Atheism

Killing in defense of innocent people is morally upright nearly without question, so you’d be clean either way.

But I’m with you that if I had a death note things would he different.

Someone make a spin of that old capitalist mindset meme with the button "press to get 1 million bucks but a random person dies" and they spam the shit out of it. But now it's you (and me) hammering away at that "you get nothing but a random billionaire or pedophile dies" buzzer.

Fair. But different than "wanting to kill" someone. You want to remove harm. Like the whole purpose of prison, leper colonies, community shaming, etc

That’s kind of the second part, about removing them from society. Death is one mechanism for achieving that.

I've been trying to reframe things like this in my mind.

Instead of contemplating if the world would be better if they were gone, I tell myself that my wish would be for them to just be a good person.

I'm not trying to be righteous. But I think, framed like that, a good person would choose the latter. And if it really came down the power to disappear somebody, I think most people would err on the side of good.

But retribution and vengeance are strong in our lizard brains.

It’s that if I had a guaranteed way of stopping these people with no personal risk, I would feel obligated to do so

I understand the impulse. But I might also posit that an individual with the power to kill with impunity will quickly become a tool of national media and demagoguery. We're seeing this play out in the age of Trump, with people like Laura Loomer and Steven Miller whispering in his ear to devastating consequence.

Anyone who claims they'd be more clear-eyed, more level-headed, and more rational need only go back a president or two to Joe Biden (genocide in Gaza) and Barack Obama (drone striker in chief, from Libya to Afghanistan). You're going to have a modern day Allen Dulles on your shoulder, telling you all about how you're going to be greeted as a Liberator once you put down the pen. And you're going to kill a whole lot of people for reasons that make you feel good, but end up doing a lot of evil.

If nothing else, consider how many folks in NATO countries would have - if given the Death Note - immediately scribbled the names of a dozen world leaders from rival countries? And then a dozen political leaders from rival parties? And then a dozen national celebrities and media figures with rival ideologies? And then what would the consequences of this be? Did Iranian government become better when Khomanie's name ended up in the book?

FFS, they explore this in the Anime. Light ends up killing a lot of good people simply because he's personally resentful or fearful of being caught.

Wanting to kill someone and wanting someone to be killed are quite different.

Wanting someone to face justice and wanting them dead are also quite different.

They didn't say that people like that shouldn't have consequences, drastic and significant ones, but they may disagree with the specifics.

Additionally, raping and murdering is what the quote is saying is wrong. The original quote does not state an opinion on using death as a penalty for these acts. For such a consequence, one could argue that it is necessary to distinguish murder and capital punishment as two separate acts, with the latter being justified.

Finally, the quote is meant to point out to most people that regardless of their religious beliefs, they have a moral compass that is not contingent on their religious beliefs and that most people's compass will generally point in similar directions. One could then conclude that religion is not required to know right from wrong.

Yeah, "other causes" 😉