Sunday, March 10, 2013

Justifiable murder and justifiable homicides

I am inclined to think that calling it murder means that you are saying that it's morally wrong. I take it justifiable homicide is not murder. So "Murder is wrong" is true by definition. However, we can imagine a society that considerably expanded the range of justifiable homicide, and the Amazon culture seems to. I can imagine a society that considered it justifiable homicide if you killed a cheating spouse. If relativism is true, then that we could never say that that society was in error for allowing such homicides.


3 comments:

Steven Carr said...

Leviticus 20
“If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.

Of course, theists can never say this is wrong, as other theists will explain to them that this is the Word of God.

I guess we can leave the theists to fight it out over whether or not they have one contradictory Old Book or two Contradictory Old Books.

Steven Carr said...

We have to remember that theists are not relativists.

They just go to different churches with different sets of objective moral values.

Son of Ya'Kov said...

>Of course, theists can never say this is wrong, as other theists will explain to them that this is the Word of God.

Except the Bible is not clear & must be interpreted according to Tradition(2 Thes 2:15) and Church(1 Tim 3:15).

As a Catholic once said scratch an Atheist find a fundamentalist. That is you to a tee Carr.

Of course in principle given the existence of, Nature and Infinite Honor of God, any offenses at all against the Almighty by definition logically merits death. The Bible reflects this obvious truth.

Still Rabbinic Tradition much of which was handed on by Moses with the Torah said a (lesser) Sanhedrin that executed more than one person every 70 years was murderous.

Also you need two or three witnesses who must observe the act and warn said act merits the death penalty according too Torah thus giving the offenders the opportunity to stop to save their lives.

Tradition is clear unless these conditions are fulfilled you cannot employ the death penalty.

>I guess we can leave the theists to fight it out over whether or not they have one contradictory Old Book or two Contradictory Old Books.

That is no more amusing then various opinions of Atheists some on the one hand might believe in a type of objective morality which they get from Aping Natural Law to create a secular version of it vs others like Rosenberg who say we have no objective morality but we should be nice nihilists. OTOH you might get some Atheist who puts 2+2 together and realizes if "God does not exist everything is permitted".

At least I know with the passing away of the OT common wealth the civil laws of the Torah are no longer an issue but the later type of Atheist is scary especially if he or she gets political power.

Like in China or Russia.