Sunday, February 04, 2007

Clarifying the Sixth Commandment: "Thou Shall Not Kill"

The theory of a Just War is the underpinning set of criteria which aids to determine if going to war is morally permissible, and specifies the circumstances in which the sixth commandment, "Thou Shall Not Kill", can be ignored. In 1993, the US Catholic Conference stated "Force may be used only to correct a grave, public evil, i.e., aggression or massive violation of the basic human rights of whole populations"

Below is a excerpt from an article in The Onion in which God holds a press conference to help clarify the sixth commandment, the "Don't Kill" rule. The complete article can be found here.

NEW YORK - Responding to recent events on Earth, God, the omniscient creator-deity worshipped by billions of followers of various faiths for more than 6,000 years, angrily clarified His longtime stance against humans killing each other Monday.

...

"I don't care how holy somebody claims to be," God said. "If a person tells you it's My will that they kill someone, they're wrong. Got it? I don't care what religion you are, or who you think your enemy is, here it is one more time: No killing, in My name or anyone else's, ever again."

...

"I tried to put it in the simplest possible terms for you people, so you'd get it straight, because I thought it was pretty important," said God, called Yahweh and Allah respectively in the Judaic and Muslim traditions. "I guess I figured I'd left no real room for confusion after putting it in a four-word sentence with one-syllable words, on the tablets I gave to Moses. How much more clear can I get?"

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