If Good People go to Good Afterlives, Why is Killing a Good Person an Evil Act?

[DM_aka_Dudemeister]

There's plenty of great explanations here, and I enjoy a pleasant philosophical debate.

If a person is good, then they do good acts. That's how the "good" alignment works for mortals. If you kill someone good they can no longer do good. You have decreased the amount of good being done in the world by the difference between now and the good person's natural death.

If you have reduced the amount of possible good being done in the world, then that act must be evil. As you have subtracted potential good from the world. It is why, killing an evil creature (one that does and intends to continue doing evil acts) isn't inherently evil. As you have decreased the amount of evil in the world.

Why is killing a neutral character evil?

Well, a neutral person may be neutral now but had the capacity for good. Yes, they had the capacity for evil, but in my opinion the capacity for good must be weighed more heavily than a capacity for evil. A neutral person at the very least does no significant harm to the world, and is probably loved, cared for and loves, cares for their friends or community. Their death causes fear, despair, anger and all sorts of tiny cuts that increases the capacity for evil in the world.

[Set]

DM_aka_Dudemeister wrote:

Why is killing a neutral character evil?

Well, a neutral person may be neutral now but had the capacity for good. Yes, they had the capacity for evil, but in my opinion the capacity for good must be weighed more heavily than a capacity for evil.

Not killing a neutral person because they might turn to good feels like a decision based on hope.

Deciding that it's okay to kill a neutral person because they might turn evil feels more like a rationalization based on fear.

So I'd totally agree with you there. Killing neutral characters would remain evil.

Heck, an evil person running around killing other evil characters for no specific reason other than their alignment is probably just as evil. Why would you want to deny them a chance to set their lives right and avoid going to the lower planes?

[Azothath]

pragmatically as it's a game, it's all a moot point.

[PrinceRaven]

Plus the only way to know someone's alignment with absolute certainty is if they resurrect you, and even then you only know what their alignment was during the casting of that spell. There are all sorts of reasons someone might detect as Evil without having an Evil alignment.

Even if they are Evil, "because they're evil" isn't a good justification to murder someone, and is contrary to the respect for sentient life that Pathfinder mandates is part of a good alignment.

[Azothath]

Assuming you have read the CRB on Alignments.

Your argument is flawed as it treats potential or future acts that might happen as having Real value. One can mathematically sum probable courses of action that lead to defined actual events (see Quantum Electrodynamics) but the imaginary events stay imaginary as only the observed events are Real. So a mixing of terms.
edit - What is Real or Imaginary (in this context)? Something a character might do, that act or event has a probability of less than 1 (100%). It is not Real or observed until it is done, an observable or likely event, or probability has become 1. The math would give you a probability of nearly 1 or more. Real and Imaginary are considered mutually exclusive attributes.

Stating that a sum of real and probable actions is the metric of morality is simply false. Clearly Good and Evil are Value judgments.

Lastly, this defies the examples laid out in the CRB, pg 166-168. The examples are given to help the GM define what the archetypes of Good, Evil, Chaos, and Law are and what their middles (Neutral) mean. As they are 'landscapes'(fields) of morality and ethics, they are not quite uniform nor linear.

[Azothath]

so how can I understand the 'wacky' alignment system?

Read

For Law and Chaos I'd read M. Moorcock's Elric series (Destiny's Brother in particular) and Corum series. This is where the Law-Chaos axis came from. 'The Balance' was something Elric sought and failed to do. Tanelorn is a kind of balance but isn't what Elric wants.
The PF/DnD spellcasting system empowers mortals and can be another kind of balance of neutrality, mixing Chaos and Law.
Is it Ethics?? hmmm...

Good and Evil are a classic moral duality.

Certainly Zen Buddhism, Seneca, Emerson, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, expand on these ideas.
I think once you get around to Jung you are going in a different direction.

[Bardess]

Perfect Tommy wrote:

Bardess wrote:

Which also means that no matter how much you suffer for your disease, you CAN'T die without committing a sin... you must endure because God sent that suffering to you. :(

Almost right. God is the author of life, ergo every life created is sacred, from natural conception to natural death.

God doesn't mind medicines to ease the pain of our last days, but it is not our prerogative to take life. It is not death which is against God's will - but killing.

Some fundamentalists are ALSO against medicines or anaestethics ^_^

[Azothath]

Bardess wrote:

Perfect Tommy wrote:

Bardess wrote:

Which also means...

Almost right...

Some fundamentalists are ALSO against medicines or anaestethics ^_^

this is why I take a moral stance against excessive use of canned whipped cream... "Just say N2O"

[Goth Guru]

Canned whipped cream is an anesthetic?
I should try that.

Killing people to send them to heaven is lawful evil.

[Azothath]

(Nitrous Oxide(N2O){laughing gas} is used in whipped cream as it is fat soluble (whipping cream is 40-52% butterfat), stops the growth of bacteria, and has a light taste. Automotive N2O contains neurotoxins. N2O also deactivates vitamin B12 in the body thus chronic use can lead to neurological issues. see wikipedia)
my post was clearly for amusement and having fun with the old "Just Say No" campaign. I was chagrined by my recent web search to find people chronically abuse the gas (20-60 little canisters at a sitting for weeks to years) as it has an old known medical history.

[Goth Guru]

If they are changing into a werewolf or deep one, and they beg you to kill them, it's a neutral act.