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Is causing the death of another ever justified?

BenjaminP 3 Feb 23
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yes. if someone is about to murder the man i love and i can stop him only by killing him, i, a peaceful, nonviolent person, will do so. if he has already murdered the man i love, i lose that right. i can only then justify killing the murderer if he is about to murder ME (assuming no one else is around he is planning to murder). the same would hold true in a bank robbery -- if i can save the people there from being killed by killing the erstwhile killer, it is justified. it doesn't have to be me, or someone i love. now, i am not saying i am capable of this. i would probably blow it and save no one and be killed, or be a coward and do nothing, and either be killed or watch helplessly as others were. but theoretically i would be justified in such a situation. and again, once i was no longer defending anyone, it would become revenge and stop being justified.

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it is justified under certain situations

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It is a fundamental principle that all life is precious, however it is also a fundamental principle that the strong should protect the weak.
Therefore in my opinion, protecting those who cannot protect themselves would be the only justification for the taking of human life.

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Yes many different reasons can be found.

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Break into my house and ask me!

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No. Absolutely not. No life is utterly without value, I have worked with paedophiles and murderers. Virtually 100% of paedophiles were at one point themselves victims. Most do not fully understand their compulsions and attempting to justify their actions does not help. They can be helped. The cycle can be broken but not by putting them to death. Murderers too. There is a diminishingly small number of people who murder for pleasure. Most kill for gain or to end a complicated situation. Those born with ASPD are again unusual but lack a part of humanity common to the rest of us. They cannot be helped by modern therapy or medications but in future there may be help available.

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Of course it would depend on the situation but yes, absolutely.

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yes. self defense. pedophiles. megalomaniacs who want to destroy the world etc. also morality is relative

Absolutely

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Justified by whom, and by what criteria? (Personally, however, I say yes.)

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I confess to being conflicted about it, but lean toward, "no, never cause someone to die who does not wish to". My conflict in principle is around edge cases like child molesters or serial killers or similar extreme predators that we don't know how to "fix" or "cure", because of the damage they do to so many people.

In practice, however, even in 'Murica we don't seem to have the actual will to carry out the death penalty, so there's no point. If justice isn't reasonably expeditious and clear then it doesn't serve as a meaningful deterrent and doesn't really end the psychological damage and corruption to everyone that these sociopaths come into contact with. Also it's far cheaper to warehouse a prisoner for life than to actually kill them. We're so conflicted we're even botching the actual killing.

So I end up against the death penalty based on irrelevance and infeasibility, let alone morality.

I can absolutely see your point. Which is why knowing the exact situation is so important. It's a hard question to answer otherwise and your conflict shows a genuine concern for the wellbeing of others. It made me think.

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Someone must think so. Look at the world wars. For example, Gen. Curtis LeMay ordered the fire bombing of Tokyo, burning alive 100,000 civilians and leaving a million homeless. And that’s just a tiny fraction of the total carnage.

Our bodies are frail and temporary anyway. From a cosmic perspective it matters little. We are more than our bodies IMO.

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Doctor-assisted suicide for terminally-ill patients is legal in five states.

[opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com]

[vox.com]

I would say that assisting someone who desires death due to quality of life issues is very different from causing someone to die that doesn't want to, though.

It's one reason I moved to the state of Washington. I've seen too many people forced to linger on either by family or hospitals and it can be quite gruesome. This is one area where the determination of religious people to insert themselves into other people's business and to use the government to impose their dogma on unbelievers is especially obnoxious and unacceptable.

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