I spoke of no divine being at any point. Yes, we must judge for ourselves which is all the more reason not to kill others. The attitude that people can just waste space disgusts me to the core, whoever the person is or what atrocities they have committed. Saddam particularly was an indefensible murder for no good reason. Hitler committed suicide, there is not much to say past that, but Saddam was sentenced to death and I find that ridiculous and heart rending, the end of a human life is sad, always, full stop, no matter how twisted that person was. In fact, all the more reason to be sad for his passing, not because his impact on the world will be missed or he himself will be missed as a person but because a fellow living human being was so bitterly damaged that they could do such things and leave the world with nothing more than a name equated with shame, evil and disgraceful atrocity. The greatest shame is that he had to die at all, next to which is the shame that he died because other humans decided his life was not worth 'the space'.

As for your arguement that if someone takes a life, they remove the right of their own I find this attitude angering and painful to read and could honestly cry because of the way you try to justify the cessation of a life.

If someone stole from you, would you steal something of theirs? If someone hurt you, would you hurt them for revenge? If someone burned down your house, would you burn down theirs? If someone killed a loved one, would you want that person dead knowing full well they were mentally ill?

If you did these things, would you want to face the penalty for your actions knowing it would mean you died? No one wants to die, no matter what they have done, they do not deserve it because forcing a judgement upon the nature of anothers existence is wrong, whether or not they have done so themselves. Two wrongs do not make a right? Never less true as time goes by or usage makes it 'cliché'

Besides all of this, what actual punishment or deterrent is it to be killed for killing others, if those two people (Adolf Hitler and Saddam Hussein) felt little or no remorse for their actions. If their sentence is death, and it is inacted then what do they learn from it? They're dead. As for it being a benefit to society in terms of deterring others from similar crimes: well gosh that has worked for us!!

One last point, I find your explanation that killing a killer is 'fair game' fucking repulsive. It's not a fucking game, it's fucking life.

Yes, it is "fucking life", and they've toyed with it, before snuffing it out, repeatedly maybe ... Just to clarify, yes a lot of my arguments are sick and saddening, that's me ! As for the divine being, that just popped up, excuse me, I'll put some cream on it or something, but it was not meant to be the driving point of my argument.

Now, let's go for Saddam: First of all, I have to admire your dedication to the human race, I do admire somebody like you when I have lost most of my hope in them, hence most of my ideas about them being rather ... nihilistic ? Now, however, I don't see the shame in the fact that a human being that was so bent and wrong died without being able to be helped or righted, what saddens me more is how that person came to be that wrong in the first place, and how they could bring themselves to do such horrors that ended up with their death sentence, be it self-afflicted or decided by a "judge", not in the legal status term, but as in a person who judges, simple ...

I find it sad that that person managed to stoop so low, as to take people's lives, and throw them away, dump them in the trash-can with no reason other than his own opinion. How can you try and help somebody who lived his life prosecuting those that never wronged him, or at least not enough to warrant fucking death ! I seriously believe that they can't be helped, if they were that wrong, something in their being was definitely broken, and can never be fixed.

Now, as for the reciprocation of acts done to my on the wrong-doer, in most cases, I would. The few times I've been hit other than in "violent fun" shall we call it, I've hit back, if somebody stole from me, I would rather right the wrong, than steal from them. In the case of murder, you cannot right the wrong, 'cos the person is dead, and as far as I know, no-one can breathe life back into someone. If somebody burnt my house down, I'd hate him, and get him put in jail: while these beings follow no rationale, rather committing crimes banned by nearly every society, we have laws, laws to help punish those that break them.

A contradiction, you say ? Yes, but extremes require different approaches. If a man killed, and was prove to be guilty, what is "better", let him rot in a cell, or kill him off to join the person they killed, or just float about the void ? There is no "better" option, both are hideous, both should never happen in the first place: why we have crime since the dawn of time only enforces my belief that humanity is a twisted thing, that will be its own undoing.

There is no better option, but there is still a choice left, and to my mind, these people are too dangerous to be trusted, too wrong to be considered humans, almost. How can you justify murder ? You cannot, so how can you justify wanting to help them ? They commit the most sordid crime, and you still hold that belief that they will repent, that they will see their wrong, and never do it again, how come ? I'm honestly curious at this optimism in regards to humanity, when history shows that, well, we've been a right bunch of fuckers in the past, and still are today !

Now, as for me doing it, and then having to face up to the consequences: no one wants to die, it's true, but I would not be "low" enough to kill another being. If you put me in a position of choice, of the possibility to take a life, or the choice between that and something else, I couldn't answer you, I couldn't, simply because you cannot make a true assumption of your actions given the context. However, I would never do so very willingly, and if I did, I would ultimately have to face up to my crimes, I would ultimately understand that I've fallen out of the chain: I would no longer be a human being to my own eyes, I would be a killer, deserving of no pity, and frankly, no help, if I did so with full acknowledgement of what I was doing.

