The Death Penalty Will Kill You
My whole life I’ve been in favor of the death penalty. It seemed like a relatively simple equation: my ugly neighbor touches my Eggo brand waffles, and I say “leggo my Eggos”. He doesn’t, so I kill him. Wait. No, I don’t think that’s what I meant.
I think what I meant to say was that I’ve always believed that there are some things worth dieing for, and those things are generally worth killing for as well. An easy example is fighting off someone who is trying to kill your child. It would be a moral thing to harm the attacker in the interests of saving your child’s life. If the attacker were able to kill him or her, it seemed similarly moral to take their own life from them. They have taken the most important thing your child had, so we’ll take what’s most valuable to them.
That’s all fine and dandy in a direct cause and effect setting. However, I saw a quote from a prominent “new” atheist today that more or less stated that some religious ideologues are so dangerous that it would be in the interests of society to kill them. I don’t know what it was about today or that quote, but that single idea gave me some trouble.
In an article that I haven’t published here yet, I argue (as others before me have) that human free will is an illusion. There are so many subliminal processes and pathways that control our every move and thought that free will really is a figment of a constantly surprised consciousness (more on what I mean some other time). Basically, we are biological computers that happen to know we’re computers.
If we’re computers, it seems somewhat immoral to simply snuff out the life of one because of the potential danger their organic programming poses to everyone else. If we don’t, however, it’s possible that their “virus” will spread beyond themselves and infect numerous other people. The more people have the dangerous programming, the more likely they are to harm you or I. Put in those terms, it makes a lot of sense in a Machiavellian way to bump off the source of the virus before it can spread. That’s pretty scary to me though. What if society decides that I’m suddenly a virus and decides to kill me even if I’ve never done physical harm to someone? Wouldn’t it be a lot nicer to try and re-program me in the image of society?
Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. Some of our human brethren are so broken that I doubt they can ever be capable of living peacefully with everyone else. The human mind is an amazing organ, but once corrupted, it is incredibly difficult to get it back. So the question becomes, do we tolerate the worst of our kind, or do we perform an abortion on the universe and get rid of them before they can really do some damage?
From a theoretical perspective, I’m in favor of the abortion. From a more pragmatic standpoint though, it’s a damn scary thought. If the guy does some physical harm to someone, it’s much more black and white to me. Once you get into thoughtcrime though, I think I have to bow out.
Nevertheless, let this be a lesson: always use a condom. Not only does it prevent an abortion in my dumb, figurative sense, but it saves us from having more idiots in the literal sense. That, and it means fewer ginger kids trying to get their soulless hands on my Eggo.
