Because killing can now be done at a distance, anonymously. Think of snipers, letter bombs, poison gas canisters. And if killing was legal, there would be no investigative body to try and find who had perpetrated a killing. Although that does open up a whole new Pinkertonesque job market.
I believe you would have vastly more anonymous killings than face to face confrontational killings where the killer was easily identified. An economical detente wouldn’t hold up under those circumstances.
I’m curious – are you communicating to us from a parallel space-time continuum? Because you’re not describing what happened in the continuum the rest of us inhabit.
First, if you want to find out about the Viking Legal Code, perhaps you should go to Google and type in"Viking Legal Code". The third link down talks about the basic Viking legal code in Iceland:
Certainly it suggests that the farmers that made up the bulk of Viking society weren’t anarchists; did you possibly doubt that this was the case?
Second, as others have pointed out, science does not itself make value judgments; all it can do is sort facts from fiction, falsify theories, and make phenomenological predictions. Moral codes, whether religious or secular in nature, may then take the fruits of science and incorporate them into their systems. A moral code based on false data is a flawed code.
Your question, therefore, doesn’t make any sense. Would you ask for a preference utilitarian proof that water boils at 100 degrees Celsius at sea level? Would you ask for a Taoist argument that Winston Churchill helped end Hitler’s rule? Would you ask for a reasonable claim, using only baseball terminology, that God exists?
Different systems of thought are appropriate for answering different questions. You’re asking the wrong question to the wrong system.
Instead, you may wish to ask for nonreligious moral codes that consider killing humans to be unethical, and thenyou may debate them.
Daniel
The_Broken_Column, i think you’re going to have to go more in depth about what you mean by “scientific reasons”. this word, i do not think it means, what you think it means.
anyone of us could give you a “rational basis” for why arbitrary killing of people should not be tolerated in a society. indeed, what could be more detrimental to the survival of a society than the removal of its members by other members?
yeah, we can all come up with rational reasons with many different bases why murder should be illegal, but science is a method. it does not speak on the rightness or wrongness of an action. when using science to argue the rationality of law, we demonstrate through scientific means the harm or pleasure the law might cause, but we define harm and pleasure independently of science. in short, science does not judge. science does not “prevent” anything. it is a method of acquiring factual knowledge.
so what do you mean when you say you want “scientific reasons”? what would a valid scientific reason be?
I never said Vikings were anarchists but that the laws were not as established as ours by a long shot.
Humans have probably never been anarchists since we are all family oriented from birth.
However the link you posted is describing a transitional Nordic culture especially in concerns with Iceland in 1022.
And I agree fully that science presents only facts, not value judgements, so why should I legalize or illegalize murder based on the facts? And like-wise, why should I legalize or illegalize gay marriage based on the same method?
My question does make sense, if you aren’t taking it so absolutely. Realize it is hypothetical in nature and that I understand what Science really is, what I don’t understand is how people can say that the “facts” don’t agree with my opinions, when in the case of killing, the facts don’t agree with the law.
Except Dante’s Annonymous killing argument, that’s good for today, but hardly explains pre-1800s English laws. Also it is intriguing since today they have the technology to make guns only work based on DNA analysis and so by the bullet you can determine who shot the gun. Not fool proof but certainly an advanced forensics method.
That is your opinion, many people have differing views about this. I’m sure whoever it was that was a philosophy major would agree that in Descartes’ mind, all that matter was method, that if we all used the same correct method on each question we would arrive at the truth. Although he didn’t seem to explain how we should agree on what is the correct method.
I thought I did ask this, I’m not speaking of morals being religious entirely, morals are morals…a societal bound. In fact I do regard morals and laws the same thing. All that I don’t believe is that morals are scientifically rationalized all the time. And nor do I think they always should be.
the great bambino is up in the press box, calling every play.
sorry, couldn’t help myself.
T_B_C:
You completely lost me on the Viking history lesson. Vinkings certainly made raids on foreign lands and certainly killed many foreigners. But there is no evidence that Viking society allowed every individual within that society to murder any other individual (within that society) w/o consequences. If you have some sources that demonstrate this situation to have been the case, “bring 'em on”.
