On the Morality of Murder

Sacrifice of Isaac-Caravaggio

On the Morality of Murder

Hey atheists, answer the question, is murder good or not? Give me the short answer, yes or no. Well, because how would we know if something is good or bad, moral or immoral if the bible didn't teach about it? Checkmate atheists.

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Every now and then I come across such, or similar, displays of mental rectitude by adherents of Judeo-Christian theism on the internet. Given the fact that these queries or memes containing them are very similar to each other I assume that they come from some pseudo-intellectual theistic source, then are unreflectively copied and spread on the internet by people who have a huge problem with independent thinking and therefore rely entirely on the opinion of a so-called spiritual authority or other guru to come up with this kind of idiocy.

Before the above question can be answered in any way, the concept of murder must first be defined.

Murder according to the UN definition is: ‘the unlawful deprivation of human life, with intent to cause death, or grievous bodily harm’. Law, as defined by Geoffrey Robertson, is a set of rules that are created and enforced by social or governmental institutions (and therefore by people) to regulate behaviour. Murder is therefore an act committed against an accepted set of rules.

It is worth adding that statistically, according to Donald Black, 90% of murders are revenge killings - retribution for acts previously committed by the victim against the perpetrator or his relatives. It seems to me that this statistic is quite relevant in determining the so-called morality of murder.

So is murder only proper for humans, and is it right or wrong because it is written in the Bible?

Scientists prove that herd animals are among the most intelligent animals. This is because the group teaches cooperation and collaboration to benefit the group, which translates into greater benefits for the individual member of the group, and an increased chance of survival for the individual thanks to the group.

Ants, bees, termites, wolves, lycas, buffaloes, elephants, chimpanzees, or hyenas, and human animals have proved over the centuries that it is possible to succeed in the age-old struggle for survival by working together as a group.

Ants or bees have created their communities divided into classes. Their groups have slaves, workers, warriors and queens. When threatened, warriors throw themselves at the enemy without hesitation, very often giving their lives in the fight to defend their community. Bees, for example, have a very interesting defensive tactic that they use to defend themselves against their greatest enemies, the hornets. Hornets are the bees' mortal enemies. When they find a bee hive, they can slaughter all the bees inside it in a very short time. So the bees, when they discover a hornet that has got into their hive, immediately surround it tightly on all sides and start flapping their wings, thus generating such a high temperature that the hornet is boiled alive in it. Bees which have taken part in this defensive mission also lose their lives in the process. So the bees carry out a murder on the hornet, defending their community, sacrificing their own lives in the process. Do bees read the Bible? How do they know if they are doing the morally right thing? Why do they sacrifice themselves?

Among vertebrates, interesting forms of behaviour have been observed in Hyenas. Hyenas form very tightly-knit groups, forming family communities. The hyena group is always led by a dominant female. Thanks to their excellent cooperation and understanding of their place in the group hierarchy, hyenas are excellent hunters and are able to take even lions' prey in a coordinated manner. In one such group, researchers observed an interesting case of a power struggle. The group was led by a very strong female, who, however, became increasingly aggressive, cruel and selfish over time. She stopped paying attention to the other members of the herd and, when hunting, attacked other members of the herd and tried to seize the prey just for herself. At one point, the other hyenas, fed up with the dictatorship of the cruel leader, organised a mutiny, attacked the despot together, injured her very badly, threw her out of the group and left her alone on the savannah to die. Was the hyenas' behaviour good or bad? How did the hyenas know what was good for the survival of the group?

I have only given two examples out of an infinite number of similar cases occurring in the animal world, of which man is also one.

Hundreds of thousands of years before the biblical Bronze Age, other hominin species walked the earth; australopithecines, homo erectus, or Neanderthals among others. They too formed communities, interacted as a group, hunted together and supported each other in order to survive. They followed rules that they themselves created in order for the group to succeed in the struggle for survival. Pathological individuals, as in the case of the hyenas above, were eliminated from the group because they threatened its survival, whereas killing for the good of the community was useful.

In Asia, long before the Bronze Age, there were societies that did not know the Bible, which created great civilisations (it is interesting that the authors of the Bible had no idea of the existence of people living in China or India).

Without the knowledge of the Bible, why didn't the people living there kill each other driven by godless selfishness?

In fact, in the times and places described in the Bible itself, apart from a group of Jews in the desert, there were other communities and even powerful states which made their own laws in order to serve the community and within which the community could develop and cooperate without threatening its own existence. The Jews, like all other communities, simply created their own set of laws and rules of group conduct to serve their survival and function. Many of these laws, by the way, were taken by the biblical writers from pre-existing codes, such as the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi. These communities created sets of laws and rules of conduct that they believed would benefit the group. Crimes committed against the set of rules established in a community were severely punished because such acts were harmful to the group.

So is murder good or bad? In my opinion, the correct question should be: is murder useful at the time or not? If the murder is committed for the benefit of the community, then the act becomes morally justifiable for the community. Therefore, the notion of some objective morality is a purely abstract concept. The theistic, speculative way of thinking is for the most part completely abstract. In practice, a given concept acquires its true meaning when applied to a concrete, real-life case, and then these abstract concepts make sense, or not. If they are devoid of practical meaning then they should be abandoned. To pretend that some system based on purely speculative and abstract concepts is reality is a mistake and a lie. On the other hand, a system of concepts that grows out of an observable godless reality, verifiable in a concrete, real-life situation, and whose practicality of concepts can be proven is true, because, as we know, the devil is in the details.

Hail Satan!

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