And who is the one to properly and objectively determine the answer? And what gives the one who answers this question more authority than myself or than congress? On the flip side, if we are told by a Nazi government that we must assist in the killing of Jews, yet I tell my family that it is illegal under my authority for them to do so, again, what is the "real law" and who is the one to properly and objectively determine the answer?
Apart from the God of the Bible, there cannot be said to be any objective moral or legal authority -- it is simply a battle of contradictory personal opinions. The concept of "law", without the God of the Bible, loses all definition. Nothing can objectively be legal or illegal apart from the declaration of the God of the Bible.
Since the death penalty has been at least in certain circumstances commanded according to the law of the objective and ontologically authoritative God of creation, it is objectively legal and therefore is not murder. If the death penalty has been commanded by God's law, it is not illegal. If it is not illegal, it is not murder. Mass killings of humans, in opposition to established government laws, are standard procedure during war.
The Bible, in certain circumstances, demands this behavior, such as in Exodus Surely this, the killing of humans in opposition to laws, can properly be construed as "murder", right? When God commands something, as we saw with the death penalty, it is objectively legal and acceptable. Indeed, if God commands it, it is objectively illegal to NOT do it.
The fact that some human government forbids it simply renders their supposed "laws" invalid and irrelevant. If the laws forbidding the killing of these particular humans are invalid and irrelevant, and if the killing of these humans is commanded by the objective lawmaker, then these particular killings are in fact not objectively illegal.
If the killings are not illegal, again, they are not murder. There may indeed be other supposed exceptions in the scriptures that do not fall into these particular categories, but keeping in mind the definition of murder, that it must be 1 a human being who is killed; and 2 an illegal killing; and also keeping in mind that 3 God is the one who, by His order, determines the objective and highest law, it should be an academic exercise to demonstrate that any such exception to the Biblical condemnation of murder has been misconstrued.
Rest assured that disobedience to God of any kind, including disobedience by killing those that He commands us not to kill, is wholly denounced by the Christian scriptures. Though we deserve the death penalty for our crimes Romans 6: As a result, we have each been offered eternal life Romans 6: All we must do is accept that offer through trusting in the sacrifice of Jesus on our behalf Romans Please leave a comment. Profanity is prohibited, along with any kind of threat, terrorist communication, etc, etc. Play nice and we won't delete your comment. In addition to being added to this page, your comment will also show up in our Twitter feed.
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Comment limit characters: What counting number comes after four? Why does religion 'permit' murder and why are people so eager to justify murders their people commited? More Questions Can atheism be viewed as an advanced form of carefully non-idolatorus monotheism or monism Answers: Atheist 0 Comments Where is the justice in punishing us for Adam's sin? Christian 0 Comments Did God have to be created?
Why or why not? Christian 0 Comments What is "jihad" and are Muslims obligated to participate in it? Muslim 0 Comments Brian Dunning from skeptoid. Comments Not surprisingly, the atheist answer is clear and concise, while the theist answer is an apology out of nonsense. Morality comes from subjective valuation, that's what moral and ethical values are - not from might makes right as theology would have it The answer is clear and doesn't require sub-sections or pages of text: Religion permits and justifies murder because it is the product of corrupt humans.
Religious violence - Wikipedia
Believe in my god or die. Phil, "Religion permits and justifies murder because it is the product of corrupt humans. Is it then corrupt to claim that "murder is wrong" in your view? What does corrupt even mean in your view? Corrupt compared to what? The primary role of religion is to help us understand and negotiate our place in this world and our relationship with the Divine. If our relationship with the Divine in this world and in ourselves is balanced and healthy there would be no need for moral rules, because we would naturally do what is good and right.
Prohibitions against the killing of another human being are only necessary because too often our relationship with the Divine is less than healthy. Hitchens points out that Stalin's government had all the trappings of religion, including Orwell's totalitarian theocracy, and thus it's merely a play on words to say that it was not religious. Pol Pot was raised a Buddhist monk who grew up to execute Buddhist monks, along with anyone else he could lay his hands on. Whole books have been written on the occult underpinnings of Nazi Germany, the symbology of the Norse gods, to say nothing of the claims that Hitler was a Christian, Hitler was a Jew, and his own writings expressing the kinship he felt with the Muslims.
A favorite counterpoint raised by Christian debaters is that these despots practiced Social Darwinism and were thus atheists by definition. In summary, the winner of these debates is the one who can convince the other that the big 20th century genocidal maniacs were motivated either by religion or by a desire to destroy religion. The entire debate is the logical fallacy of the excluded middle.
- Honor killing - Wikipedia.
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If you write a book called God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, you sell a lot of books. If you write a book called What's So Great About Christianity on the evils of atheism, you also sell a lot of books.
Christian terrorism
If you say that neither extremist viewpoint makes any sense, you end up doing a podcast and working as a greeter at Wal-Mart directing customers to the section where they sell Hitchens and D'Souza books. The truth is less incisive, it's less inflammatory, it raises no ire, and it draws no audience. And that truth, as I've said time and time again, is that people are people. No matter what segment of society you look at, you'll find good people and you'll find bad people.
You'll even find, as has been said, that the line between good and evil cuts through every human heart. Certainly there are people in the news who kill in the name of religion, but just because they kill in the name of religion doesn't really mean they kill because of religion. The Islamic militants who cut off Nick Berg's head are not nice men who would have otherwise been his best friend, if it weren't for their religious convictions forcing them into this grievous act.
They are base murderers, and they should be punished accordingly, I don't care whether they go to church or not. Killers don't really kill because of their religion.
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Neither does a lack of religious convictions cause one to run wild in the streets with a bloody axe and a torch. Religion is a convenient banner for many to carry, but there are plenty of other banners available as well, and if it wasn't religion, they'd do their deeds under some other justification, if they care to even have one. The real reason they do their evil deeds is that they're human. Humans are very smart, very capable; and when we want something, we generally find some way to get it, even if that means killing someone or committing genocide. By doing this episode, I'm going to be called an apologist for atheist genocide.
My dismissal of the entire argument as pointless and fallacious will be interpreted as a dodge from advocating a weak position. So go ahead and post that as a comment on Skeptoid.
Honor killing
I'm convinced that arguing either side is merely an opportunistic way to tingle sensitive nerves and sell a lot of books. And, I'm convinced that any discussion of the religious causes of genocide is a divisive distraction from the more worthwhile investigation into the true cultural and psychological causes. Waghmore said he was brought to Bengaluru on September 3. He had been trained to use an airgun in Belagavi.
After two hours, a biker took me to show the house of the person I was to kill. The next day, the biker took me to another room in Bengaluru. Another man in the room took me to the R R Nagar house again on a bike and dropped me back. I was again taken to Gauri's house in the evening, by the same biker who had taken me the previous day. I was told that I had to finish the job that day.
But Gauri had returned from work by then and was inside her house," he allegedly told the SIT. Amol Kale, Dada may have masterminded Gauri Lankesh's murder The special investigation team SIT probing the murder of Gauri Lankesh expressed strong suspicion that Amol Kale and fugitive accused Nihal alias Dada could be the masterminds of the plot to assassinate the journalist.