Because I don't want to live in a world where it's okay to kill bad people. The legal system, while not a perfect solution, is better than your proposal. To me, this question has nothing to do with religion, but with being a good, reasonable person.

An orderly society is more valuable than justice in a single case.

Also your scenario has far too many implausible conditions.

"Why is this directed at non-religious people?"

Because I already know the answer (or set of answers) most religious people will give me.

"Why is this directed at non-religious people?"

Because without fairies and ghosts telling people what to do, they have no direction.

Is this yet another thread about drones?

In the lord of the rings, Gandalf says (of someone who deserves to die): “Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement.”

I do not like the idea that people don't lie/cheat/steal/kill because they're afraid of divine retribution. I don't think you need the threat of divine retribution to know the difference between right and wrong. And, I think it's frightening that there are people who WOULD do those things, if they thought there wouldn't be consequences from God.

Penn Jillette has a quote along similar lines that I think is quite good:

http://i.imgur.com/ADbZdCt.jpg

Tolstoy: it's a dangerous proposition. At what point does "clearly guilty" become not so clear?

So to you, as an individual, I don't honestly have a moral problem with it. In fact, if I as an individual had given the legal system its chance, and it had failed, then I would consider doing the justice myself, and have no regrets. But you need to be aware that there are consequences to this. I consider it like a bumblebee. Sure, you can kill, but at what cost? If you aren't willing to sacrifice yourself for this greater good which you supposedly protect, then you're just protecting yourself, not the greater good.

Though I agree with Putin in the larger sense, there are times where justice is more important than order. It has to be "worth it."

But as said above, I really don't think there's going to be a large discrepancy in the answers you get between the religious and nonreligious.

The gist of the responses seems to be that social order trumps justice. But what if the failure of the legal system to provide justice creates the very real threat of a large collapse of the social order that is valued above all? Let's say (completely hypothetically, of course) members of a large religious institution are involved in a massive conspiracy to commit and cover up serial child rape on a large scale, and the Legal Authorities aren't really interested in making criminal prosecutions because they have soft spot in their heart for the said religious institution and/or the religious institution's lawyers are better at obfuscation and calculating statute of limitations expirations than the government's lawyers? And that as a result, members of the general public are going to riot in the street and cause social disorder that will certainly kill thousands and result in hundreds of billions of dollars in damages? Would you still be opposed to a peaceful resolution to the situation by a few unsolvable murders that - gee golly! - just happened to eliminate exactly the right (obviously guilty) people that (entirely coincidentally) greatly reduces the threat of a potential torrent of mob violence?

It's a trap it's a trap it's a trap it's a trap

More implausible conditions. Your scenarios assume foreknowledge that is impossible. It's also doubtful that a massive riot would take place over child rape, or that such a riot at least would be on the scale you describe. Your scenario precludes the possibility that your convenient murders would not also result in further violence and instability, say tit for tat killings. It seems highly unlikely if this organization was so powerful that it controlled the legal system that they'd just sit back and let their own get killed with no reprisal.

The future cannot be known with certainty and the past cannot be known with certainty, which is why vigilantism is not a good idea.

Putin the buzz kill.

oh that's why not religious people

if you know that a given Catholic priest has raped children and is going to continue to rape children without any significant reprisal, then I'd argue you have a moral obligation to prevent it from happening. killing them should be a means of last resort, but it is still preferable than doing nothing

of course no one knows this with certainty... and it's hard to judge likelihood of a future event happening, so this moral hypothesis has painfully low proscriptive power, but since your hypothetical appears to erase any knowledge-based ambiguity, this answer is satisfactory for the discussion

[sigh]... I'm not aiming to set traps, I'm just seeking to understand others' viewpoints. It seems that for anti-theists, the demand for social order is the highest value and supplants the 'demands' of "fairies and ghosts" for social justice... this begs in my mind the question of whether or not this makes atheistic polities inherently less prone to overt social unrest than theistic ones when faced with (I'll add the qualifier "relatively" here, since apparently we're not fond of certainties) injustice, and whether or not this is a good thing. Any thoughts?

Now that I think of it, how often are major social movements led by overt atheists? Here in the US of A in the last century and a half, the Abolitionist and Civil Rights movements both had major religious influences.

"Here in the US of A in the last century and a half, the Abolitionist"

That's flatly untrue. As Frederick Douglass emphatically pointed out, the churches were on the side of the slavers and the freethinkers, atheists, agnostics were on the side of the abolitionists. Christians point to a small number of very liberal, quasi-atheist non-conformist churches and claim the abolitionist movement was Christian-led.

