Poll: At what point is killing/hurting something wrong?

emeraldrafael

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TheBear17 said:
emeraldrafael said:
Its always wrong to hurt/kill, even if you're swatting a fly. What separates a fly from say a cat really, and makes it wrong to abuse one and not the other? Why can you organize stag beetle fights and not dog fights?

The true issue is when is it justifiable, to what means is it justifiable, and will society see it as justifiable? and all of that is subjective to morals really.
who desides right from wrong, I would imagine if your an athiest this is an even more challenging question.
in the end its the society that punishes you, because tehy're most likely the one to enact punishment, putting aside divine intervention/random coincidence of chance.
EDIT:

Glass Joe the Champ said:
emeraldrafael said:
Its always wrong to hurt/kill, even if you're swatting a fly. What separates a fly from say a cat really, and makes it wrong to abuse one and not the other? Why can you organize stag beetle fights and not dog fights?
If, for some bizarre insane reason, people organized events where they poured bleach onto dirty clothes for entertainment, would it be morally wrong because they're killing millions of bacteria for fun? If not, what's the distinction between bacteria and insects?
Thats exactly what I mean. The question isnt right or wrong to kill, its how society views its justification. washing your hands (correctly) or brushing your teeth (correctly) kills millions of microbes and bacteria, which you can classify as living things. But the trade off is if you dont, you risk potential sickness and death, and society may view you as undesirable and dirty.

Also, you must not have seen those Oxyclean commercials, cuase thats basically an organized event to bleach the shit out of clothes.

...

taking it a step farther, but going on the same logic, you can also say that to treat someone medically is wrong, because it kills bacteria and germs. However, if you dont, you could die. to kill AIDS or stop cancer, each of which are living things, should be wrong because its wrong to kill. however, society sees it as justifiable, and I imagine those that would suffer from it would aslo see it as justifiable.
 

CarlMin

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Hitokiri_Gensai said:
Personally, i believe that if youre going to use what you kill then its ok. FOr instance, hunting. I love to hunt, but i never hunt wastefully. ANything i kill is either eaten by myself or i give it to friends or family.
Well I guess hunting isn't nearly as bad as eating meat produced by factory farming when you think about it.
 

Hitokiri_Gensai

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CarlMinez said:
Hitokiri_Gensai said:
Personally, i believe that if youre going to use what you kill then its ok. FOr instance, hunting. I love to hunt, but i never hunt wastefully. ANything i kill is either eaten by myself or i give it to friends or family.
Well I guess haunting isn't nearly as bad as eating meat produced by factory farming when you think about it.
haunting? :p

well, it sort of depends on the situation. I dont eat fast food or food from any place that doesnt atleast ATTEMPT to use organic farming practices etc. But that said, hunting is a little more... well i dunno how to explain it. I just make sure to use everything i can from what i kill.
 

Aur0ra145

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Zakarath said:
I'd say what matters is not the creature's sapience but rather your motivations for killing it.
You see it as a threat? Okay.
You're killing it for food? Okay.
You're killing it just for the hell of it? Not okay.
damn ninja'd

I totally agree though. You should kill for two reasons: survival and food. Killing just for the heck of it is very wrong.
 

CarlMin

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Hitokiri_Gensai said:
CarlMinez said:
Hitokiri_Gensai said:
Personally, i believe that if youre going to use what you kill then its ok. FOr instance, hunting. I love to hunt, but i never hunt wastefully. ANything i kill is either eaten by myself or i give it to friends or family.
Well I guess haunting isn't nearly as bad as eating meat produced by factory farming when you think about it.
haunting? :p

well, it sort of depends on the situation. I dont eat fast food or food from any place that doesnt atleast ATTEMPT to use organic farming practices etc. But that said, hunting is a little more... well i dunno how to explain it. I just make sure to use everything i can from what i kill.
Ah yeah, hunting. Stupid me. ^^

And well I guess you're right about that
 

badgersprite

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Sep 22, 2009
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Wrong is just a concept, not something set in stone. What people perceive as wrong is going to vary across cultures, time periods, and individuals.

