Does anyone see my point that fundamentally, for example, to kill somebody is neither right or wrong?

Question

...it is human beings who decide for ourselves what is right and wrong, but who's to say we're right?

In my opinion, it is wrong - just to make that clear, because I AM A HUMAN, so I have my own morals I live by.

But, like someone has said, 'right' and 'wrong' is a human invention.

Answer 1

absolutely, in fact there is no "right" for anyone to say

Life kills other life and did so for billions of years and still does. siblings kill each other, parents eat young and on and on. Only humans have this idea that it's 'wrong" to do so. It's purely a human invention.

Is it "wrong" when a lion kills cubs of another male? When a femaly hyena pup kills it's siblings? When a shark in the womb eats it's siblings?
Wrong doesn't enter the picture, it's survival. Only humans have this idea that somehting is "wrong".

Old Dog, what in the wide world of sports is recetivism?

Do you mean recidivism? and if you do, what does comitting new crimes have to do with this discussion?

perhaps you mean moral relativism? lol

Answer 2

I see your point but I think you're wrong (look at me using these things all over the place).

Here, the problem is that you've taken the notion of human discovery and made it into a notion of human creation. Just because we label things right or wrong doesn't mean that we created the labels anymore than the eixistence of the labels 1 and 2 mean that we created numbers. We simply named the things that actually exist apart from us.

The slide into the relativist standpoint (with regard to killing) doesn't hold up just because animals kill each other and we don't care. Animals are 1) not self-aware (for the most part) and 2) really dumb. I appreciate that monkeys can learn sign language and elephants can 'paint' but animals are just dumb intellectually.

Humans, on the other hand, have some intellectual prowess whether they display it or not. That means that we hold different sorts of obligations. If I understand the impact my actions have with regards to others and I have some control over those actions then I can be held responsible for those actions and thus we can judge the actions of humans in a way that we cannot judge the actions of animals.

It's the same with little kids. You don't yell at a three month old child for throwing food or grabbing a stranger's rear but you do when the person is thirty. Dumb things aren't accountable for their actions, smart things are. We didn't make the rules up, we just discovered them.

Answer 3

Well... just one teeny tiny hole in your argument.

What's right and wrong is decided divinely, not humanly. Which means its not a human invention but a divine one, meaning it's always been there and it will always be there.

Of course, that a religious standpoint so it only applies if you believe in a god. Since I'm on the fence about a god and could really lean either way right now I am inclined to agree with you. That's why people say murder is "inhumane".

That's all I have. I can see other people said a lot of the same things I would before me. Have a good day.

Answer 4

Humans have indeed set a standard of right and wrong for each other. But people seem to agree on a lot of it. "Thou shalt not kill." "Though shalt not steal." Basic things like these seem to be pretty well accepted. (Not really meaning to say that the bible is what gives us all our morals, just those basic commandments happen to be a good example). Humans have set a lot of things though in society. For example, why is it that now, it is disgusting to marry a cousin, while 500 years ago or so, it was quite common?
Being human though, does change it. I must admit, we are not the same as animals. We have communications, and comprehending of one another. We have relationships, and know that if one of our loved ones were killed, we would be mournfully upset. We are more educated, therefor, we understand why these rules are set of moral and immoral, and have have reasons to understand.

Answer 5

I think there are good reasons that the human species should not support killing. Violence has physical and psychological effects of violence that puts humans at risk.

Morality can be reasoned. Humans are no longer subject to Darwin's rules. Look at our technology -- we need not starve or suffer from violence any longer. Assuming humans want to improve their quality of life and to coexist peacefully, we can do anything. We can use our genetic propensity for compassion to overcome our genetic propensity toward violence. We are no longer confined to the waste and suffering of other animals. The future is in our hands, and it does not matter if there is no extrinsic source to dictate what moral system, if any, is correct.


The killing of any person without consent with the perception of pain is wrong in my view. The universe doesn't say this. Death is a natural part of life. There are no gods to condemn or uphold killing. But I think it's a bad thing.

There is no absolute yardstick, of course. But morality is an important way that humans can live together to maximize their individual autonomy (like freedom of opinion) and to avoid compromising the autonomy of other people. Usually the majority of people decide what is considered moral. They are not always right, but I think history shows that we've learned a lot.

So I do not buy into moral relativism. Our genes underlie our behavior and influence the way that we consider morality, so there is a way to consider some things as "better" to a human than others. Unlike other animals, humans have the self-awareness to choose which behaviors that we value.