Good point Ramanujan, I began using the term “Scientific Reasoning” over scientific reasons because I quickly realized that term was too vague.
Obviously physics isn’t going to explain this.
But scientific reasoning I believe captures what I was looking for, using the scientific method (statistics and observations and experimentations if need be), and or a strong amount of reasoning along those lines (because of these sociological factors murder is a black and white issue where murder beyond this line can not be tollerated in a civil society).
And I don’t know what a valid scientific reason would be, that’s why I asked. Scientific “reasoning” if you will.
But I wanted something along the lines of the same type of argument you would give for gay marriages or polygamy or such.
What reasons besides simply what people can argue for themselves is there to ban killing people?
Or rather, draw a line in the sand if you will. When you draw a line it is defined and non-debateable.
Is that even possible with such a thing as killing? And is that possible with most things in our society, most morals?
There’s one in every crowd! 
Broken Column, may I gently suggest that you’re not expressing yourself as well as you might? Your original post asks several different completely unrelated questions, and when some people tried to provide answers to the first question, you rejected them as not answering the third question.
But I’ll assume that you mean what you say now, that you’re looking for secular moral systems that consider some killing of humans to be illegal. If that’s what you’re looking for, surely you’ve not looked very hard. Look at Peter Singer’s preference utilitarianism, which is a coherent moral system that allows for killing human newborns but not killing adult cows, for example. Look at John Stuart Mill’s classical utilitarianism. Look at modern Libertarian thought, exemplified by Nozak (or was it Novak?) and Anarchy, State, and Utopia.
There is a superabundance of moral codes that do not rely on any supernatural beings or forces but that nevertheless reject the prima facie killing of most human beings.
I’m still not sure I’m getting your question. Of course, given your history here, I suspect that your real question is, why are you secularists willing to murder babies? If that’s your real question, perhaps you ought to ask it instead; that might avoid some of the confusion. If that’s really not your real question, though, it would definitely help if you clarified what you’re asking, using specific examples and avoid mass generalizations.
Daniel
Well I know that all of Viking stories show that the level of permitted killing is no different between fellow “viking” and foriegner, indeed if at the time of their first expansion there was even such a distinction.
It was not Viking “superior” thought or such that let them kill others, it was the fact they had been so brutal at home that they were so brutal abroad.
Read these sagas and eddas to your delight, if you can post a historian that can say specifically that “historically we don’t see any evidence that they were as violent at home as abroad” I’ll give that merrit and try to make a stronger case. But for now I think if you just flip through these you’ll see the distinction I’m trying to establish.
http://www.scandinavica.com/shop/viking/sagas.htm
That’s just a list, you’d have to buy the books, but you can just type those eddas and sagas into yahoo and find them online as well or at least substantial parts. I’m just not going to bother posting a list of terms to put into yahoo or such.
you understand that the value judgements are always the responsibility of the people, right? religion does not make value judgements, it leaves that to its adherents. it makes demands and posits consequences for not submitting to those demands. if those consequences are accepted as fact (which is a value judgement), then the person deciding how to behave will determine how those consequences will affect his utility compared to how it would be if he just followed the demands.
if you are asking for reasons not to commit murder other than “because god said so”, please say that. science does not, however, provide reasons why we should or shouldn’t behave a certain way. it provides facts which help us decide how to behave based on what we want.
I think you’re right left hand, I am not so certain though that from now on that will be such a case. I was under sever time constraints to put out this post, and I even ignored the time to post some replies, so I was hardly really thinking as well about the issue I was trying to bring up, as much as I was just about trying to create an issue.
But I’m not so much looking for a secular moral reason as a positivist reason (I think that would be a good term to use?)
Positivists are policy makers who believe in using the scientific methods, they are why you see so many polls and such about this or that…everything can be analyzed and a policy can be formulated from that.
I personally am a bit of the Rational or Constructivist “sect” in which scientific models are completely ignored or they are used but that culture and morals must also be taken into consideration respectively.
