is it okay to kill people? [myspace]
This was actually going to be a big long thing, but myspace errored out and lost it. So here it is in brief – I’m pretty sure that it’s wrong to kill. I’m really sure in fact – it makes me sick to think of death, my own or anyone else’s. If there isn’t any heaven or hell to live out the rest of your eternal existence (since God isn’t availble to refute me on this one, I’m going to go ahead and assume I’m right) then this mortal lifetime is all we’ve got – which sucks, I know, but that’s the situation.
And if this life is all we’ve got, just about the worst thing that anyone person could do to another is to take that life away.
There are of course ramifications. Can anyone guess which hot political topics this impacts? Abortion, capital punishment, war, and doctor-assisted suicide. Since all of them involve killing someone, I’m now opposed to them. The only situation in which I would be willing to make an exception is killing in self defense – if it’s your life or theirs, you’ve got every right to pick your own. Survival is our most basic instinct – in fact, I might even argue it’s our highest purpose in – well, life. Reproduction is a close second, with the betterment of our species or something like that coming in third.
But yeah. I had always kind of wondered exactly how I felt about abortion. After thinking it through, I’ve got my answer. Yuck. Killing people is wrong. Killing baby people is really really wrong. And killing them before they even have a chance to become anything more then a helpless little bundle of cells – yeah, that’s pretty much the worst kind of cold-blooded killing. I know, there are so many arguments in favor of allowing abortion – but I can’t even imagine anything (besides that self-defense caveat) that would justify murder. Murder is what you do when you’re crazy.
Which brings us to doctor-assisted suicide. What is suicide? Killing yourself. So that’s obviously not okay. And if a doctor gives a patient who expresses a desire to end their life a lethal does of chemicals, then they’ve committed murder. It doesn’t matter if the other person wanted it, or even if they were asking for it – the simple fact is, up until that point, they were alive, and afterwards they were not alive. Totally absolutely wrong.
And ultimately, why would I think this way about killing? Because I’m completely terrified of my own mortality, and people are crazy – if they start to think that SOME killing is okay, it’s not that big of a leap to decide that MORE killing must be okay. Including killing me, or other people that I like. So let’s avoid that, okay?