I normally respect PZ a great deal, but on this topic as with a few others I find him to be the definition of a liberal elitist. And I say that as someone who’s defining feature in family conversations is to purposely piss off my Beckian family members.

I’m an extremist in this debate, I will freely confess. I hold an absolute view that no killing is ever justified, that individuals have the necessity to defend themselves against assailants, but that even that does not grant moral approval to snuffing out the life of another.

The only reason PZ can get away with this moral system is because he has been blessed with a life that has never forced him into a situation requiring that someone die. Well, I have. When I was 22 I was mugged while hiking at my local state park. In the process of defending myself my attacker pulled a gun and at the end of it all he had a fatal bullet to the shoulder.

Now do I cheer when I think of this? Absolutely not. It causes daily walking nightmares and has fucked me up something fierce. It wasn’t for months that I was even able to reconstruct exactly what transpired during our fight, and then only with the help of investigators. I did everything in my power to save the bastard but there’s only so much you can do when a .380 round punctures someone’s brachial artery a mile from the nearest road.

So for people to compare what I was forced to do by my attacker (and what others in similar situations are forced to do) to the barbarism of those who would murder innocents over a book is, itself, an act of perverted morality. He doesn’t have a clue, he’s too sheltered, and he has absolutely no grounds to judge me or anyone else who’s had to chose between their own death and that of someone else. Life isn’t a fucking movie, and the notion of “disable but don’t kill” is nice in theory but tossed by the wayside the moment you have a gun shoved in your face.

And no Charles, I doubt PZ would concede the point without some major arm twisting. He’s too good of a writer to post something without meaning exactly what he says. He knew what he was saying, and I’ll be shocked if he honestly backs away from it in any way.