If killing is unforgivable, but you can stop someone from killing by killing them, how do you reconcile?

There is not necessarily any contradiction in this, at all.

Look up the concept of the social contract - that rights exist, but that they can be forfeited through one's failure to live up to those duties that must be carried out, if the desired rights are to have any practical significance.

If people felt free to kill, then a right to life would have little practical significance, so, the argument goes, by trying to kill, the would-be murderer forfeits his own right to life. Therefore, one does not commit murder by killing him in order to prevent the killing he intends, because the right of his that one would have violated has already been discarded, by the would-be killer.

If you established a contract with somebody else, promising to pay him a certain amount of money in exchange for mowing your lawn, and on the appointed day he elected to not show up, would you feel obligated to pay him anyway on the basis that "two wrongs don't make a right", or would you say that understandings and contracts exist only as long as all parties to them abide by them - that they are a matter of give and take, not of a pair of freestanding unilateral commitments?

Some would argue that much the same principle applies here. We pay for the respect shown to our own lives and rights with the respect we pay to the lives and rights of others. If we should be delinquent in our payment, we would, in this view, be left with little ground for complaint should we find our benefits permanently revoked.

There are, of course, three answers...and where you fall will be based on how you view the world.

1) First and most simply is that you simply do not reconcile it. Two people committed a "wrong" action. The first in trying to kill and the second in killing them to stop it.

2) Second, and least popular, is that killing is not unforgivable. In this case, neither person was in the wrong. It was OK for the first man to kill and the second to kill also.

3) Third, and where most of society falls, is this: aggression versus self defense. An "unprovoked" killing is wrong because it is without cause or disproportionate to the cause. Whereas the second person kills only to defend and in proper reaction to the crime being waged against them or others.

My take is that we all have certain inalienable rights and among them is the right to life.

What is a "wrong" action is any action that violates the rights of another. So, an unprovoked killing is wrong specifically because it violates the victim's right to live.

However, one of your inalienable rights is the ability to defend the rest of your inalienable rights by proportionate response. If someone violates your right by trying to kill you, you are within your rights to defend yourself (defend your own right to live) by fighting back. The killing is still not "right" in some metaphysical ways, but it was right enough to not be legally prosecutable. Your reactionary killing was provoked and in direct relation and proportion to the attack against you.

Person one was violating rights. Person two was defending them from violation.

... IF => THEN

wisdom helps

would the three SEAL-team marksmen be judged as committing an unforgivable sin for shooting the pirates holding the ship's captain hostage?

I don't think so.

holding someone else's action as "being unforgivable" seems to be an unforgivable position in itself.

You run into paradoxes when falling into the quicksand of "judging others".

Buddhists in the Army would likely have a tough time grappling with this concept I'm sure.

maybe differentiating between

a) killing

b) murder

would help resolve the ethical dilemma.

Armies, by their very nature, seem to involve the reality of killing when deemed necessary by commanders.

Buddhism is a beautiful philosophy

here my view to this:

if you kill someone for any reason (save one to be explained in a moment) you are wrong. Everyone has an inalienable right to life as autonomous human beings and no one has the right to end that.

excluding:

self defense, because just as anyone else has an inalienable right to life so do you. You have a right to preserve your life or the lives of others that can't defend themselves, however killing someone should be a last resort, if you can incapacitate them surely this is a much preferable option. However if this isn't possible for reasons beyond your control you have the right to protect your life without it being unethical, actually whoever is trying to kill you or others that are defenseless are violating your rights (or theirs) and has violated the social contract, use the force that you need to stop it. Hope it won't end in death but if it does that is the way that it is and nothing can be done about it.

For me, religion has nothing to do with these stuff.. Killing is not the only way to solve problems, that's what you need to know..

Killing is wrong, so you want to kill in order not to have someone else get killed by that person?.. That's still wrong.. It's still killing.. It's like saying it's okay to kill someone who has killed another, so revenge would be okay, which is not.. There is no excuse or justification to such an action, no matter who's the one committing it or against who it's committed..

So sorry, but who told you that in all instances, situations and circumstances ending the life of another is wrong?

So as to defend the life and freedoms/rights of others who are being oppressed is such a manner that the same threatens to end their life or lives, or to defend the same in regards to one's self or one's family, such actions may be well justified and, in fact, necessary for the greater good if there are no other possible options for controlling or remedying the situation (such as incarceration or another form of restraint and/or limiting of the offender, re-education the offender, mutually agreeing to end the violence, etc.).

Killing of others is wrong when such is done or is being utilized as a means of oppressing others, harming others for one's perverted personal pleasure, so as to steal from others, so as to control or limit population growth, as a practice of eliminating "unwanted" members of a society, as revenge for a crime, etc.

Each instance must be dealt with as both the "instance" in question (i.e., the immediate) and according to the long term effects that may arise and are foreseeable from the imposition of any possible resolution.

It is best to live in harmony with the energy of the universe as much as one is able to do so.

namaste

In the terms of the situation I think it is ok. Your not exactly killing someone in cold blood, your not killing someone because you want to. You've got a fair enough motive.

I suppose it comes down, is it more noble to let the victim or the murderer die? My opinion is to kill the murderer.

You don't, so the answer is that some killing is forgivable.

I'm sort of trying to answer that myself. http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=Avb_U...