Comment by BatmansMom

17 hours ago

Is hammurabi's code moral? I don't know if I think that someone who takes out a person's eye deserves to have their own eye taken out also

Hammurabi Building Law 230: If a house falls due to improper construction, and kills the son of the owner, the son of that builder shall be put to death.

Given my dad designed and built homes, I'm very much against this rule.

  • We still have criminal negligence laws, so apart from the capital punishment (which, at least in the US, requires intent), it's actually pretty forward-thinking. Of course professionals being criminally negligent should be charged. Are you seriously saying that you don't think the crew of the Key Bridge collapse[1] incident ship shouldn't be held criminally responsible?

    [1] https://www.npr.org/2026/05/13/nx-s1-5819609/federal-governm...

I seem to remember that a lot of it is about how much to pay when you kill someone, and the relative prices of slaves and women. Or am I thinking of Ur-Nammu.

I agree, I believe I would disagree with most of the Hammurabi's code, and I also happen to disagree with the majority of the ten commandments. (I am an atheist leftist humanist, cosmopolitan liberal socialist.)