Besides all of this, what actual punishment or deterrent is it to be killed for killing others, if those two people (Adolf Hitler and Saddam Hussein) felt little or no remorse for their actions. If their sentence is death, and it is in enacted then what do they learn from it? They're dead. As for it being a benefit to society in terms of deterring others from similar crimes: well gosh that has worked for us!!

What would they learn from it if they were not killed ? Nothing, they won't learn, they never do, they never will ... What help, how "better" would it be to keep them alive, you would make them suffer more, and that seems almost more sadist than killing them. Some call it the easy way out, aside from suicide, but the hard way, to see your life just go away, you'll inflict pain upon them, yes, but you are also simply using time as a weapon against them, using the passage of time to hurt, is it any better or worse than ending their life swiftly, and removing the threat they pose ?

As I said, there's no "better" solution, the ideal situation would be that we never have to face such a thing, but was a species, we're just wrong, to even think about killing each other: yes, animals do it, but by necessity, not by cold blood or insanity ... We do it out of self-interest, cold blood revenge, we do it not for survival, as that has been gained a long time ago, we do it for whatever other reason we see fit. Or not, for sometimes there just doesn't seem to be a reason ...

But please, I am genuinely curious as to how you hold humanity in such high esteem, that actually fascinates me, please tell me ...

Hi Selothi,

I am the creator of this thread, something you might not remember. I also happen to share many of Wakboth's beliefs (although I cannot say all, not having read his posts in their entirety, and him not being religious whereas I am), and so would like to share why I hold humanity in a high esteem.

I believe all men (and women) are equal. That doesn't mean I'm Communist, or think no one is less smart or talented at certain things than others. There will always be someone smarter, more talented, quicker than me, as well as those less so. When I say I believe we are all equal, it means I believe no one person can be 'better', in a sense than another, or worth more, or hold something over another.

I believe all men (and women), in being 'equal', in this sense, have the same potential to do good, or 'right' things, and to do bad, or 'wrong', or 'evil' things. I believe we are all inherently flawed, and that none of us is perfect, least of all myself. I believe we've all messed up, made mistakes, done things that are/were wrong, and will always continue to do so, throughout our lives. Obviously, this includes myself.

I don't think I'm better than anyone else. Despite being religious, and being a Christian (who are often some of the worst offenders here), I believe I am no better and worth no more than anyone else who has ever lived, or who lives now. I hold no arrogance in me. Like I said, I'm not perfect, and I always and continually do things that I believe are wrong. And for that precise reason, I have no arrogance in me--because how could I hold myself in any higher position than anyone around me if I too do 'wrong' things?

This may sound paradoxical, and in fact, it is, but I hold man in high esteem because I believe we have so much potential to do good and to prosper, and to lift one another up. Yet, at the same time, I hold man (and myself) in no esteem, because of what we have done. Look at the atrocities done by our hands. Look at the death, the pain, the suffering, the raping, the burning, the poverty, the cheating, the theft, look at what we have done to each other--to satisfy our own greedy lust, our own need for power, our own need for a thrill or high, in the name of our country, in the name of our God.

Like Thomas Jefferson, I have found myself to be a woman of many contradictions. I say this not proudly, but honestly. I believe killing is wrong, always wrong, and the end will never justify the means. Man has, in my opinion, done much good, and much evil, often with the same hands. What binds us can just as easily destroy us.

Perhaps I will close merely with a quote from a short story I recently submitted to a contest, one that summarizes how I feel quite succinctly (except that the protagonist, whose point of view this is from, does not believe in a god, at least not one of an organized religion): Some of this, however, the beginning and the end, were included for contextual reasons.

Ylanne Sorrows wrote:“God is love and mercy,” said the priest at my school, but then why did people always justify evil with the name of God? The year I was born was the year a man was executed for treason against my home country. He bombed government buildings and marketplaces, claiming freedom for his people was his only goal. This man, he said he was bringing the wrath of God down upon the infidel.

Strange, how the Crusaders said the same thing. They were the rallying cry of God, his wrath incarnate. God is love? If he existed, he would be either a psychopathic sadist or a devastated optimist. Look what his people have done, to him, to each other. Look what you have done. Do you know how much you hurt me? I told you, but you did not hear my words. You only heard the voices in your head, filling your thoughts with hatred! O how much hatred will there be in this world before we can have peace? How much? You tell me!

What humanity is saddens me, Selothi. But at the same time, who we could be brings me the greatest hope.

