Question How can one rationally show that life is of supreme value and that killing should be disallowed in all instances, without relying on religious axioms such as that life is "sacred" or "god given?" It appears that, without resorting to such a religious axiom, it is impossible to rationalize complete prohibition of killing, especially considering social situations which we already know necessitate taking of life, e.g. war or self-defense. If that is true, can one conclude that the prohibition of killing as it stands in modern criminal law is induced by religious motivation and not a genuine society engineering concern, and as such contradicts reasoning?

Accepted:
May 6, 2008

Comments

I think you've answered most of your own question. You pointed to self-defense and war as potential cases of acceptable killing. But the law in every country I know of allows for self-defense, and also allows for legislatures or rulers to declare war. We might add: for better or worse (worse , in my view) some countries allow for capital punishment. And so whether or not religion has anything to do with the historical origins of the law, there are very few nations, if any, in which killing is absolutely and always illegal.

Still, we do place a very high value on life -- perhaps even a "supreme" value, even if not an absolute one. But it's not at all clear that we have to use religious premises to end up with this view, and it's also not clear that there's anything irrational in thinking that killing is usually a very great wrong. One might think: if this is irrational, we need some sort of argument to see why.