Why are we not allowed to kill

[Meneldil]

Our culture views Life, Liberty and Property as being fundamental for the individual. This draws, obviously, on the ideas Locke advances regarding these concepts.

Then we're back to culture.

That has always been the worst and most irrelevant response. Who cares what other people want, realistically?

I think you're quite wrong on this. Everybody actes according to others' view. Not only we care about what they want, but also about what they think, do or say, and we define our behavior given these informations. Some people chose to behave as people expect them to do, some others willingfully chose not to.

Without a metaphysical superlative - murder, theft, etc are not wrong, they may just be inoportune in the name of balance and hypothetical personal security. The funny thing is that those who beleive in nothing still appeal to universal concepts to express their outrage when killing happens.

Everyone dies.

The real question is "why not" embrace nature and kill as callously as a falling tree or suffocating tide if you'd like to? You have better than a 50% chance of getting away with it - and if you beleive that humans are just animals, then the guilt should be gone in the same basket as God, Heaven, and hell.

By metaphysical superlative, do you mean some kind of god? If so, I call on BS. Many people wanted to explain why murder is bad without using universal principles. We so far reached several conclusions:
- there's actually no reason why murder is "bad"
- we decided it was bad out of a rational, egoistical reasoning
- we avoid killing eachother because of empathy
- we avoid killing eachother to protect our gene pool

Yet, even if I think each of these postulates is somewhat right, I still on a personal level use universal concepts to blame (most) murderers, and I don't believe in God/gods/Heaven/Hell. Universal Concepts are not limited to believers. We had this whole Enlightment thingy a few centuries ago you know.

[CBR]

Yet, even if I think each of these postulates is somewhat right, I still on a personal level use universal concepts to blame (most) murderers, and I don't believe in God/gods/Heaven/Hell. Universal Concepts are not limited to believers. We had this whole Enlightment thingy a few centuries ago you know.

By universal I assume that is meant as in 100% ?

Not all humans shows remorse/empathy and some seem to have no problems with killing. So killing=bad cannot be seen as universal for humans. I guess it can be considered universal if one looks at society(the majority) in general.

AFAIK there are examples of animals showing compassion even towards other species so one cannot even say it is a human concept only.


CBR

[ICantSpellDawg]

By universal I assume that is meant as in 100% ?

Not all humans shows remorse/empathy and some seem to have no problems with killing. So killing=bad cannot be seen as universal for humans. I guess it can be considered universal if one looks at society(the majority) in general.

AFAIK there are examples of animals showing compassion even towards other species so one cannot even say it is a human concept only.


CBR

Yes!