"Thou shalt not kill"...did you have to be TOLD this?

A common police report if kids didn't know that killing is wrong: "that's the tenth toddler that mass-murdered people this month alone...darn, we need to do get the Ten Commandments to these kids sooner than we're doing, since they just don't know that killing is wrong! Thank god we have the Ten Commandments available, though!"

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People were fundamentally stupid back then, and so were the writers of the Bible/Quran. Those idiots thought the earth was flat. If they were so stupid to not know that killing is wrong then why the hell would we believe in their invisible friends today!?

 

Christias/Muslims/Jews.....it's a fairy tale.

 

Then too bad that SOB doesn't care about us enough to simply author a book telling us right from wrong. He could do that in 0.0001 seconds (in all languages) if he's the all-powerful creator of the universe and all. But he won't do that, because he's not even real. He was invented by insecure people to control other people, and to try to explain where we go when we die.

 

What an utterly ridiculous comment. Toddlers don't know how to swim, does that mean 10s of thousands are drowning every day? Most people would understand why that isn't the case; I'm not sure that you would.

Here, you've made the assertion that children "innately" know right from wrong, including that killing is wrong. Prove it.

You didn't answer the question. Whether they were as informed then as we are today is irrelevant. Were they actually different? Did they have a different *capacity* for learning right and wrong?

 

It's not relevant today unless we believe in their claimed invisible friends, and/or use their writings as moral guides today, which the Pope and others do today, of course. The Pope is an idiot. He believes in the invisible friends of barbarians.

 

This is not complete proof, but still: if people needed to be told not to kill then atheists (who haven't been indoctrinated into the 10 commandments) would likely have a much much higher percentage in prisons than religious people do....but actually it's just the opposite.

 

What does it say about you that you make a lot of assertions that you refuse to support?

 

You feel that these things are not self evident?

 

Apparently its a GOOD THING that the Bible's 10 Commandments exist or Ken would have killed someone before he read them?....apparently they are not self-evident to Ken?

 

Think about this
you believe the version in Hebrew is right

So often people say they believe
And then act is if they know

 

What, that because toddlers aren't mass murderers they innately know that killing is wrong? I can think of a lot of reasons why toddlers aren't mass murderers. One, very few are capable of thinking of about killing others. Two, they aren't of a size that allows them to control their own environment, much less engage in the difficult endeavor of taking the life of another.

Anyone who watches small children knows that they are generally very selfish (it's how they get resources) and that they can be violent when angry and that they must be taught to control that anger rather than hurt others. I do believe that cooperation is also a strong urge, which leads children of all ages to try to work with other children first, before moving toward domination and violence.

Humans of all ages grieve over loss, and they are capable of understanding that others have the same feeling of loss, even those others are of a different tribe and, thus, "the enemy." That cooperative urge will lead the more sympathetic to want to avoid causing such grief unless strictly necessary.

However, if a small child instinctively knows right and from wrong, as the OP asserts, then the OP ought to know exactly when it's right to kill and exactly when it's wrong since it's instinctive for him (and everyone else.)

 

I have not mentioned one word about the Bible or the ten commandments. I'm not religious nor have I ever been. I don't believe in skydaddies or supreme beings that tell others what to do (or supreme authorities, for that matter). What I am picking at is your completely unsupportable assertion that children instinctively know right from wrong.
What is also apparent is that you don't really an argument. You just have a desire to attack others.

 

I was unaware that you are not a theist, sorry about that.
Let me clarify: I think children know that KILLING is simply wrong. They don't need an invisible sky daddy ("that always needs money!", by the way) to tell them that, that's an insult to our intelligence.

George Carlin: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2iv9GceJA8

 

You think it. There's not reason to believe it. Mass murder on behalf of states or tribes (think Hutus and Tutsis) goes on all too frequently to make it believable that humans innately "know" killing is wrong.
It is through the work of enlightened individuals that culture, over the long period of human civilization, has shifted to valuing human life simply for the sake of human life. It's unfortunate that humans then turn that into religiosity, but that's no different than an atheist state which routinely kills on a mass scale for the "common good."

Now the counter argument might be that an aversion to killing is innate, and yet our intellect allows us to overcome such aversions and make more "rational" decisions as to when killing other humans is appropriate. I don't see any evidence of that.

 

The nature vs nurture thing is tough to work out, but members of social animal groups know not to randomly kill eachother.

 

Is that for survival in the form of cooperation, or because they know it's wrong to kill? Frequently neither they, nor human animals, have any problem killing their own kind from outside their social groups.

As a wise man, you might hand down a commandment like "Thou Shalt Not Kill" in order to unite tribes into a stronger nation. Otherwise, they are going to have no problem killing each other. Now you have a problem, do you claim the rules are from you, or from some powerful entity capable of inflicting extreme punishment? The latter will have much more effect, especially as the people of the time had little in the way of explanation for natural phenomena. Irrational fear is common enough today, and atheist states use it to get one group of people to kill another group of people, such as the Kulaks of the Soviet Union.

 

The original commandment said "You shall not kill." Which in effect automatically condemns everyone to hell. In other words, everyone is going to hell, because everyone kills at least something -- germs, insects, etc.

But as time went on the original commandment was spinned, interpreted, amended, translated, adjusted, modified, and edited to the point that it nows means whatever one conveniently wants, or needs it, to mean -- sort of like the U.S. Constitution.

 

Actually no children don't know that, but society is built where killing is not needed. Now you stereotypic view of religion suggests you have no interest in discussion.

 

No it says.... Do not Murder.........it is clear.....it isn't ambiguous. The mistranslation centuries later not withstanding.

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No it says.... Do not Murder.........it is clear.....it isn't ambiguous. The mistranslation centuries later not withstanding.

 

But just what is murder and what is not is far from clear,even in countries with tightly codified laws like the usa. what a middle eastern sky god cult might have meant by it is not clear either, tho they give a lot of examples of what would be war crimes, atrocities and murder by today's reckoning, all sanctioned by same god..

 

Funny that is exactly why I know that it means murder, which is the unlawful taking of a human life.

Funny how people who don't believe in God take the Bible more literally than many who do.
The real question would be about why would an ancient people write a story like this?

 

I think we can clarify at least in terms of a simple rule of thumb. Don't kill anyone you're not supposed to, and the authorities will decide who that is. Their decision depends on circumstances, and on who they are, who you are, and who the person you killed is.

 

how do you know atheists take it more literally? i dont take any of it as literal.

its at best, approximate when its not outright false.

as for why an ancient people would codify their social mores,
every society new and old does that.

Stories that illustrate ideas be it Aesop or some native american cautionary tale is also a universal.

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Absolute morality, there it is.

 

Not murdering people is just a self evident truth to me and I have always wondered why some need to read it in a book for it to carry any moral weight.