Tough Question for Religious Orientated People

[Arrian]

Assuming several things about Boris' example:

Let's assume the woman was 6 mos, or less, pregnant (such that the baby could not survive outside the womb). Let us further assume that a single childbearing female *could* revive the species.

I would still leave the choice to the woman. Yes, even if that means the end of humanity.

Can we throw out another wrinkle?

The baby is male, and the woman does NOT want the abortion. The only way to save humanity would be to compel the abortion, since the woman will die in childbirth and the child is male. Whaddya do?

-Arrian

[GePap]

Originally posted by Azazel
6 months, smarty pants. Or the "rape the woman" scenario.

Well, on the rape woman scenerio- if you begin using violence, how does anyone stop her from committing suicide? She can certainly act to sabotage any pregnacy without the ability to stop her, unless she is strapped down, sedated and fed intravenously.

[Az]

abortion. It's the survival of the human species. PERIOD.

[Ben Kenobi]

Give me a minute Azazel. I'm answering each post in turn.

6 months is no different. 6 months = 25 weeks. Child would survive outside the womb. If you assume that the facilities are available for an abortion, the faciilities would also allow an incubator.

In any case, even given the lack of an incubator, then it must be up to the mother, since we cannot save both the life of her child, or her own life. If the mother refused, then we would have to perform the c-section and try to save the life of the child.

Secondly, if you change the parameter to 6 months, at what point will the mother's life be endangered by the pregnancy? You could carry the child as long as possible in order to increase the chances of survival.

[Elok]

Either question is irrelevant. Whether the woman lives or dies, she will look around, look at the eight men discussing the probabilities of viable female offspring vs. survival of parent over X years of breeding age, and decide that the extinction of the human race is a small price to pay to avoid having sex with these losers.

[Az]

Well, on the rape woman scenerio- if you begin using violence, how does anyone stop her from committing suicide? She can certainly act to sabotage any pregnacy without the ability to stop her, unless she is strapped down, sedated and fed intravenously.

Well, If she's so hell bent on the destruction of the human species, than I guess there is nothing I can do. I tried.


Ben: stop arguing over technicalities: Rape, or Extinction, what will it be?

[Arrian]

So much for hypothetical questions. *sigh*

By the way, anybody notice how Lot goes about trying to repopulate the world after his wife is stupid and gets turned to stone? I don't remember, but does he get to burn in hell for incest or what?

-Arrian

[GePap]

Originally posted by Azazel


Well, If she's so hell bent on the destruction of the human species, than I guess there is nothing I can do. I tried.

Well, the thing is we know from the start she is hell bent of wipping out the species- so why mar the last few days of Mankind with savage violence leading to the death of one of the few remianing human beings?

[Ben Kenobi]

Give me a minute, azazel. I'm preparing a response that will likely surprsie you.

GePap:

During the night you recieve a dream in which God tells you you must murder a man in order to save X amount of people. This man is not evil, he does not plan to do anything evil, but he will do something whose reprecussions will bring about X amount of suffering.

Now, you wake up, but are utterly unable to shake the conviction that this is NOT just a dream, but real.

NOW, what do you do? Do you go talk with some religious authority to see what they say? Would you follow their advice if they did? Would you ignore it becuase what is being asked is a crime?

I would see a religious authority, my pastor. I would ignore his advice if he recommended following the dream, though I sincerely doubt he would ask me to fulfill the dream. What might some of their reasonibng be? Satan can take many forms. He could easily come to me in a dream, as he has with others.

[Az]

Well, the thing is we know from the start she is hell bent of wipping out the species- so why mar the last few days of Mankind with savage violence leading to the death of one of the few remianing human beings?

mar? wtf? do you mean it won't look good in the news afterwards?

Do you think mankind's end will look beautiful, after being wiped out in a nuclear war/ epidemic/whatever? No.

By the way, anybody notice how Lot goes about trying to repopulate the world after his wife is stupid and gets turned to stone? I don't remember, but does he get to burn in hell for incest or what?

That's not the biblical story. Lot is old, and his daughters don't have any kids. So they get him drunk and sleep with him. And that's not done to repopulate the planet.

Either question is irrelevant. Whether the woman lives or dies, she will look around, look at the eight men discussing the probabilities of viable female offspring vs. survival of parent over X years of breeding age, and decide that the extinction of the human race is a small price to pay to avoid having sex with these losers.

We've already said that she's a *****, no need to repeat it.

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
6 months is no different. 6 months = 25 weeks. Child would survive outside the womb. If you assume that the facilities are available for an abortion, the faciilities would also allow an incubator.

That isn't a reasonable assumption by any means. The amount of technology needed to keep a 6-month old premature baby alive far exceeds that needed for an abortion. For starters, there's the matter of electricity.