----Ylanne

Lemme just say I love the way this convo is going. This is the first intelligent discussion I have had on these boards, and I have been trying for quite some time, now.

Selothi wrote:
As I said, there's no "better" solution, the ideal situation would be that we never have to face such a thing, but was a species, we're just wrong, to even think about killing each other: yes, animals do it, but by necessity, not by cold blood or insanity ... We do it out of self-interest, cold blood revenge, we do it not for survival, as that has been gained a long time ago, we do it for whatever other reason we see fit. Or not, for sometimes there just doesn't seem to be a reason ......

This brings up an interesting point for me. Killing for survival.

I'm having a hard time wording this, and it's not going to come out the way I want it to, which kinda blows, but here we go. And it's kinda going off the beaten path of this discussion, but ... oh well.

If the justice system is allowed to pass judgment on those who have killed, then there would certainly be a lot of dead soldiers, wouldn't there. Personally, I see no difference in killing someone during a war and killing someone because you wanted to. In fact, I think that killing say, in battle might be even worse.

Granted, they are trying to kill you also, but let's just think about this for a moment.

Say I chose to kill someone that I know, someone that I really want to kill. I at least have my own sick reasons for killing this person. Hell, I might even have a legitimate reason for killing this person. And in order for me to get to this point, it took some sort of injustice done to me.

But, killing someone in battle is just so impersonal. Looking across a battlefield and killing someone you don't even know, who has never done anything to you besides not being on your side in the war definitely takes a cold heart ... what makes that any better? Even worse, what about when civilians are killed? Should not soldiers who have killed civilians be killed for their actions?

Granted, I doubt that any soldier who kills is ever the same after that, as most soldiers are decent people with a conscience, and possibly the guilt they feel would be enough to punish them for their entire lives.

I dunno, I don't think this issue is black and white enough. There's too much gray area, which is another reason why I don't believe the death penalty should be in existence.

Granted, I doubt that any soldier who kills is ever the same after that, as most soldiers are decent people with a conscience,

Amen to that, my brother is in the British army, so talking about war is always a bit touchy for me, as he's out there (not right now, but he's going back to Afghanistan or Iraq some time soon), but let me tell you what I think of killing during war. It's wrong, simple as that, but the soldiers are not to blame: if you decide not to shoot, not to fight the "enemies", the people who have been tagged as such just because the leaders of two countries have incompatible interests or desires, then your a blamed a deserter, or whatever, you're court marshalled and that's not good.

Soldiers who kill, do so because of orders, they don't want to kill, anyone who is human and not twisted doesn't want to kill somebody they don't know: they do it because they are told to, and don't have a choice. These days, war strives to do as little deaths as possible, incapacitate the enemy, or just don't meet them, but when the situation does get rough, you have to pull that trigger, it's your life that they're also trying to take. And they do it either due to orders, again, or to defend their home. Imagine, the US and UK army marches into Afghan and Iraq, you are one of the inhabitants of said country, how do react ? If you're in the army, you might truly believe they come to kill you, to take your land, and so, you want to defend what is yours, you want to drive them back, like a wolf preying on your flock of sheep.

And then there are those that are exactly in the same shoes as the soldiers on the other side: only following orders. It is easy to take a life, but few can actually be tempted by it, and even less would actually want to take that life out ! But those who "must", by the will of their superiors, don't have much of a choice. I don't believe soldiers are killing machines, no, they are men and women of flesh and bone who do this because they have no other option. We can't judge them for that ...

Now, talking to Treali, I can't see any light at the end of this dark, dark tunnel that humanity has dug, and dug, deeper and deeper. I can see it widen, maybe, so as to let some air in, let us all breathe a bit more, but I don't believe we can honestly change what has become of us. To my mind, while not entirely a lost cause, I can't see us getting back on our feet once more. The wars, hell, everything you've stated and more, rather than make me hope that we can all back-track on that and find a way to finally solve it, I rather think that we'll just learn a bit our lesson, but keep doing it. Humanity is a den to hypocrisy, we are all a victim and a perpetrator of it, and that same hypocrisy is what fuels our stupidity.

We fight wars in the name of a God, who we before preached to be just and believe all people are equal, we enslave "races" we consider "inferior" due to our laziness and need of man-power, and even centuries after, when I believe mentalities should be smart enough to understand the simple horror of it, some people still believe, and are fervent supporters, of racism. I see men and women who murder each other, mothers who drown their babies, men who rape women, who beat their wives, who kill out of cold blood and self-interest, self-interest that they fulfil by contemplating the most hideous way to resolve it possible; murder ...