And while I have deeper reasons for this thread I don’t ask the questions as you say, all at once. Because I want to learn the individual ideas of people, not the conglomerate.
For instace, a person might establish an opinon about this that is different than a topic that involves this but in a different setting.
Just ignore that though, that’s personal stuff nothing to do with the topic on hand.
If you understand what I mean by positivist versus constructivist and rationalist, then you’d know EXACTLY what I’m asking for in this post…I’m asking for the postivist response on why it should be policy to illegalize murder.
Easy answer is…because humans form societies. And societies, if they are to function, form rules, moral codes, mores, etc…otherwise they degenerate into chaos and anarchy. Why have marrages? Why, to set out guidelines of sexual access and smooth over tensions and problems that arrise otherwise. Why limit ‘murder’? If there was no limit on murder in a society, then there would be anarchy (and therefor NO society), so societies themselves mark out the limitations…sanctioning or not sanctining ‘murder’. These limitations are generally but not universally agreed upon by the people who make up the societies in question. Has nothing to do with religion, its survival of the species and propagation of a given ‘society’.
If enough of the people in the society do NOT agree with the demarked limitations, then the society either changes, splits or collapses. So, there is a ‘non-religious’ explaination of why societies limit murdering humans to sanctioned activity only. Anthropology IS a science after all, so I suppose you have a ‘scientific’ reason also.
You claim that the Nazi’s ‘sanctioned’ the murder of the Jews (true enough) but that just because they ‘sanctioned’ it, we must feel they are right for some reason. Just because the Nazi’s believed and sanctioned systematic murder in THEIR society doesn’t mean a thing. Obviously other societies didn’t agree and in the end the Nazi’s were crushed. A society gains its power from the people that make it up…the PEOPLE who make it up. Other societies are free to agree or oppose those sanctions, and if they are agregious enough, there will be war between societies.
Whats your point then? Viking society had a different moral code, different limits on the sanctioning of murder, different mores, etc. Are you trying to make the determination that OUR moral code, legal code, etc is better or something? Better based on what? Who decides whats better?
Your question makes sense…to you. It makes no sense to me (and appearently I’m not alone here). Science can’t answer things like ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. Thats a given…it doesn’t work that way. The ‘fact’ is, that without delimiting ‘murder’ in a society, you don’t HAVE a society. Therefor societies MUST delimit ‘murder’ as well as myriad other things, to function. Each society delimits things differently. In some homosexual practices are not stigmatized…and even encouraged. In others, men may have multiple wives. In others, old women and men are tortured until they confess their ‘sins’, deprived of their property (to the enrichment of the church) and then burned at the stake…i.e. sanctioned murder. What other ‘facts’ are you talking about?
-XT
No actually I think I figured out exactly how to ask the question, too bad I didn’t think of it at the first post, but refer to the “positivist” question.
If you’re unsure of what a positivist is I suppose it’s available to look it up, but in short it’s just a person who believes that policy decisions can be made through scientific reasoning alone. I’m not a positivist.
My “agenda” is simply that I’d like people to respect morals or values more than I see, I see a lot of people trying to be far more like “positivists” than constructivists or rationalists. That is, everyone these days seem to think that if there is no scientific reason not to do it (scientifically verifiable, you know, if you can’t prove God don’t believe in him, that sorta thing), then there is no reason not to do it.
Well so is there any way to prove through a method of science, that there is a good reason to illegallize murder? Or do we have to rely on simply opinions and logic?
I think I understand your terms, but I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a positivist argument in favor or in opposition to any public policy, and I’m not convinced you have, either. Can you provide us with what you consider to be an example of such an argument?
If you provide us with that example, we can either dispute your premise (by denying that it’s a positivist argument), attempt to provide an analogous argument, or conclude that there is no positivist argument to be made against killing humans.
Without that example, I’m afraid you’ll get answer to many questions, but not to the ones that you’re trying to ask.
Daniel
TBC, could you define “killing people” for us? I think it would be fairly simple to come up with a memetic or genetic argument about why murder (defined as killing people in the in-group) is disadvantageous. However, societies thoughout history, including ours, have had no problem killing people outside the in-group. (John, I assume your question about long-lasting societies sanctioning killing refers to in-group killing.)
