Werewolf said:
The relevance is that feeling bad about having to kill an evil someone who tried to kill you is irrational and based on emotion not logic.
I believe that many people say they'll feel bad because that is what western culture expects them to say not because they will. I also believe that many will actually feel bad because that is what society expects them to feel. Our emotions derive from expectations created by societal demands that we were taught by our parents.
Let me rephrase- what's the relevance with respect to my posts? My position is that I'm not going to feel bad about having to do something like that, but on the other hand, I wouldn't be jumping up and down because he's dead (perhaps I might do that because I'm glad to be alive, but not because the other guy is dead, that is).
"Many people" might say they'll feel bad because it's what is expected, but I didn't say that, so why are you addressing me as if I did?
It is completely logical and rational that everytime an evil person is removed from society that society and its members rejoice. If one believes that Evil is bad then it follows that eliminating evil is good. So why shouldn't one feel good about eliminating evil?
Because it's hard for me to imagine evil as an inherent part of a person that cannot be tamed. Is a man that robs a store to try to feed his kids evil? Who knows what the guy you just shot has been through.
Certainly, what he is doing is wrong, but evil? I wouldn't go that far. And even if I did, how could I judge a man and say, "he'll be evil forever, always was, always is, always will be, so taking him out was a great thing"? I don't think I can say that anymore than I can say someone has been, is, and always will be a "good person."
That, of course, sidesteps the fact that "evil" is a relatively subjective term. Hell, some people believe guns and gun owners are evil. Should they rejoice when a gun owner is shot by a criminal and killed?
What makes the life of a serial killer, rapist, or any other societal maddog all that freaking sacred that the good among us who kill in self defense should have to suffer the pangs of guilt from doing it?
Tell me! I want to know!
I didn't say, once again, that I would feel guilty or bad about it. I just said that I wouldn't feel good about it either. And I'm not quite sure why anyone should feel good about taking another life, whether you think someone is "evil" or not." Evil, of course, being something that you decide for yourself, and something I decide for myself. No doubt we will have similarities, but we will also have differences.
Why should we as individuals shed a single tear, or lose a single night's sleep and/or wrack our selves with guilt and be miserable for the rest of our lives because we killed a scumbag?
Who said we should? Certainly not me.