Zarqawi Dead
I just came across a news article about how we just recently killed the leader of the al-Qaeda insurgency in Iraq. That's good news. Unfortunately, as with so many other things involving this administration in specific and war in general, there was at least one instance of glaring hypocrisy:
"Now Zarqawi has met his end and this violent man will ( Read more... )
Most importantly, there IS, yes IS a definite difference between killing and murder just as there is a difference between blue and purple. Some people may not be able to tell the difference but that just means they need new glasses or they aren’t wise enough to recognize it. To equate killing with murder you must then equate Hitler, Pol Pot, Ayatollah Kohmeini, the BTK serial killer, Timothy McVeigh, Stalin, Jack the Ripper and with any cop killing a dangerous suspect, with any soldier fighting the Nazis, with any kid who shoves his friend in jest and ends up killing him, with any victim off attack, physical abuse, or rape trying to escape and with every newborn who kills its mother by being born. If you can’t see the difference, change your prescription, purple and blue are two different colors.
Both murder and killing are similar in that they both take a life, a life that was most certainly able to be longer. Murder is emotional, it has feeling, it has hate or want. Soldiers on the western front in World War I came out of their trenches and played futbol with each other on Christmas. If they had been only participating in murder then how could a friendly game like is recorded happen? To paraphrase what has been said many times, ‘I doubt that if soldiers had met their “enemies” on any other walk of life they might probably have been good friends.’ This is not to say that atrocities and outright murder have not taken place at the hands of soldiers, but they are not to be labeled murderers by default.
Even the Bible itself, the Word of God speaks of a difference between killing a murder. The Commandment says, “Thou shalt not murder,” not ‘Thou shalt not kill.” If you have to sit down and philosophically find a difference between the two you need more help than logic can offer.
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Just because violence has been the way things have happened for thousands of years doesn't mean we should continue on the same trend. What is unique to 21st century America is the means to respond to violence with something other than violence. Alas, we like being violent way too much to give it up for something as silly as morals
The definition of murder as "emotional, it has feeling, it has hate or want" doesn't cover hired assassins or "cold-blooded" killers.
Regardless of the exact translation of the commandment (which is debated, not completely settled), Jesus seems to have quite a different attitude. Are the Beatitudes to just be suspended whenever a political or religious leader decides to rally the masses for their own benefit? The Bible doesn't really explicitly distinguish between killing and murder, and it seems clear to me that you can't kill someone (intentionally) who you're supposed to love with the love of Christ. It's like saying "I'm sorry. We just can't possibly work things out. Ever. No matter what". The prophet Ezekial makes it clear that God would rather someone repent and return to Him than be punished. I believe that it's important to remove any threat to other people (though not necessarily to yourself), but by using the non-lethal force if possible. And once the threat is removed, there is no reason to kill somebody. I think it's murder if we intentionally kill someone who didn't have to die for us to eliminate the threat they pose (if any). But God still grieves for His children that are killed, and we should care about that. That should make us strive to look very very hard for ways to avoid killing someone. We need to really make sure that there's no alternative, and we must never be willing to sacrifice human life for money. And we definitely must never sacrifice human life for something like national pride or to prove that we "have a backbone" and "aren't afraid to fight". This is by far not the most easy way, but it is most definitely the most right way. We as a nation are pretty bad at doing the right thing for the right reasons - we only do it if it's easy or cheap or popular enough. Often we don't do the right thing at all.
I think I need to emphasize here that I'm not claiming that you disagree with the above. I just think that ending a human life is only acceptable if it meets the above conditions.
Anyway, as interesting as all this discussion is, it's not really relevent to my claim, which was that the line between murder and killing is arbitrary. This is not to be confused with the claim that one cannot draw such a line. You have shown where you draw the line, but not that your line is universal. One cannot defend a claim to universality with appeals to examples from experience. So... why is your line necessarily the line?
As an aside, I don't really like your ad hominem arguments: "...that just means they need new glasses or they aren’t wise enough to recognize it", "if you can’t see the difference, change your prescription", and "if you have to sit down and philosophically find a difference between the two you need more help than logic can offer". Just because someone doesn't agree with you doesn't mean there's something wrong with them (which is something I often have to remember myself).
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