No, I don't see any redemption, any lesson-learnt from humanity. I see it as a never-ending circle, a cycle that has reiterated itself so many times, that has become so vicious, that it cannot be stopped, lost as it is in the momentum granted to it by mankind. It is a bleak view, a very sombre portrait of the species I belong to, but that is my view. And LALAshesang, I understand that this area, along with many others up for debate, is far too grey to fully be able to chose one answer over another, but I also think that you just have to delve in there, build yourself a little port, drop the anchor, and stick to the argument and opinion that you built up in that misty area of thought.

To me, Ylanne, it is more than saddening, and I see no exit to our own grave, a grave we've been digging for centuries now.

Selothi wrote:We fight wars in the name of a God, who we before preached to be just and believe all people are equal, we enslave "races" we consider "inferior" due to our laziness and need of man-power, and even centuries after, when I believe mentalities should be smart enough to understand the simple horror of it, some people still believe, and are fervent supporters, of racism.

That basically sums up my problems with this world. I find it kind of funny that people fight wars for religion when it's supposed to be all about peace and loving your neighbor as if he was your brother, etc. And then they try to justify it by saying this is what "God" wants ... I dunno .. if "God" is as awesome as everyone says he is, I doubt that anyone knows what he's thinking.

And the racism thing ... don't even get me started. It's actually gotten even worse now that Barack Obama has won the election.

The silliness of people as a whole should be enough to make anyone think the death penalty is wrong. How can we trust ourselves to sentence anyone to death when we've botched so many other things so horribly?

Selothi, I would not say I hold humanity in high esteem. My reasons for believing we have no right over life are more simple: each person has a conscious mind and everyone has the same thought, the will and need not to die. To cause pain to another is to do an awful thing that we would never want enacted upon us, to kill is the ultimate betrayal of this and the ultimate disrespect of life.

The thing is, every time someone dies we kill a part of a whole, but also an individual. The reason we should not kill others or cause them deliberate pain is because there will be no hope of a better time if we continue to do so. We create our own hope, it is not some arbitrary or esoteric force that will always be accessible, it is an element entirely under our control because hope is a psychological effect, if we do not have hope and try to work towards something then there is no hope, because we have lost the will to have it. The less we work as a communitive force the more we lose from this lack of effort. Setting aside any questions of morality or compassion, taking a more pragmatic view we can say human beings need each other, it is this simple.

I must also stress there is no 'evil'. Everyone is capable of the darkest of actions or the greatest leaps of so called 'humanity' or compassion more accurately. However it is our ability to deny even to ourselves (or at least to surpress) that we have done something wrong that allows us to commit negative acts. It may be as simple as "I'm doing it because I have to" or something even more removed like "A Higher being told me too" because this allows us to deny to ourselves that we have erred, or as I say to at least suppress the guilt. This is not to say that God does not necessarily exist, though personally I find it doubtful, it is to say that our ability to constantly shift God's own moral compass and will over us is based entirely on this need not to feel blamed or suffer the consequence of blame.

In someways I do hold humanity in esteem because we have an ability to do good things, just as any other animal. But like any animal (this is where I disagree that animals kill only be necessity) we can also kill with little compunction. Animals do not always kill due to necessity but sometimes out of a simple feeling of threat or in some evident cases, simply because of a desire to display power and strength to other animals. Perhaps we could see this also as necessity, by nature animals compete for resource (I am referring to us as animals too) and if you can enforce and instill fear in others then they are less likely to combat you for your needed resources. However, if we look at nature a lot of animals work together to increase their survival, however these animals will still have a natural predator and would work against that species, rather than damaging its own.

It is that lack of natural predator of humanity, due to our technological protection and separation from other animals that I feel causes us often to fight ourselves, because removed from the normal fight for resources with other animals we see other humans as competing for those resources. This is not however the case and we need to realise that by co-operating entirely we can achieve more and survive more really than by competing or trying to destroy perceived threats. However our need to survive can only eventually outweigh our 'need' to compete or commit violent acts and we must at some time challenge our perception and see a reason to work co-operatively as a whole. This is something we very slowly move towards at the same time as completing the cycle of treachery and atrocity. It is a very slow process but our way of existence cannot last forever.

We do have a naturally violent streak, as all animals do, born of a need to survive and a will to exert our knowledge of our bodies capable force. However I feel this will never go away no matter how much we realise a need for complete co-operation. But it can be diverted into other channels, such as controlled violent sports or simply contests of physical prowess. There is little need for this to become a whole scale conflict, because such conflicts are not born of a simple brutal violence but of, as I've said a perceived threat to resources. If this perceived threat to resources was decreased or eliminated by whole-scale co-operation the violent urge would not be less, but used differently and the reason for actual war would be supersillious, though as I say (sorry to repeat but I'm tired) the need to exert physical force would still exist in a different fashion.