Answer 6

I think that there are reasons why people end up doing what appears to most "normal" people atrocious. Like killing someone, paedophilia, abuse, harming animals, torture etc. The "reasons" help explain the "why" but to my mind never justify or excuse it.

If someone was constantly beating you, day in day out... if that someone had worn you down, eroded all your self-esteem etc. If one day you ended up pushing this person away, in self defence and they maybe stumbled over, drunk and cracked their head open on the concrete and died, would your actions be right or wrong? Would the reasons of WHY you'd needed to push them, to defend yourself, matter? Or is it still killing someone in cold blood and WRONG? Who has the right to say?

I think if you are judging things as right or wrong, more often than not, you really have to see them within their context.

And who can say just how far it is possible to push any human being until they go over the edge and lose it?

Most of our sense of right and wrong stems from the bible and bible teachings. With the ten commandments and seven deadly sins. Most of the laws and the magna-carta have some foundations in biblical scriptures.

Your own morality and sense of right and wrong is linked to your culture... where and how you are brought up. I think it also evolves, adapts and changes through out mankind's existence. Many things people do now and consider socially acceptable would of been shocking and frowned upon 20 or 30 years ago! Just look at things like divorce and single parenthood. Sex before marriage, contraception...

I think there are basic "universally" agreed morals; things practically everyone would be in agreement about being right or wrong. But then we all have our own little set of rules and agenda. Some people seem to have the morals of a sewer rat; whilst someone else is a stiff as a brush!

Answer 7

It's a kill or be killed world. Other animals do it all the time, and no-one ever attaches an emotional response to it, unless, of course, it's little Fluffy and she was killed by the neighbor's pit bull. LOL.

But as humans we are born into a pre-existing social contract where it is generally agreed that we will not kill each other except under certain circumstances, and laws have been enacted to enforce this.

Answer 8

no human society has ever existed in which arbitrarily murdering members of your own tribe has been acceptable behaviour. all languages have a word for 'murder' and all peoples consider murder heinous. there are different shades of meaning to 'murder' between languages, but the core sense is always the same (it is how i have defined the term above).

in fact there is a huge list of universal human values known to modern anthropologists (there is a simplified presentation of this list as the first appendix to steven pinker's 'the blank slate'). the notion that 'all values are relative' is at much at odds with actual science as the idea that 'god makes the thunder by knocking two rocks together'.

there are still people who believe that god makes the thunder by knocking two rocks together.

Answer 9

If you mean, to execute somebody, I would not use the term "right"; I would use the term "justified." If you mean just randomly killing someone, that is flat out wrong. Your freedom to swing your fist ends at the tip of my nose. If your hand has a knife in it, you'd better stop your hand a few inches earlier. This is not some sort of man-made law that we can't determine right from wrong on. This is a natural, God-given freedom that others cannot take from us without the fear of punishment. We can decide what is right and wrong for ourselves because we have a standard greater than ourselves to measure by. If you want to call it God, fine. If you want to call it Nature, fine. The framers of the Constitution called our right to life "inalienable," meaning it is our right by birth and not to be taken from us. To do so is wrong.

Answer 10

There is nothing right or wrong in the general nature of thing as they stand. It is things themselves, especially the living, that see things right or wrong for the purpose of their specific standpoints. It is, for instance, right for a leopard to kill an antelope, but it is also right for the antelope to run for his life; or inversely speaking, it is wrong for a leopard to not kill for his food, and it is also wrong for the antelope not to run to save his life from an approaching predator.

From human point of view, however, things are more complicate. The basic laws and principle, however, still apply the same, with some reservation that we allow ourselves to have because we assume us to be superior in the nature of all other things. There are many things in life that are right or wrong just because they are in general, or more specifically, either good or bad for us; that not only for the purpose of individual good or bad, but also in collective sense, and that not only in a temporary sense, but forever - laws are made against things that are proved to be in favour of the wellbeing of man, and allowances are made for things that are considered beneficial. It is however right to kill enemy soldiers in wars that the enemy however despite recognising as loss would not consider as wrong as killing of innocent civilians.

It all depends what you are in life and thus where you stand. There is no poison in the world as such especially manufactured by nature to kill human beings; arsenic is a far too powerful a catalyst form spasmodic movement of stomach that if taken in a certain excess would cut through organs by accelerating their very natural function to terrible consequences.

So I you think like a none-human intelligence you might see things differently, but soon as you start to think like humans, you start to feel like the ones, and then you will have concerns to inform you most pressingly that one cannot live with unlawful and unjustified killing. It simply is not akin at all to human nature; it is diametrically oppose to it.