Dor - yup. My brother said something funny: "the madder you are, the wronger you probably are." Thanks for stopping me in my emotional tracks.
Regarding the ethical consideration of self-defense (a gun held to your head) as pertains to the belief in the gunman's head: Imagine a person has declared that his dedication to god demands that he murder thousands of innocent people on your country's soil as a means of worshiping that god, and that he fully intends to carry out his martyr's mission and nothing will stop him. You are unable to jail or curtail him, but you have an opportunity to snipe him in his own domain. Do you take that opportunity and kill him? Or do you let him go and hope everything works out all right? Would offing him be "self-defense" even thought there's no immediate and urgent threat, such as exists with the gun-to-the-head? I think the "would you go back in time and kill Adolf in 1930" question has been debated to no end.
From my reading of Sam Harris, I understand he is speculating about that ethical question. He's not advocating that we kill in that instance, any more than I am by writing it above.
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