I was having a conversation with my brother a week or so ago about my recently published book, “A Thinker’s Guide To Truth” – that I have mentioned on this blog elsewhere. Anyway, part of that conversation kind of triggered the thought in my head that I’m not sure I was clear about the distinction between killing and murder.
For those that don’t know, murder refers to ending someone’s life to serve your own ends, whereas killing refers to ending someone’s life in the service of your country – at least I read that somewhere along the way (I think it was in a Dennis Prager book, actually).
Anyway, I just want to say that I’m pretty sure that murder is always wrong and I think I made that point in the dialogue. As for killing… I’m honestly not sure. If given the choice, I would always try to not choose war, and thereby eliminate the need for killing. But this is an imperfect world. War sometimes happens – we even have two (involving allies of ours) going on as we speak. In light of that, I might characterize killing as a dark grey act as opposed to an act of pure unadulterated evil. Not as bad as murder, but still not desirable. Of course, there are a plethora of factors that can influence such.
Of course, this in turn impacts the “absoluteness” of the Right to Life and could lead to a long, complex discussion – a discussion I did not have in my Dialogue, or at least, this Dialogue. I touched on it only briefly in order to say that I think murder is always wrong/evil/whatever – so that there is a certain “absolute” character to murder, but, possibly not killing. And, if not killing, then not the Right to Life either.
Anyway, I will probably address the issue in more detail in some future dialogue on war, perhaps. Maybe. We’ll see how these first few dialogues on truth work out. And go from there. Oh, yeah, one more thing, once again my post about the adulteress is being postponed a week or so.
Doubts and Questions 