Quote Originally Posted by Sir Moody
1. Some guy is working on his property digging out his waterline and a neigbours kid falls in and is KILLED. Is that MURDER?

2. Some teenagers out for smoke behind someone's house toss a cigarette that starts a fire, KILLING someone. Is that MURDER?

3. Some drunk runs a stop sign and plows into another car, KILLING someone. Is that MURDER?

4. Some woman shoots and KILLS a man attempting to rape her. Is that MURDER?

5. A drafted soldier in Vietnam is in a foxhole and KILLS an enemy soldier coming at him. Is that MURDER?

6. A soldier at the village of My Lai guns down women and children as they try to run, KILLING them. Is that MURDER?
1. accident. Some people would say proper messages could perhaps have been taken to avoid it, but if the person didn't know about it, then he can't be blamed in any way. If he knows about it, but it costs time and money to cover up the hole so nobody can fall down, then according to averages measured in society in industrial production, people think it's unethical if covering up etc. cost less than $200,000,000 per person that died if you didn't cover up, i.e. a human life is on average worth $200,000,000

2. if they saw it starting to burn when they threw the cigarette, and didn't try to stop it or call the firemen. While I believe you have no duty to actively do good things, if you cause something bad you have a duty to actively compensate it, otherwise you're evil (how evil depends on how much damage you caused, obviously).

3. if you can't drive properly while drunk, or keep yourself from driving when you get drunk, you shouldn't drink. You shouldn't be given a second chance on this one - if you've committed this you should be forbidden from ever drinking again, and punished each time you're seen drunk outside your own house as if you had run over someone while drunk.

4. self-defense, however in law it must be thorougly established that it was rape and not a normal intercourse during with she shot the guy before the woman can be considered innocent.

5. killing in war is a form of self-defense if you look at the situation in itself, but if you fight in a war that is unjust, it's definitely a form of murder. You're however pressured to it in order to get your wage, or pressured to it by conscription. The judgement all comes down to whether the war is justified or not. If it's justified, you're pretty much innocent. If it isn't justified, you're comparable to the man who kills someone because someone else forces you to do so (and whether that is a sin or not is different according to different viewpoints). It all comes down to whether the war in itself is justified or not, and in general is carried out in a way such that it'll achieve a political objective that'll improve the life for many people in the future. If a justified war is fought with massacres and massmurder, then it becomes unjustified because the defeated will not tolerate the outcome, and keep fighting back, starting revenge wars etc., in which case a stable peace can't be met. Because of the difficulty for a regular private to assess this situation, the judgement must be based on what information the soldier had at his disposal when he choose to fight or not fight. Certain news seldom reach the soldiers at the frontline until the end of the war, so the judgement must be milder in practise than in theory.

6. murder