QUOTE(BloodArchon @ Jan 29 2007, 05:49 PM)
Well vagrant, what about someone who is already evil? Say a child murderer, and you stole their soul.....I mean doesnt the ends justify the means....A totally unlikely situation I confess but then again so is stealing souls to begin with.
mmm, having never been in the presence of a person who was that evil, I can't confirm it for sure, but somehow I think those people have already given their souls up to the void, hence the twisted purpose they have taken into themselves.
And even if they do still have an intact soul, i'm not sure that's the sort of soul you want any sort of attachment to.
And in most cases, the ends does not justify the means. It is the means, not the end, that will usually mess you up by the time you get there.
What it comes down to is that 'stealing' a soul, comes from a position of ego. Stealing implies taking from someone/something for oneself, for whatever purpose. Outside the ego condition, such an action does not exist. Even if it is from someone judged 'evil' by those, it is also worth mentioning, inside the ego condition.
There is a better way to deal with that situation. If you are going to attempt to steal a soul, you're going to be fortifying the ego, seperating yourself from the divine, and thus pushing yourself to a lower density. Ultimately, it does you more harm than good.
You could argue the altruism of sacrificing your own nearness to divinity (in whatever form you choose to see it), by incurring such a condition on yourself by stealing the soul of someone you've judged to be evil, but in the end it's just selfish martyrdom, and what happens when you aren't rooted to a body anymore? The weight of that stolen soul is going to be a more realistic hinderence then.
You could say the ends justify the means in that case, but realistically there are other ways to go about meting out justice to evil doers, that would be just as effective, and far more selflessly altruistic.
peace