The Civil Rights movement stemmed from the labor movement (SNCC was an outgrowth of CORE, itself an arm of the CIO) which was replete with godless communists. A Philip Randolph, the forgotten organizer of the 1963 rally (For Jobs and Freedom, if people recall) where MLK issued the I have a dream speech, was an atheist.

But naturally theists like to steal credit and ignore the fact that they were on the other side on both issues.

There weren't many if any overt atheists in front of abolition/civil rights movements because
(a) there weren't many if any overt atheists in position to do so
(b) if there were, the negative PR from being spun as a godless/anti-god movement would have hurt

That doesn't mean that atheists are any better or worse than theists on the matter, per se, just that the circumstances surrounding atheist involvement vs theist involvement are too different to draw any real conclusions about either from that particular angle.

I don't get why you're busting on atheists for not supporting extra-judicial executions on here. Elsewhere you have decried this activity but maybe that's because of who the victims were and not the act itself.

" this begs in my mind the question of whether or not this makes atheistic polities inherently less prone to overt social unrest than theistic ones when faced with (I'll add the qualifier "relatively" here, since apparently we're not fond of certainties) injustice, and whether or not this is a good thing. Any thoughts?"

Doubtful. The most stable polities of this century have been the religious kingdoms on the Persian Gulf coast, who have managed somehow to deprive women and large portions of their non-Arab populations even basic political rights for decades, and not only that have survived the recent 'Arab Spring' revolt unscathed (which begs the question in my mind if these things were completely astroturfed). All the secular republics, by contrast, have gone up in flames.

On the other hand atheistic eastern Europe went up in flames in the late 1980s due to various 'injustices', perceived or real.

More recently major social movements in the US, like the anti-globalization movement, the anti-war movement, and the occupy wall street movement, were led by atheists.

Frankly religious people only come out to side with state power, not the other way around.

"There weren't many if any overt atheists in front of abolition/civil rights movements because"

Gah. False. Completely completely false.

Frankly I do not understand why anti-statists find individuals taking it upon themselves to be judges, juries, and executioners to be less frightening, authoritarian, and despotic than submitting these decisions before some kind of publicly accountable magistrate. That defies any logic. You cannot have 'liberty' in a system where every individual assumes for himself the power to act like a state.

In terms of absolute numbers? No, there weren't. You will undoubtedly find more theist than atheist leaders in both movements. It's just a function of population, and not a launching point for criticism of atheists for not being progressive.

Tolstoy - when you say ' if I could get away with murder' do you mean there will be no legal ramifications. What about your victims family are they likely to kill your nearest and dearest because they feel that you have killed, are untouchable by the state and could kill again?

''Here in the US of A in the last century and a half, the Abolitionist and Civil Rights movements both had major religious influences.''

I agree. Is that a reflection of what the religious, for good or ill, largely take up an absolutist moral position, while those of the atheists tend to be more subjective?

I remember, for example, some quite vigorous debate on absolute and subjective morality in the context of rape and natural selection when ''elevator-gate'' was in the news a couple of years ago.

fulhamish;atheism;dr

PE, don't be so dismissive of fulham's theistic approach to atheism.

I think PE is on trolling duties this month, trying to get in a bit of overtime.
Nothing a big hug couldn't put right, maybe a big sloppy kiss

@Tolstoy

You shouldn't do it if the act of killing the chap will impact you severely and ruin your life. If that isn't going to happen then I see no reason not to.

I for one fully endorse the vigilante murder or maiming of very bad peeps.

Of course, if your judgment of what constitutes a very bad person is 'wrong' or you accidentally off the odd innocent, then you will be subject to the full extent of consequences of your own intentions.

Really once you start murdering peeps you forfeit the right to be surprised or offended when someone makes you an ex-diplomat.

So really Dexter should have been killed by a do gooder vigilante. Anything better than being a lumberjack. Unless you are a gay lumberjack. With your best girl by your side.

So oscar, what do you really think? Has rape always been absolutely wrong?

Yeah, fulham, I can't think of a situation where rape would be the right thing to do. Are you now gonna quote my troll remark to semck from the gay gun thread as though it was my actual opinion and use it to put me in my place? Really fulham? Those traps you try to set are way too obvious dude. Keep practicing though.