Introduction
The recent shooting death of Renee Good has resulted in a lot of discussion about whether or not the shooting was justified. Those discussions are important to our society and are illuminating when everyone engages with respect for each other. I project that most regular readers of this blog will land on the side of “legally justified self-defense”.
But whether or not it is legally justified is not what I want to address in this missive. I think, especially if my projection of my audience is accurate, that what I want to address is even more important.
What is the moral cost of lethal self-defense?
If you’re looking for a quick verification of what you already know, this is much longer and less definitive than you want. If you’re looking for philosophical rigor, this is much less precise than you want.
On Becoming Pro-Life
I blame the atheists for my becoming pro-life.
That’s not completely true. I had been a Christian for a good while and being pro-life was part of my faith. It was founded in the idea that life belonged to God and we weren’t allowed to take away what belonged to HIm. I’m confident that is still true. That being said, there came a point in time where that wasn’t sufficient for me. I felt I needed something more philosophically grounded.
This came at a time when there was a bit of turmoil in my life so I must honestly say that the search for grounding was not entirely intellectual. I was mentally and emotionally thrashing and was looking for something to ground and discipline myself so that I could work my way out of it. In all honesty, it wasn’t close to sufficient but it did get me somewhere I had not previously been.
This was the age of the New Atheists. Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens were the two I paid the most attention to. I preferred listening to Hitchens over Dawkins personally. But Dawkins definitely made an impact. His 2013 declaration that “With respect to those meanings of “human” that are relevant to the morality of abortion, any fetus is less human than an adult pig.” struck a chord. Where does this come from? What is this about?
JWR Adds: It is noteworthy that Christopher Hitchens (a “New Atheist”) was Pro-Life.
To address that, I’ll turn to Pete Singer, PhD. Dr. Singer is currently the Decamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton. The New Yorker has referred to him as the planet’s most influential living philosopher. Richard Dawkins has referred to him as probably the most moral man in the world.
Dr. Singer is also the author of Practical Ethics. In the 2nd edition of that book, he says something that I think is both correct and important.
The liberal search for a morally crucial dividing line between the newborn baby and the fetus has failed to yield any event or stage of development that can bear the weight of separating those with a right to life from those who lack such a right.
This is not the argument of a Christian or someone who is against abortion. This is the well-reasoned, philosophically sound argument of a professor of ethics at one of the most prestigious universities in the US who believes that women should have the unlimited right to abortion.
This is also not an argument about whether it is right or wrong. This is, quite simply, a statement that you cannot be inconsistent in your thinking about what things are.
Philosophy is weird. The philosophical studies of ethics and morality require a set of thought patterns that I find difficult to fully engage with. Not so much because it is intellectually difficult, although it is, but because it isn’t how I typically engage in discussions of morality.
One of the positions held by Philosophers, specifically that of Pete Singer, is Utilitarianism. As I understand it, that means that it is morally right to seek out a state where the greatest number of Persons are experiencing the most happiness. And the focus is, again, on Persons.
In the 1st edition of his Practical Ethics he says something I think is illustrative of an atheistic ethics…
“Human babies are not born self-aware, or capable of grasping that they exist over time. They are not persons”; therefore, “the life of a newborn is of less value than the life of a pig, a dog, or a chimpanzee.”
Dr. Singer believes that the idea of treating self-aware, non-human animals as non-Persons is speciesism. And to say that human life is always more valuable than the life of a given animal is wrong.
He grants that killing “a being with the ability to think of itself as existing over time, and therefore to plan its life, and to work for future achievements” is more wrong than killing a nonhuman animal, but…
…given that some human beings — most obviously, those with profound intellectual impairment — lack this capacity, or have it to a lower degree than some nonhuman animals, it would be speciesist to claim that it is always more seriously wrong to kill a member of the species Homo sapiens than it is to kill a nonhuman animal.
Dr. Singer believes that infanticide is not wrong because infants who have not yet achieved self-awareness are not persons. Especially those infants that have been born with some disability.
‘Defective infants lack these characteristics,’ he wrote. ‘Killing them, therefore, cannot be equated with killing normal human beings, or any other self-conscious beings.’
The life of a newborn child born with Down’s Syndrome is worth less than the life of a pig, because the pig is self-aware, and the infant is not and cannot be.
Richard Dawkins took it one step further when he responded to a woman questioning herself about whether she would abort if she found out she was pregnant with a Down’s Syndrome child by saying
“Abort it and try again. It would be immoral to bring it into the world if you have the choice.”
To emphasize, Dawkins asserted that it would be immoral to bring a child with Down’s Syndrome into the world.
When you start with an analysis that determines there is no moral difference between the life of a newborn and the life of an infant, and you make the determination that self-awareness is a more important criterion for value, then the logical, rational conclusion is that killing newborns is a morally valid choice.
As I said, I have difficulty getting into the mindset required of philosophical discussions.
I accept Singer’s statement that there’s no moral difference between unborn and newborn. They are both Human.
I reject that being Human is less important than the level of self-awareness that a pig is capable of achieving. This is not a philosophical conclusion, this is an assertion of value.
My logical conclusion based on Singer’s analysis and my own value assertion is that I need to be pro-life.