I personally think hurting/killing is rarely if ever 'right'.
 

zehydra

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If it is human. The nature of survival is that species survive at the expense of others. While I believe killing a person is wrong, it's not because of pain (that's a totally different issue), it's denying them life.

If we go and say then, "killing ALL living things is wrong because it is denying them life", then we would have no way of living. We would all starve to death. All other limitations, such as "capable of pain" or "sentient" are arbitrary in the context of the question of the right to life.
 

Fidelias

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Killing, and the morals of the act, are too complex to simply put down what is okay to kill and what isn't. The fact is that it changes with the situation. I believe that killing for pleasure is wrong, but self-defence or justice/vengeance isn't, in some situations. I don't see a problem in killing animals, as long as it's for food. Killing bugs such as bee's or wasps is perfectly okay to me, though I usually don't bother with it if they arent bothering me.
 

Vykrel

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it is okay to kill any creature, so long as you have a legitimate reason. self defense or protection of another being, especially.
 

pppppppppppppppppp

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emeraldrafael said:
Glass Joe the Champ said:
emeraldrafael said:
Its always wrong to hurt/kill, even if you're swatting a fly. What separates a fly from say a cat really, and makes it wrong to abuse one and not the other? Why can you organize stag beetle fights and not dog fights?
If, for some bizarre insane reason, people organized events where they poured bleach onto dirty clothes for entertainment, would it be morally wrong because they're killing millions of bacteria for fun? If not, what's the distinction between bacteria and insects?
Thats exactly what I mean. The question isnt right or wrong to kill, its how society views its justification. washing your hands (correctly) or brushing your teeth (correctly) kills millions of microbes and bacteria, which you can classify as living things. But the trade off is if you dont, you risk potential sickness and death, and society may view you as undesirable and dirty.

Also, you must not have seen those Oxyclean commercials, cuase thats basically an organized event to bleach the shit out of clothes.

...

taking it a step farther, but going on the same logic, you can also say that to treat someone medically is wrong, because it kills bacteria and germs. However, if you dont, you could die. to kill AIDS or stop cancer, each of which are living things, should be wrong because its wrong to kill. however, society sees it as justifiable, and I imagine those that would suffer from it would aslo see it as justifiable.
So by killing millions of microbes for the benefit of one individual, you are implying that the one individual is millions of times more valuable than the microbes, thus all life is not equal. For any of us to exist, we must kill many, many things in our lifetime: many plants, many insects, many microbes, probably many animals, and possibly many humans. There's no way to morally justify this unless you accept that all forms of life are not equal.

Once you accept this, you'd have to decide what lives are decidedly less valuable than yours and are thus okay to kill if it benefits you, like how you "murder" millions of microbes to appear more clean. So try to think about what forms of life fall under the category of being substantially less valuable than humans.
 

kinapuffar

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Question #1. Do you think Nature makes mistakes?
If No: <move on to question #2>
If Yes: <move on to question #3>

Question #2. So, why does pain exist?

Question #3. You're an idiot, nature doesn't make mistakes.


It's simple:
Pain exists to deter humans, and animals, from attempting things which are a threat to our continued survival.
The body senses that something is occuring that could injure you and impede your chances of survival, and sends a message to your spine, which triggers a pain response.
You pull away from whatever is dangerous, and avoid it in the future.


Pain is good, it teaches people what not to do. People NEED to feel pain.
Say you eat my yoghurt I left in the fridge. I tell you: "Stop doing that."
You do it again. I tell you: "Stop doing that."
You do it once more, I punch you in the face, you're not going to do it again.

See if I had punched you in the face the first time, you would never do anything similar. Because you would always carefully consider your actions, since you know that there will be no warning if you fuck up, there will be pain.

It's a great teacher!


Also, life doesn't have to be less valuable than others to be ended.
Subjectively, my life is more valuable than everyone on these forums put together. I wouldn't hesitate to kill you all to save myself.
Does that make me more valuable than you? No. Does it make it right? No.

But life isn't based on right or wrong, it's based on survival.
Right and wrong are figments of human imagination, concepts that don't exist in reality. Even if there was an objective measure of right and wrong, we do not know it. And if you believe yourself to have the authority to decide for all of humanity what is, then you are an arrogant fuck with delusions of grandeur and you should seek help.
 

