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Perspectives
Keynote Address at the First Sinai Conference on Bioethics
Interpreted by David Guston
Foreclosing on scientists’ freedom to pursue questions through experimentations or other forms of inquiry bodes ill for science and for democracy as well. - Nobel laureate Paul Berg in his 2006 Hogan and Hartson Lecture at Arizona State University College of Law, 1 March 2006.
I’d like to thank you for the invitation to speak here, in this lovely camp, in the shadow of the majestic Mount Sinai. I must say that the reception last night was something! That was the best manna I’ve had in weeks, and those belly dancers were just, well, I could go on….
But my purpose here is really to address the very challenging question that Moses has, in his latest publication, quite literally thrown at our feet. Now I won’t bother with the whole Decalogue, but I’ll just focus on one of them, the sixth. In this sixth commandment, Moses proposes that we forbid murder, or the killing of another human being.
It’s appropriate to the spirit of open discussion and free exchange that Moses has raised this question. But I respectfully disagree with Moses, and perhaps with many of you out there, that killing should be forbidden.
We have, of course, been killing for a long time now, and we’ve made it to this point – from slavery to freedom, a veritable Golden Age – without much trouble and without any such commandments. And our methods of killing are by no means so novel as to require such a change. We’ve had bronze swords for generations now, and although not everyone can afford to wield some of the sleeker, iron models, we can all afford to go out and hew a piece of ash into a club, and bash someone’s brains in quite effectively.
Now, we have been talking about banning killing for years – the Noahide laws, the code of Hammurabi – and it hasn’t done much good yet. We’ve been killing each other since Cain and Abel, and even the Almighty’s condemnation of Cain hasn’t done much good. So this sixth commandment is likely to be as ineffectual as it would be redundant.
Moreover, the killing of one man by another is just a human form of something that is utterly natural. Death happens naturally; Anubis has dogged mankind – indeed, all creation – since the beginning! There really is no important difference between that “natural” death and any so-called “unnatural” death – they certainly have the same consequences. And murder is really more efficient and more selective than plagues, pestilence, leprosy, pox, and those other so-called natural deaths. We, too, are creatures of nature, and slighted by those like Moses who supposes murder unnatural.
In fact, killing celebrates many of those natural and uniquely human traits. Forbidding killing would, for example, squelch a great deal of creativity in conceiving and executing murderous plots. I myself have killed a number of people, and it took a great deal of creativity to devise the means to do so without alerting the victims or their families to my machinations. I also learned a great deal about botany, aerodynamics, and how long scorpions can stay alive in curdled goat’s milk.
It is also quite apparent that any across-the-board commandment against killing is going to punish the innocent along with the guilty. Restrictions on killing will bring restrictions on a whole host of things, from banishing people into the desert to tossing them in holes, to stoning to trade in poisonous snakes. The commandment would further reduce the economic benefits of killing, for example, the employment of grave-diggers, embalmers, and the watchers, washers and wrappers of the dead. Shroud-makers! Don’t forget the shroud-makers. These are quality jobs, without which the whole community would suffer.
And why accept these concrete harms, when we all know that there is no risk-free or death-free society, and that the risks of killing are really over-stated by those who simply find it distasteful. Killing can be done in a clean, safe, and humane way. Again, I draw on my own experience when I say that delivering a swift blow to the head to render someone unconscious and then cutting out their throat is really inflicting much less pain than forcing them to wander years on end through the desert.
Finally, even if we stop killing people, what’s to stop others from killing? The Canaanites will continue sacrificing children to Baal, and the Hittites and the Egyptians will continue butchering each other. It just doesn’t make sense to allow all that killing without doing some of it ourselves. Will we kill them in order to stop them from killing? Even if Moses forbids killing among his followers, it will still be easy enough to conspire with a Philistine to do the same killing. Is he going to ban that, too? This Decalogue is likely to multiply into a Centilogue!
I see from Aaron’s wild gesticulations that my time is up. So, I’ll say in conclusion, if you accept this Sixth Commandment, you accept an ineffectual, redundant, proscription against a common and historically important practice that would squelch creative and economic activity and reduce Hebrew competitiveness in the region.
I’m happy to field some questions, and then I’ll look forward to seeing many of you at the reception sponsored on the south side of camp by the Golden Calf Institute.
Thank you.
David Guston is Associate Director of the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes, Director of the Center for Nanotechnology in Society at Arizona State University, and Professor of Political Science at Arizona State University.
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