Apparently, during WW 2, there were cases where allied soldiers slaughtered Concentration camp guards. I say that this was in perfect accord with the moral law-if a man sheds blood so by man shall his blood be shed. Some say it was a war crime. What do you think?

6295577
The Bible has no special status for me as a non-believer, but I don't believe that killing another human being is acceptable in any case beyond self-defence or preventing further loss of life. (Like many Europeans, I am fundamentally opposed to the death penalty in all circumstances.) So, camp inmates killing a guard to escape and save lives could well have been morally correct, but soldiers doing so after liberation was wrong.

Although I can understand that in such extremes a person might feel they were doing the right thing, I don't think they were. As a modern analogy, a police officer who shot a terrorist about to spray a crowd with bullets would have moral justification. A police officer who shot a terrorist in the van on the way to jail would be committing murder.

6295672
I don't normally support the death penalty. But I do believe extreme circumstances warrant it. I respect your viewpoint however.

6295577
Unlike Loganberry, I feel the death penalty is acceptable. Like him, I find the Bible to be a poor model of morality. While I feel capital punishment should be rare, it is more relevant to a proper moral and justice system than the Bible is.

In the example you gave, I agree with Logan's analogy of the terrorist in the van, which most closely fits the situation. I would expand on it further though. The camp guards were military personnel. They were combatants in a wartime situation. If they surrendered, then they stop being combatants and become prisoners of war. There are rules and guidelines how to proceed ethically at this point. The proper outcome would see them tried in a court, evidence weighed, and so on. If we went through that process properly, I would be fine with seeing them hung for their part in the atrocities committed.

That they were not afforded a fair trial and murdered "on the way to the jail" makes their killers criminals.

6295577
I think this specific and archaic example, which comes prior to the revelation of law and the prophets, and which is given in the context of a covenant specific to Noah, needs further specification. We should not equate the moral law with moral commands. This is an example of moral law, and we should not press it for specifics. We need to look to other sources for specification.

6296159
As for those who would claim that the Bible has a misguiding moral stance on capital punishment, they should not look to this early and unspecific source of moral law.

6295577
In my past, I've met, and talked with, one of the soldiers who freed Bergen-Belsen. He was twenty years old when he was there. The things he, and his buddies saw, merely as they entered the camp, scarred him for life. The level of horror was almost beyond the human capacity to cope with - for some of his group, they couldn't cope, and later killed themselves merely to stop the memories from replaying. This was at the end of the war, and most of the worst stuff at the camp had either stopped or put on hold, so what was left was entirely the results of what had happened before he got there.

Camp guards were not in any way blameless. They often participated, they performed atrocities themselves, and some, in those last moments, threatened prisoners in futile attempts to bargain for themselves when the allied soldiers entered. None were in any way repentant, at least none that he personally saw or spoke to. They were certain that what they were doing was right, and they would proudly do it again. There was a genuine concern that many would slip through the cracks, run off, escape, and avoid any responsibility, and many did. The situation was so massive that keeping track of them all was difficult.

I think you know what they did there, the sort of horror I speak of. These guards, many of them, might as well be classed as serial killers who enjoyed torture and mutilation as a form of fun.

I offer that, in a case such as this, as what this man described to me, that there is a point where a human being ceases being human anymore. I would never invoke the concept of demons, devils or other religious claptrap - but if there is anything in reality that would fit such a description, surely it would be these camp guards. He no longer felt they were men anymore. Not human men. No human could do, participate, enjoy what these creatures did and remain a human being.

I would argue that when faced with literal monsters, with the very real probability that many will simply slip away, or get off, or avoid responsibility, and end up loose and free - as too many actually did - there is an argument, in this one case, in this specific sort of historical event, that straight up killing them is arguably a moral virtue. Even if they never committed another terrible act, even if they go on - as many did - to live quiet, invisible suburban lives, their influence, words, thoughts, and speech still has an impact on everyone they interact with. I would suggest they would be an interpersonal poison within society itself, running free, voting, influencing, merely by existing.

This former solder? He was emotionally scarred, as I said. But he never regretted, not once, the death of even one concentration camp guard. And I came away fairly convinced that he had killed at least one of them, on his own, without orders, apparently when he saw what the guard had done to a young girl, and... what was left of her.

I think, in that specific kind of situation, normal moral arguments have long ago ceased to have anything resembling rational meaning. In those concentration camps, nothing human remained in charge, nothing human controlled them, and nothing human stood guard.

I have never forgotten talking with him. Sometimes, I wish I could.

7432888
Well said.