As our in-groups have expanded, from tribe to village to nation-state, the number of people you are not supposed to kill has expanded also. Notice that governments have taken this power on themselves. In time of peace it is wrong to kill someone in the next country, in time of war it is wrong not to.
How this has anything to do with gay marriage, though, is way beyond me.
But xtisme, you bring up a good point with Marriages, it is my belief that Morals occur over long periods of time because it is the way society functions BEST…hence illegalized murder and such…
…but even with the case of marriage to me it seems that people are saying because there is no “evidence” to have such morals they should be removed. I think it is just impossible to see that we need such morals because in the case of society so much is involved at one time that we can over look factors that cause morals to begin with.
Also see above posts to see that I’ve finalized my question into what I think is fully understandable.
xtisme though reading your post I think we’d agree on more things in time. Just making a premliminary assumption but it seems you see things as variable from society to society and so do I, what was right for the Nazis doesn’t mean it should be for everyone, and I see nothing wrong with passing our judgement on them as a punishment. The victor sets the rules kinda thing.
Again this question is trying to establish a goal in the question form of “Should we or should we not allow killing of humans”, with the requirements that the goal be achieved through the “Postivist method”.
Which means for some, maybe you, this will be completely non-understandable, as not all of us are willing to ignore the moral aspects of something to make a decision, I certainly am not.
But in other things I have a position on, they are shaped by morals regardless of what the facts are, and they aren’t morals because I was raised that way but because it is how I want the world to work…and I think that it is just as legitimate as the guy who can provide some scientific evidence of anything.
For instance, we can’t test the existance of God, for some this is enough to ignore God completely, I don’t see it that way, does science make my opinion less valid?
I don’t think so.
And I think that this question in the revised way I have asked, shows that. I believe that science isn’t the justification of everything, just a guide, and if everyone here thinks that too more power to you. If not, then that person should be able to answer my question as I asked it.
Does that help any xtisme?
I want to clarify that when I ask for an example, I’m looking for a cite: I’d like something I can evaluate for myself, ideally a website I can look at, and not simply a description of someone else’s argument.
Voyager does raise an interesting point, that genetically speaking it’s often disadvantageous to kill members of your support-group; however, I’d say that that argument isn’t really one that anyone uses seriously, since who constitutes your support-group can change so fluidly. It’s close to the argument used by rational egoism, though, or by social contractarianism, two more secular philosophies that reject killing most humans (but that, incidentally, contain no provisos against abortion).
Daniel
Cooperation improves everybody’s chances for survival. We’re producing more art than the Vikings because through cooperation, we can pool our resources. Your thesis seems to be that every man for himself is the natural way of things, and I don’t think that’s correct.
Well left hand, the most important thing is people have begun in this thread to move away from the childish assaults as were earlier. People seem to have taken a dislike to my thoughts and it is probably mostly due to how I present them, not so much what they are. But that can all be smoothed out, it is a bad reason to dislike someone.
I think I see what you mean, and come to think of it I don’t think I can think of something that says through the positivist method, “here is the black and white answer.” It seems with this method as with the scientific method in general, the answer is challenged, then replaced with a new answer and it is an ongoing process.
But in matters such as Murder (killing = killing of people … let’s ignore if it is in the in or out crowd and just say killing of anyone), gay marriage, gun ownership, people want a definite answer. And what I see is that people try to get this answer in a scientific manner…which is as stated above, unworkable because the scientific method itself is about test then retest and argument and then a counter argument. Very few “laws” exist in any branch of science, and do any even exist in the branch of social science?
So a good question in itself is can we even make a policy or law or such based alone on scientific data and objective analysis? Particularly in the case of something such as killing people.
Voyager that might be a point though, backing up to the discussion of Vikings, I said that “if there even was a meaning to be viking when they first expanded”…that is because you weren’t a “viking” as much as you were a person from such and such a town with such and such a king, and the person down the way was another “group” all together. When people expanded from their boarders their groups merged into larger more general likenesses.