God has ordered you to kill
God has ordered you to kill
I have asked this question to dozens and dozens of people, across continents and across religions. I thought it might be interesting to ask it here, too. A couple of threads have skirted around the question, but none yet have come right out and asked it that I have seen.
The hypothetical situation
The hypothetical situation that this question is based on works is simple. Somehow your god has conveyed to you a message that you must kill a person. However this was done, you have no doubt in your mind that the message really is from your god. There is no deception or trickery, and you have been convinced of this somehow.
The person you have been ordered to kill is not an obviously dangerous person. For example, your god has not ordered you to kill Osama ibn Laden or Pat Robertson, but an average person who, by any reasonable estimation, is harmless. There is no reason to suspect that this person is in anyway a threat to anyone or anything. They are an ordinary, average person with an ordinary, average job and family.
So, to summarize, you have been given an order that you are sure is from your god to kill a person that you cannot see a secular reason to kill. What do you do?
Before you answer
Before you answer, here are some qualifying points:
First, you can't simply say that your god would never ask you to do such a thing, unless you can prove that not only have they never done it, but they definitely never would. For most religions, if not all, that is not possible.
Second, you can't simply say that you don't have enough evidence that it really is the will of your god. The assumption of the question is that you have had it proven to you in some way or another that this really is a request from your god.
If you do either of these things, you are avoiding the question. The question assumes that your god has asked you kill someone, and you have proof that the request actually came from your god.
(However, if you can actually prove that your god would never ask someone to kill, feel free to present it. Clearly that is not the case for any of the Judaistic religions: Abraham was ordered to kill his son. Sure, God ordered him to stop at the last minute, but the point of the affair was that God ordered it and Abraham was prepared to do it. And of course, there are plenty of other cases of God ordering killing, often of innocents, such as in Exodus 32, Deuteronomy 7, Joshua 8-11, Judges 20, 2 Chronicles 22, Ezekiel 9... need i go on?)
Summary
So in summary, the question at hand is:
Once you have answered that, you can answer the followup question: What would it take to convince you that an order to kill someone actually came from your god?
I have asked this question to dozens and dozens of people, across continents and across religions. I thought it might be interesting to ask it here, too. A couple of threads have skirted around the question, but none yet have come right out and asked it that I have seen.
- What if your god told you to kill someone? What would you do? Would you attempt to argue? Would you simply refuse? Or would you actually go ahead and do it?
The hypothetical situation
The hypothetical situation that this question is based on works is simple. Somehow your god has conveyed to you a message that you must kill a person. However this was done, you have no doubt in your mind that the message really is from your god. There is no deception or trickery, and you have been convinced of this somehow.
The person you have been ordered to kill is not an obviously dangerous person. For example, your god has not ordered you to kill Osama ibn Laden or Pat Robertson, but an average person who, by any reasonable estimation, is harmless. There is no reason to suspect that this person is in anyway a threat to anyone or anything. They are an ordinary, average person with an ordinary, average job and family.
So, to summarize, you have been given an order that you are sure is from your god to kill a person that you cannot see a secular reason to kill. What do you do?
Before you answer
Before you answer, here are some qualifying points:
First, you can't simply say that your god would never ask you to do such a thing, unless you can prove that not only have they never done it, but they definitely never would. For most religions, if not all, that is not possible.
Second, you can't simply say that you don't have enough evidence that it really is the will of your god. The assumption of the question is that you have had it proven to you in some way or another that this really is a request from your god.
If you do either of these things, you are avoiding the question. The question assumes that your god has asked you kill someone, and you have proof that the request actually came from your god.
(However, if you can actually prove that your god would never ask someone to kill, feel free to present it. Clearly that is not the case for any of the Judaistic religions: Abraham was ordered to kill his son. Sure, God ordered him to stop at the last minute, but the point of the affair was that God ordered it and Abraham was prepared to do it. And of course, there are plenty of other cases of God ordering killing, often of innocents, such as in Exodus 32, Deuteronomy 7, Joshua 8-11, Judges 20, 2 Chronicles 22, Ezekiel 9... need i go on?)
Summary
So in summary, the question at hand is:
- Your god has ordered you to kill. You have no doubt that this order is from your god. You cannot see a reason to kill the intended victim other than that it has been commanded by your god. What do you do?
Once you have answered that, you can answer the followup question: What would it take to convince you that an order to kill someone actually came from your god?
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