Why is it wrong to kill?
You cannot use God, the Law or the Golden Rule as an argument. There has to be a further reason to answer why humans believe it’s wrong to kill, rather than your own personal feelings towards murder—some greater purpose to it all.
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36 Answers
You’re really starting to worry me with these questions.
Humans are social creatures and rely on co-operation in order to survive. Not killing one another is instinctive because it’s harmful to the whole community including yourself. You see it in other social animals too, where members of the herd or pack fight viciously to establish their position, but they rarely kill except accidentally. Solitary animals fight to kill, to protect thir territory.
Don’t believe in god.
Fuck the Police.
Not a fan.
I guess the only reason I don’t kill people is that chickens taste better.
Wrong question. The real question is, ‘why did humans evolve to regard killing generally as wrong’.
The answer is thus:
You humans are weak. You have no claws, no sharp teet, your visual acuity is pathetic, as are sense of smell and hearing. You are slow as well. Alone in the wild, you are easy prey for superior lifeforms, such as the proverbial sabertooth tiger.
Accordingly, you must rely on social groups to increase your survivability.
If you randomly kill your fellow tribesmen, you lower the survivability of your group, and subsequently, your own. Your tribe will be less successful at hunting, more at risk of a disease wiping you out, inbreeding turning you into rednecks, and severely hindered in recovering from a random bear strolling into your cave and decimating your horde.
Therefore, not killing your fellow ape ultimately increases your own chances of survival, and those that evolved the instinct to refrain from killing people are those that ultimately survived.
“no sharp teet”…that’d make breastfeeding fairly unpleasant.
What’s with all these questions about murder and psychopathy lately? I get that you’re into Ted Bundy, but he’s not interesting enough to warrant this many questions.
Maybe some get the urge to kill when daft bastards pretend to be aliens & constantly spew out boring dross to that effect. Not condoning it, but that’s one powerful motive :)
My only question of @johnpowell‘s response is… “How would you know?”
I question the premise: Who says it is wrong to kill? We do it all the time.
Damn, I forgot the ‘h’. That is what sleep depravation does to a woman.
I have to agree with @CWOTUS the act of killing is not in itself considered wrong by society; we only place restrictions on what we kill, who we can kill, who can do the killing (and this is contingent on all the other questions) and how we can do it.
Kant’s Categorical Imperative.
“Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law.”
What makes anything wrong? As soon as you have an idea about the way things ought to be, then Right and Wrong appear: Right is that which tends toward how things ought to be, while Wrong tends away from how things ought to be.
If you think, “I hate being in constant fear of my life. I see that most other people feel the same way. The world ought to be a place where we mutually agree to let each other live, so we can be relieved of some of that fear”, then killing starts to look quite wrong.
That leaves the door open for exceptions. Suppose a gunman starts picking off passersby. Because his existence now poses an imminent threat to the lives of many others, killing him starts to look right.
Much depends on how the “ought” idea is formulated. If you think “The world ought to be a place where Aryan people can live untroubled by non-Aryans” then, as we now know, killing can start to look right. If you think, “The world ought to be a place where I can do anything I damned well please”, then killing may also start to look right.
The “Golden Rule” is just a policy on how to formulate good “ought” ideas.
Yes, biological imperative, nothing more, nothing less.
Now….IF, you’re planning on killing, just do yourself in and don’t make arbitrary choices for others.
I don’t believe that killing in and of itself is wrong. Sometimes ‘he needed killing’ is a valid defense IMO. You just have to get the 6 to 12 people on a jury to agree with you.
There are several people walking around now only because killing them would cause me more problems than they are worth.
@WestRiverrat I believe it is valid in the South.
And, I agree with @Coloma, if you are planning a murder/suicide, do the suicide part first.
^^^ “do the suicide part first” lol
Because there’s something to love and something unique/ special about each life.
It’s just plain rude. Manners are essential to a civilized society.
We don’t want other people to kill us so to get them to agree to that we agree not to kill them particularly even though we find them really really annoying. .
I think anyone with any amount of empathy would be naturally repulsed at the thought of killing someone. On some level, someone with empathy would think of their own pain at being killed and would have a very hard time doing it. This is why soldiers from the beginning of time have learned to think of the enemy soldiers as “others” and not quite human. It’s easier to kill someone if you lack empathy for them.
Any organism that would think it wrong ( if it could so think ) to have itself murdered would be able to extend the some consideration to another organism and attempt to refrain from murder.
Naturally this excepts psychopaths, war, murder for profit and passion killing.
@Neodarwinian…and self defense, insanity, the execution of a condemned inmate, and police in the line of duty.
But I’m wondering how murder for profit and passion killings are excused here.
@livelaughlove21
Excused? Who said they were excused? Excepts does not mean excused.
They do happen though as we are human.
@Neodarwinian Ok, excepts then. I’m more than aware that these things do happen, but I don’t get why they’re exceptions to your rule.
OK, I’ll play along.
It’s not wrong as in right and wrong. Right and wrong do not exist in the real world. They are simply human descriptions of actions that have outcomes you want or outcomes you don’t want.
In general, killing has negative outcomes
@livelaughlove21
Rule!?!
Could be exceptional weather, but I doubt that any rules were excepted from!
Humans have evolutionary and cultural underpinnings of some moralities, but humans also are supposed to eat until satiated, or store fat against times of need, but you sure see a lot of fatties around, don’t you.
Psychopaths are obviously excepted and some people other than these amoral monsters exceed their ” governor setting ” from time to time for a myriad of reasons. Shit happens.
@Neodarwinian The “rule” I’m referring to is your statement that we do not kill others because we don’t want others to kill us. Why psychopaths are an exception is not my question. My question us why murder for money and passion killings are exceptions. Saying “shit happens” does not answer that question – it’s a completely different explanation.
I’m coming to the conclusion that you’re so focused on semantics and my wording of the question that you aren’t even bothering to answer it. And I thought it was a pretty simple question to answer. Oh well…
” My question us why murder for money and passion killings are exceptions. Saying “shit happens” does not answer that question –”
Are you being deliberately obtuse? All organisms are variants and that means they are normally distributed about a mean. Some behavior can be as much as two to three standard deviations from that mean, but the individual reasons that these are exceptions to the ” normal ” occurrence of events are myriad in nature. Do you slooshy (nadsat for understand )?!?
Murder for money should be obvious and passion can come from so many different perspectives as to defy all quantification.
” And I thought it was a pretty simple question to answer. ”
Obviously not, or we would have less of the shit happening!!
Oy! Yeah, I’m the obtuse one. I ask a question about why you listed certain examples as being an exception to your statement and you’re going on about a normal distribution. I still haven’t heard an actual answer. Suddenly, I don’t even care to hear it (if it even exists).
I’m out.
If you have a sufficiently high level of moral development, you can probably judge for yourself who you can righteously kill. The problem is most of those people are in positions of power, and have the police and/or army protecting them.
In those cases, it’s not wrong to kill, but you’ll get in trouble for it anyway.
Right now I am thinking of killing my orthopedic surgeon.
@gailcalled I’m going to go out on a “limb” here and guess that you are have a “bonified” reason for your ire and are not just running a “femur” and not thinking straight. Did your surgeon tell you a “fibula” about what he could do? They do have a “tendon”, see, to exaggerate. Or perhaps it was a “clavicle” error from his office.
Sorry, I was just “ribbing” you in an attempt to be “humerus”.
Ok. Ok so my punning “skulls” are not the best, you don’t have to have such a “sternum” look on your face.
Arrrggh! Give us a “break”, please, @rojo.
Ever wonder why nobody killed you? Otherwise you couldn’t post this Fluther question.
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