Death for Belief?

[theleftone]

The link between belief and behavior raises the stakes considerably. Some propositions are so dangerous that it may even be ethical to kill people for believing them. This may seem an extraordinary claim, but it merely enunciates an ordinary fact about the world in which we live. Certain beliefs place their adherents beyond the reach of every peaceful means of persuasion, while inspiring them to commit acts of extraordinary violence against others. There is, in fact, no talking to such people. If they cannot be captured, and they often cannot, otherwise tolerant people may be justified in killing them in self-defense. This is what the United States attempted in Afghanistan, and is what we and other Western powers are bound to attempt, at an even greater cost to ourselves and to innocents abroad, elsewhere in the Muslim world. We will continue to spill blood in what is, at bottom, a war of ideas.

I was reading the reviews on Amazon.com for the book The End of Faith, and noticed on of the reviewers citing the line bolded above. I then searched the book to find this quote in context. It appears the author, Sam Harris, advocates the idea that it may be ethical to kill someone for believing what he calls a "dangerous idea."

Do you believe it is ethical to kill people for believing "dangerous ideas?" Why?

[McCulloch]

Sam Harris seems to be advocating violence to achieve peace; suppression of rights to achieve the goal of civil rights; censorship to achieve freedom of expression; chains for freedom.

I suspect that his approach is antithetical to both humanism and Christianity.

[ST88]

This question reminds me of hate-crime legislation. If a violent crime is committed against someone, it is considered that much worse if it is done in the name of an idea that society has decided to disapprove of. In certain jurisdictions, this could mean the difference between imprisonment and the death penalty.

Contrast this with a war against the Taliban. In war, do we kill the enemy for reasons of self-defense, or because they believe something that is incompatible with modern civilized society? If the belief spreads, then it could become a matter for self-defense to kill those who believe it.

I guess the best example is a James Bond villain. Someone who believes, for example, that 98% of the world's population is a useless appendage. Do we wait for him to act on his beliefs, or do we try and stop him beforehand? Sound like anyone we know?

[OccamsRazor]

Do we wait for him to act on his beliefs, or do we try and stop him beforehand? Sound like anyone we know?

Hmmm, forgive my ignorance but I have no idea who you are alluding to.

This post reminds me of the (in my opinion rather bad) film called "The Last Supper" in which the following question is asked:

If you were sent back in time and you found yourself in Munich talking to a young artist called Adolf Hitler, would you be justified in killing him? Note that at present he is just a young man and has (as yet) not done anything wrong.

[ST88]

Do we wait for him to act on his beliefs, or do we try and stop him beforehand? Sound like anyone we know?

Hmmm, forgive my ignorance but I have no idea who you are alluding to.

I was referring to any of a number of Islamo-fascist figures who we (US & UK) are trying to hunt down & saber-rattle at at the moment.

If you were sent back in time and you found yourself in Munich talking to a young artist called Adolf Hitler, would you be justified in killing him? Note that at present he is just a young man and has (as yet) not done anything wrong.

Forgive the paradox, but if you're going back in time, then you are a part of the history whose production involved the bad Hitler. This example involves various time-shifting paradoxes that don't really translate well to an analogy of the above situation (you don't know which reality you have time-traveled to, you don't know if the advent of WWII led to the invention of the time machine, or even if you were an indirect product of the Baby Boom that followed WWII).

Imagine that there is someone who lives in your city, someone who has telephoned you saying that he is going to kill you and your entire family. He won't say how or when, and he's a little non-specific on why. But you know who he is, where he hangs out in general, and who some of his friends are. What would you be justified in doing? Would you have to wait for imminent danger in order to act?

[OccamsRazor]

Imagine that there is someone who lives in your city, someone who has telephoned you saying that he is going to kill you and your entire family. He won't say how or when, and he's a little non-specific on why. But you know who he is, where he hangs out in general, and who some of his friends are. What would you be justified in doing? Would you have to wait for imminent danger in order to act?

I understand your point. The main issue here is what are you justified in doing? Are you justified in pre-emptively executing them?
In your example you are talking about someone who has issued a direct threat, which is somewhat different from someone making, for example, aggresively anti-semetic remarks. There is a fine line between imprisoning people for bigotry and imprisoning them for inciting people to violence and I think that the US and EU may be in danger of straying too far over this line.
A great example of this is Guantanamo Bay in which people were and still are detained without trial in a "pre-emptive action against enemy combatants". I would argue that this action is taking the term pre-emptive action too far and is violating human rights.

btw - I just wanted to add an anecdote about James Bond which greatly amused me:
I saw an interview with one of the script writers of "Die Another Day" and he said that he always found the "Licence to Kill" quite funny, here is a man who has been given, by the government, permission to execute people as he personally sees fit.

[HughDP]

Imagine that there is someone who lives in your city, someone who has telephoned you saying that he is going to kill you and your entire family. He won't say how or when, and he's a little non-specific on why. But you know who he is, where he hangs out in general, and who some of his friends are. What would you be justified in doing? Would you have to wait for imminent danger in order to act?

I can't imagine me tooling up and going to his house to kill him in a pre-emptive strike on the basis of a telephone call.

If I could act in any other way than killing him, I would. If I was as sure as I could be that it was at the stage where it was him or me, I'd do my best to ensure it was him.

Whilst I've claimed to have been a Buddhist for 22 years, I've never claimed that I'm a good Buddhist!

[Jose]

Contrast this with a war against the Taliban. In war, do we kill the enemy for reasons of self-defense, or because they believe something that is incompatible with modern civilized society? If the belief spreads, then it could become a matter for self-defense to kill those who believe it.

...or are they fighting us because our beliefs are incompatible with their understanding of modern civilized society? The hawks and saber-rattlers among us claim that they're evil, hence we need to kill them and hence they try to kill us. If they only knew better... But maybe the hawks have it backwards. Certainly, our hawks haven't fostered discussion of alternative ideas. Don't they see us as the evil ones?

This raises the difficult problem of whose belief should win. Are there any criteria at all for determining which, if any belief system is "right"?

[ST88]

I can't imagine me tooling up and going to his house to kill him in a pre-emptive strike on the basis of a telephone call.

Surely not. But what would you do? My guess is most of us would call the appropriate authorities and have them deal with it.

Now pretend that you are the authorities and you have no one to call. Let's say you're a world superpower and a dinky little organization says that they have nuclear devices and will detonate them in various of your major cities just to watch people be incinerated because you're all BAD people.

[ST88]

I understand your point. The main issue here is what are you justified in doing? Are you justified in pre-emptively executing them?

Myself, I don't know if a determination can be made without looking at cases like these on a case-by-case basis. There is such a term as justifiable homicide, and we have laws against the "stalking" sort of intimidation. But ethically? If someone believes "All Americans must die", what do we do with them? Well, sure, you're entitled to your beliefs, but if you make a direct threat, then you'll really be in trouble. In this specific case, isn't the belief itself a threat?