Moral Weight
In the years since I came to the philosophical conclusion, I felt strongly that I needed to be consistent throughout my value system. In order to achieve that consistency, I had to have a foundation.
That foundation would have to be that Human life is innately valuable.
That squares with my Christianity. “For God so loved THE WORLD…” and “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.”
Everyone. Christ died for everyone. Every single human being in the history of the world.
If human life is innately valuable, if it is innately good, then willfully destroying it is wrong. And if it is wrong there is a moral weight that must be born.
How do I square that with members of our armed forces or police force that are put in the line of fire and into situations where they must take a life? How is that weight born?
How do we bear the moral weight of taking a human life in self-defense?
A Christian Vocabulary
There is one particular word from my Christian vocabulary that I think is particularly important in this discussion – Justification.
As Christians, we have both Justification and Sanctification. Sanctification is our participation in our faith life after we have been saved. Sanctification is our doing good.
Justification is our being made good. Justification is the removal of the moral weight of our sin.
Important note – I am using this vocabulary word from a Christian perspective, but I am not saying that I speak for Christ. I am trying to come up with a philosophical, moral argument for my own sanity. Do not take anything I say as doctrinally correct. I do not make that claim.
Is there a way that we can morally justify the willful taking of a human life? I believe the answer is “Yes”.
Under What Circumstances?
If there is a way that we can morally justify willfully taking a human life, what are the circumstances?
I have biases about this and anything that I come up with will be tilted toward those biases. I know this. As I’m working through what I think the circumstances are, I have to think about my biases. They will likely still be there, but at least I can try and work through it intentionally and knowingly.
I have come to the conclusion that there are two different circumstances where the willful taking of human life can be morally justified:
First – During the proper prosecution of a lawful government order.
Second – In defense of self or others from imminent peril.
While they seem generally obvious, I’m also the one who wrote them and I’ve been thinking about them for a long time. So I have context that my readers do not. So to be thorough, I provide commentary to make myself clear about the pieces of them. Note that this commentary is not exhaustive, just illustrative.
For the first, my thinking was aligned towards members of the military. One reason for the institution of governments is to take responsibility and accountability for the use of violence. Governments are not, however, tangible and require humans to carry out what they need to have done. If we are giving governments the authority to call for violence, the moral responsibility for that violence cannot be on the humans. It must fall on the government and the members of the government giving the orders.
But, the humans carrying out the orders have the capacity to take that responsibility back onto themselves. They take it back when they
- Carry out the orders in a manner inconsistent with the value of human life. If you are tasked with taking an enemy position, you will have to kill the opposing soldiers to take that position. That’s very different from laying waste to a village filled with non-combatants to ensure no possible combatants escape.
- Carry out orders they know are not lawful. It is possible to not know an order is unlawful, in which case they have not retaken responsibility. For the second, I’m obviously thinking of self-defense. If someone is attacking you, you are, in my opinion, justified for taking action to defend yourself. With that being said, there are some things that I did not include in the criteria that I need to call out.
I do not count defense of property in my statement. I cannot morally justify the taking of human life for the purpose of defending “stuff”. I might be legally justified (jurisdictionally dependent), but I cannot say that I am morally justified. If someone has broken into my garage which is disconnected from my residence, I cannot morally justify killing them. If they break into my main home, I can justify using lethal force because they have demonstrated a disregard for the law and for my well being.
I do not say “mortal peril”. There are legal jurisdictions that require a fear of “mortal peril” where you are fearing for your life. If I’m going to be beaten up, and I’m most certainly not a fighter, I am justified in defending myself. I cannot be expected to just take a beating leading to a hospital visit and rehab and recovery.
I do say “imminent peril”. If I have time to reflect and plan for the use of lethal force, I likely have time to escape. There will be situations where that isn’t possible and that can change the definition of “imminent”. But my intent is to avoid the idea that you can plot out killing someone.
But What About…?
I do believe that the use of lethal force can be morally justified. I have developed circumstances that I think cover what I think should be covered. But I know it isn’t air tight. And I know that.
I wish I could make a check list. But I’m not the intellectual philosopher with an array of logical statements and positions that can be mathematically verified. It’s not how I think or how I live.
So what can I say to help you?
“Sin boldly!”
Wait… what?!?!? What does that even mean?
If I see someone being attacked, I have to make a decision about whether or not to defend them. I don’t know anything about why the attack is happening. Maybe who I perceive as the attacker is truly the defender. But if I’m wrong and someone dies needlessly, a human life is lost. If I choose to defend them with lethal force, a human life is lost. And I don’t know what the “right” answer is when I start with the foundation that no human life is more valuable than another.
Martin Luther was presented with questions about what to do when every possible path we see seems “wrong”. His answer was to “sin boldly” (act knowing that you are probably making a terrible choice) and to trust in the fact that Christ’s death, resurrection, and ascension have guaranteed and proven that we are Justified (in a Christian sense) before God.
When we are dealing with moral decisions, we need a starting point. Mine is that human life is inherently valuable and the willful taking of it is morally wrong and doing so imparts a moral burden. And from there we ask if there is ever a situation where the taking of life can be justified. I provided two that I think cover pretty much every situation that a normal human being will ever encounter.
And what do we do when there’s no good answer? We trust in Christ and sin boldly