindset, there are many who don't respond to whim, are oblivious to decree and can't murder under any circumstance, Law or no law.

So few. So rare.   Why do you suppose that war is endemic to mankind?  If you are depending on Goodness you are doomed to Disappointment. 

Personally I would rather avoid violence.  I gave up making weapons of bloodshed back in 1968.   I finished my day as a weaponsmith.   I no longer possess fire arms  although I keep an ax and a dirk just in case.  Purely personal defensive weapons.   I no longer have any great yen to shed blood.  Being a blood warrior and an active participation in warfare is mostly the affliction of young men. There are exceptions of course, but old warriors are very rare. 

[moralist]

11 hours ago, anthony said:

Greg,

The phenomenon is so widespread I think of it as a mind-plague, and the germs have been spreading for a long time. I have the view that Government(s) is actually not the direct cause. Yes it is a secondary initiator, but the State is symptomatic of the general ethics and of the manner that a sizable proportion of people think and have been thinking, or emoting, more like. Through State education the plague has been sifting down from lecturers in universities for decades. They in turn picked it up from published "post-Enlightenment" intellectuals, and they from several philosophers going back a few centuries. The ideology is that pernicious that it has affected the art world, another secondary and powerful source. This very broad 'philosophy' or mix of philosophies behind this, goes by the name Post Modernism. Here's the biggest masked threat to western civilisation which has partially enabled other more obviously blatant dangers from some countries and radicalism . My very simplistic explanation is people lost their minds and a moral compass when their religious belief began waning. They've chucked out the baby and the bathwater, the soap and the tub -everything of value - and ended up with a cynical and agnostic skepticism approaching the fat zero, nihilism. These intellectuals are that smugly smart and educated as to be totally dumb (I've known some). And another seeming paradox, such a person is often so blinded by science he can't see reality - for himself - especially the reality of man and his mind; result, he's given up his individually centered morality. Me, I save my disgust for those who know full well what they are doing to infect and manipulate people's minds to some end, and I don't think Bob is one. I believe he is quite the innocent in that scheme of things. 

Spot on, Tony.

The government isn't the primary cause because it can only be what people created in their own image, driven by their own weak parasitic dependent need for it to educate them, employ them, underwrite their debts, indemnify them, give them benefits checks, and take care of their health.

It's peoples' own infantile need for the government to be their mommie which grants it such tremendous intrusive power over their lives. Freedom is never revoked. People can only piss it away.

In my opinion, only children are innocent.

When they get older they can choose either to grow up and out of their infantile condition, or to remain in it. Bob's mentally crippled state was his defense mechanism against his parents mindfuck. (Sorry, there's just no other word to describe the atrocity of parents dumping their own unresolved issues onto their kids just as they were dumped onto them.) He had the choice to grow out of it to become a self aware adult, but instead chose to reject adult self reflection by embracing his impairment as if it was a virtue. And because of his taking so much pride in what he himself freely chose not to grow out of, if he had any kids there is the likely potential for him to pass his condition onto them as it was passed onto him.

 

Greg

.

[moralist]

6 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

Greg sure has your number, but you did all the convincing.

I do.

As an adult, Bob chose to refuse to become aware of himself, and so he gets the just and deserved consequences of his own choice.

Greg

[anthony]

3 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

So few. So rare.   Why do you suppose that war is endemic to mankind?  If you are depending on Goodness you are doomed to Disappointment. 

Personally I would rather avoid violence.  I gave up making weapons of bloodshed back in 1968.   I finished my day as a weaponsmith.   I no longer possess fire arms  although I keep an ax and a dirk just in case.  Purely personal defensive weapons.   I no longer have any great yen to shed blood.  Being a blood warrior and an active participation in warfare is mostly the affliction of young men. There are exceptions of course, but old warriors are very rare. 

I'm staying with the topic - murder. No one here has to belabor the obvious re: self-defence or national Defence, and that if someone comes at you or yours make him dead without hesitation. You remind me of the 18 months I took a job as lab assistant at the Atomic Energy Board of SA (in the early 70's), and our Metallurgy Section experimented in the reactor with certain metals, discovering their changes of resistivity at various levels of radiation . Many years later it was admitted publicly that, in part, the AEB and the South African Gment had covertly been producing nuclear weapons, and the programme was disbanded. I'll never know if our innocent looking experiments had any contribution to bombs.

[BaalChatzaf]

52 minutes ago, anthony said:

I'm staying with the topic - murder. No one here has to belabor the obvious re: self-defence or national Defence, and that if someone comes at you or yours make him dead without hesitation. You remind me of the 18 months I took a job as lab assistant at the Atomic Energy Board of SA (in the early 70's), and our Metallurgy Section experimented in the reactor with certain metals, discovering their changes of resistivity at various levels of radiation . Many years later it was admitted publicly that, in part, the AEB and the South African Gment had covertly been producing nuclear weapons, and the programme was disbanded. I'll never know if our innocent looking experiments had any contribution to bombs.

Lucky you.  I have worked on weapons that have been used to slay thousands.,  I am a genuine accomplice to mass homicide. 

[Brant Gaede]

12 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

Without Law we are ruled by Whim or Decree.  Don't knock it. 

Without morality . . . .

We are ruled by whim or decree and real bad law.

--Brant

[BaalChatzaf]

25 minutes ago, Brant Gaede said:

Without morality . . . .

We are ruled by whim or decree and real bad law.

--Brant

We need both.  Morality and Law. 

[Peter]

Ba’al wrote: Lucky you.  I have worked on weapons that have been used to slay thousands., I am a genuine accomplice to mass homicide. end quote

Ah, Bobby is ever the drama queen. Care to give specifics? Was it the enemy getting their come uppance? You have expressed no remorse when the bad guys get shot by the Lone Ranger, so what is irking you about this particular project that killed people who deserved it?

Resistance is futile. Dancing around reality is not permitted. You will comply, or I, Seven of Nine, will squeeze your gonads until you comply.

Peter