Anyway, everyone is responsible for his sinful activities. That's a fact. Therefore Śukadeva Gosvāmī recommends that tasmāt, "Therefore," puraiva āśu iha pāpa-niṣkṛtau, "so long you are in this body, in order to get yourself free from all the reaction of sinful activities, you should atone." Yateta mṛtyor avipadyata . . . avipadyatātmanā, doṣasya dṛṣṭvā guru-lāghavaṁ yathā bhiṣak cikitseta rujāṁ nidānavit (SB 6.1.8). According to the sinful activity, one should accept the prescription and program of atonement exactly like a . . . a physician prescribes different type of medicines according to the gravity of the disease.
The other day I was explaining, just like the state law is that if you commit a murder, if you kill your fellow man, then you have to atone that sinful activity by being killed, by offering your life. That's a fact. Everyone knows it. You cannot escape. If you have killed one man . . . of course, not man; if you kill even an ant, you are responsible for that, what to speak of man.
Because that distinction is imperfect, because this is man-made law. Man-made law, they're taking consideration of the man being killed. Another, the killer, must be killed. Why not an animal? The animal also a living entity. The man is also living entity. So if you have law that if a man kills one man he must be killed, why not if a man kills an animal he should be killed also? What is the reason?
This is man-made law, defective. But there cannot be defect in God-made laws. God-made laws, if you kill an animal, you are equally punishable as you kill a man. That is God's law. There is no excuse that he . . . when you kill a man you are punishable, but when you kill an animal you are not punishable.
This is concoction. This is not perfect law. Perfect law . . . therefore Lord Jesus Christ prescribes in the Ten Commandments, "Thou shall not kill." That is perfect. Not that you shall discriminate that, "I shall not kill man, but I shall kill animals." This is cheating one's self. The God laws will not excuse.
Therefore there are different atonements. According to Vedic law, if one cow dies while he's locked up on the neck . . . because the cow is on the shed, somehow or other it dies, and the rope is round the neck, the proprietor of the cow has to make some atonement. Because it is to be supposed that the cow has died on account of being locked up with the rope, there is atonement. Now if you are willingly killing cows and so many animals, so how much we are being responsible?
Therefore at the present moment there is war, and the human society becomes subjected to be killed in mass massacre—the nature's law. You cannot stop war and go on killing animals. That is not possible. There will be so many accidents for killing. The wholesale kill. When Kṛṣṇa kills, He kills wholesale.