Would you kill for your god?

Just a hypothetical question borne out of my own curiosity.

If the god (or a messanger of god) of your chosen religion appeared on earth with a message (that was without doubt genuine), that all believers must kill all non believers in order to get to heaven (or a higher plan etc), would you go through with it?

I know that if there is an omnipresent, omnipitent god it would not need us to kill each other as it would have the power to do so itself but lets just for the sake of the question say it is a demand by said deity.

So would you kill your fellow man if your god commanded it?

Please dont reply with bible verses or things like "god is kind and would not ask such a thing", nobody could say with certainty what a god would want. Look within yourself and answer as to what YOU would do in such a scenario.

(I realize this question relates to religion but i think it is more a psychological question, if MODs disagree please move it where it belongs)

reply to post by sicklecell


I wouldnt need to kill for my god, he could smoke you witha bat of an eye-) And I doubt he would test my resolve by telling me to take a way something like life. (in-laws) not wxcluded.

reply to post by sicklecell

If the god (or a messanger of god) of your chosen religion appeared on earth with a message (that was without doubt genuine), that all believers must kill all non believers in order to get to heaven (or a higher plan etc), would you go through with it?

My chosen religion is Deism. None of that aforementioned gobbledy-gook applies. In a very BROAD and REACHING fashion - the study of the creation (naturalism) can lead some to errant views on Evolution and Social Darwinism if poorly understood. Yet even if that were the case that evidence actually supported such conclusions, I tend to invoke Hume's Guillotine. Just because we can show naturalistic reasoning for WHY something is the way it is, that doesn't mean we should adjust our morality to accommodate it.

Charles Darwin framed the is/ought issue beautifully in the full intention of his famous out-of-context quip from his Descent of Man.

Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.

The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature. The surgeon may harden himself whilst performing an operation, for he knows that he is acting for the good of his patient; but if we were intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit, with an overwhelming present evil.

My God is the essence of Love, the creator of all, the glue of the multiverse. My God, our God, would not have us to kill anything.

my god is myself, and yes I'd kill someone if I had to

No

I would never praise, worship or abide to the word of a killer god or its messenger/s.

If what ever god whats me to do his dirty work, he can do it him/herself or go ask the next sap.


But that does not mean that I would not protect my life or those of my loved ones if some crazed retard would come and kill me in the name of a blood thirsty god.

If this is the definition of God:

God
a. A being conceived as the perfect, omnipotent, omniscient originator and ruler of the universe, the principal object of faith and worship in monotheistic religions.

Than I don't believe in such a thing, so the question is moot...

ETA:
To clarify: the question is moot [for me] not that the topic question is moot! I actually think this is a very good topic.

[edit on 5-10-2009 by LadySkadi]

Hi! I don't have a god. I guess I won't be killing others in the name of any super-man-god-boy-thing.

Although, this is the mentality that scares the hell out of me. There's no reasoning with fanatically religious people that have this notion in their heads. I fear the day I'm confronted with this situation.

reply to post by sicklecell



I was excited when I saw the title to this thread - Would you kill your god?





But then I realized I was mistaken...

Its something I don't have to worry about. Its a non issue. But if my God said I had to kill them to go to heaven that would make me question what kind of heaven would that be like. Probably one I wouldn't want to spend eternity in anyways.

reply to post by sicklecell


I know this is a trick question for the exchange of 1000 pretend virgins for

carrying out these pretend killings for a pretend God. ^Y^



[edit on 5-10-2009 by amari]

After what I have been thru? God has done NOTHING for me to have any desire to do anything for him/ it. He'd get a middle finger and told to spin on it.

How one answers this question is dependant on many personal variables...
Such as; what is the punishment for disobeying my god? How does my god and/or religion in general view murder? If god orders it, would murder be acceptable? How much faith do I personally put into this "god"? or its religion? Was I raised to believe in this religion, or did I come to believe it through personal study of my own accord? Etc... etc...
And on and on... To answer this, we must ask ourselves many other questions first. It really is quite a deep question to ask.

As for my personal answer, I would have to say no... I would not willingly take another human's life unless they were threatening mine or my kin's. But not because of religion, or because my god says so. Because doing so would be against my better nature.

The real question you are asking as far as I surmise is, do you blindly follow orders or do you think for yourself? What's funny is most who think they are thinking for themselves are actually thinking what someone else wants them to... It's the "goth kid" paradigm, to be non-conformist, we simply conform to a different standard, and in doing so we are only changing what we are conformed to. I'm talking about armchair atheists who become so as a result of their dislike for their parent's religion, and the rigidly-religious town-criers from their rooftops who never question anything. They're both the same in my book.

Deep thread OP man...

[edit on 5-10-2009 by mostlyspoons]

reply to post by miss_silver


Thank you for answering the question (you are the only one so far), i myself do not believe in god, however, if this scenario did occur, i would not abide by its wishes, that is the choice i would make.

reply to post by mostlyspoons


Thank you very much for that well thought out reply. *star*

Yes i was hoping this would be a question to make people stop and genuinly THINK about what they themselves would do, so far few have.

The answer to the question would be absolutely and unequivocally NO.

But then again, I don't belong to any organized religion and therefore won't be killing anyone just for the simple fact that they don't see eye to eye with me on what I "believe".

I believe we are our own creators, or what some of you call it, gods.

So would I kill for myself? Hell yeah.

Only if the positives outweigh the negatives, and in 99.99999999% of situations, it does not.

My god is the almighty dollar, and given the right set of circumstances, I might kill for it.

I believe no one can give you an honest answer here unfortunately. It's kind of like the "what would you do if someone pulled a gun and held you at gunpoint" question. You could say how you would run, or how you would try to disarm the guy, but no one knows for sure until they are placed in that position.
I don't think I can answer this even ignoring my previous statement, because the idea of god, or our creator does not click with the act of killing another human being in my mind, and I'm not sure god could do anything to prove that he is the ultimate creator to me when asking me to take another human life. IF somehow all of the previous was sorted out, and it was undoubtedly god commanding me to kill someone then I guess I would at least think about it. silly question.

I will kill if its only self defense I don't know who my god is even if thier is 1 it might just be the universe and he wouldn't want me to kill anything unless it was in self defense pther wise it wouldn't want me to destroy his creation.