Exterminas

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If there is no given moral system (you did not give one with your question) then it is okay to kill everything.

The whole idea that murder is wrong is not inherit to the act itself but was created in order to make societies function.

Resulting from that each society has abolished murders as wrong that would threaten a societies integritiy.

For example: Thousand years ago nobody would ever consider stating that eating animals is wrong. Simply because animal husbandry and eventually meat was a backbone of their nutriton. Of course the degree varied by social statures (poor folk rarely got meat) but in the end nobody really could afford to be so smug to say "Eating meat is morally wrong"

But today the abolishment of killing animals barely threatens any western society, so we start considering it.

Moral is a concept that came into existence via different human societies. Thus no moral question can be anwered without a social (or metaphysical) framework.
 

Dagny

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Jul 13, 2011
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Glass Joe the Champ said:
Personally, I believe that inflicting physical and emotional pain should be avoided whenever possible. That means that I don't eat meat, and I think abortion is wrong after the nervous system has fully developed and it can feel pain (which is about 20 weeks last time I checked), but killing plants, insects, microorganisms, and intelligent machines is okay.
Wait, why is killing intelligent machines okay? Is it still okay if these hypothetical machines are capable of physical or emotional pain? If we're starting from a premise of intelligent machines existing, I don't think it's implausible that they might be capable of experiencing pain.

My own view is that if something is intelligent and self-aware, it doesn't matter whether its intelligence and self-awareness are encoded in an organic, synthetic, or virtual medium. The sapience of an AI is no less valuable than the sapience of an organic human. Therefore, it would be wrong to harm or kill a sapient AI, unless it were actively trying to murder someone (including another sapient AI).
 

Imperioratorex Caprae

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Since humans are predominantly meat eaters (check your teeth if you're otherwise inclined to disagree) killing for food is necessary and ok in my book. Debate with me on the merits of eating non-meat substitutes and you'll be debating a brick wall. I don't believe in denying ones nature, nor do I believe eating meat is inhumane or wrong. You wouldn't tell a tiger that soy products can give it the same nutritional value. Nor can you convince me that because we can that means we have to. Certainly if you choose to ignore your basic nature thats fine with me as long as you don't think it gives you the right to tell others how they should live.
Nature is brutal and violent, and we're all natural animals despite being "sentient". Now other than killing for food, I don't believe in killing anything else unless it is self-defense with no other options open.
Death penalties aren't a good deterrent any more thanks to appeals and prison life being not as hard as it should be.
 

Canadamus Prime

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At the most basic level I'd say ostensibly at the point when one's survival is not dependent on it. In other words self defense, killing for food = fine, killing for sport = not so much.
 

CarlMin

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zehydra said:
If it is human. The nature of survival is that species survive at the expense of others. While I believe killing a person is wrong, it's not because of pain (that's a totally different issue), it's denying them life.

If we go and say then, "killing ALL living things is wrong because it is denying them life", then we would have no way of living. We would all starve to death. All other limitations, such as "capable of pain" or "sentient" are arbitrary in the context of the question of the right to life.
I'm not sure If I agree with that.

There is no logical reason to value a life over another life simply because it's a member of homo sapiens. I value human life because humans are emotional, intelligent creatures. Just like most mammals and birds, and I value their lives as well.
 

Kargathia

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Jul 16, 2009
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Killing anything that lives is morally wrong, and by definition makes you a selfish jerk.

However, this is where we leave philosophical cloud-cuckoo land, and enter the real world.

Yes, that place where we're all jerks, in varying degrees. Personally I've stopped even pretending that logic and classroom ethics have anything to do with my behaviour. It's influenced by so many things that it's pretty safe to call it arbitrary.
 

Gibboniser

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I disagree with killing in pretty much all circumstances, only kill it if your going to eat it, or in self defense ect. I honestly wish the people that hunted game were the ones getting shot at.
 

lacktheknack

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Jan 19, 2009
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Other: Injuring anything without a good reason vs. suffering.

Slapping flies because they're biting you: OK (flies don't feel pain, I think).

Pulling the legs off a fly with tweezers because you can: WTFNO.

Shooting a cow to eat it: OK.

Setting a live cow on fire: No!

And so on.