Az:

Again, you've not given any coherent reason why the survival of the human race is so important in this instance that it permits rape/murder. I'm assuming you don't approve of such things normally, so I'd like to get a consistent argument.

[Theben]

Originally posted by Arrian
The baby is male, and the woman does NOT want the abortion. The only way to save humanity would be to compel the abortion, since the woman will die in childbirth and the child is male. Whaddya do?

IIRC most women who start getting complications with childbirth only get worse in later pregnancies. So in this case the human race is already doomed; let her do what she wants.

[Az]

Again, you've not given any coherent reason why the survival of the human race is so important in this instance that it permits rape/murder. I'm assuming you don't approve of such things normally, so I'd like to get a consistent argument.

I've told you: utility. The death of the human race is the ultimate anti-utilitarian act.

Now please explain why raping a woman is wrong, generally.

[Agathon]

Same from me. I will speak no more of it.

Anyway - some phil I saved up.

Boris' case introduces an unnecessary complication, since it requires one to resolve the vexed question of whether the rights or welfare of future human beings must be taken into account.

It would be better to use a simpler case such as the old one where the guerilla tells you, you must shoot one of ten prisoners to save the other nine, or that he will shoot all ten. What is the right thing to do in this case?

Well if you are a utilitarian or consequentialist it is pretty simple – you shoot the one man (selected at random) and save the other nine. The welfare loss from the deaths of ten people is, all other things being equal, worse than the welfare loss from the death of one person. Hence it's a no-brainer.

But if you are a rights-based theorist, you will believe that it is either simply wrong to kill people, or wrong to kill people without their consent. Say in the guerilla case, no one consents (which is rational, because the chances of being killed are certain if they consent, but less than certain if they don't). What to do?

Well, the standard answer is to do nothing since it is wrong to kill people. But this is a seriously confused view. In fact everyone who believes in a rights based theory like this is seriously confused.

A critic can always ask, "which is worse, ten violations of the right to life, or one?" If you say ten, then you have admitted that the killing of one is morally preferable to the killing of ten, which is exactly what the utilitarian said. Of course rights-based theorists piss and moan about this and say that it's not their fault and that the guerilla captain is responsible and should take all the blame. I agree, he is morally responsible, since he put you in the position of deciding (which is also wrong). So I agree that you are not blameworthy for being put in this situation nor should you be punished for killing one person, but that doesn't mean you aren't blameworthy if you don't choose between one death or ten. The power has been given to you, and only you to make the decision for a better or worse outcome – hence you are responsible in that respect.

Again people piss and moan about this because they think that there are always other alternatives (the usual suggestion is to shoot the captain and play the hero), but that is an ignorant response, since it ignores the fact that situations where we have to choose between the lesser of two evils because someone else's bad decisions restrict ours, happen all the time. The guerilla captain case is just a case that illustrates this general problem. Changing the case is an illegitimate argumentative technique.

Another fallacious response is to argue that you can't be sure whether the guerilla captain will actually shoot all ten, or preserve the other nine if you shoot one. Of course there are cases where we can't be 100% sure what happens, but we have always had to and will always have to make decisions based on probabilities (especially with regard to what other people will or won't do). To argue that the impossibility of being certain about what another person will do means that you can't make any decision is just plain loopy, since you would have to generalize that principle and that would mean you basically ought to make no decision ever again. The guerilla case is one of those in which you can be reasonably certain about the outcomes, just like you can be pretty sure that when your mother makes you breakfast, she isn't trying to poison you.

So leaving off those lame responses, what is left for the rights-based theorist. Well, not much since they seem to agree with the utilitarian that it is better for one to die than ten.

But there is one other response, which exposes the rights theory for what it really is – disguised religious belief. This group of people will object that whether or not it is worse for one person to die or ten is irrelevant, the only rule is that you shouldn't kill anyone.

But such a person admits then that the fact of whether they do the killing or not matters more than how many killings happen in the world. This view is called moral fetishism. It is the view that your own sense of moral purity matters more than the consequences of your actions or inaction upon others.

How could one make sense of this view? Well, if you ask the moral fetishist this question: "what makes killing bad? Is it something to do with the victim or something to do with the killer?", they have to say that it is something to do with the killer. That's because if it is the effect that makes it wrong, then there is nothing special about me not doing it as long as less bad effects happen overall. But they are going to say that it is the killer's breaking of a moral rule that matters, and it is not the case that more or less rule breaking is better or worse, what matters is only that I don't break the rule. How do we make sense of this? How can it be the case that rule breaking is bad, but that no one is obligated to try to minimize the amount of overall rule breaking, but only to refrain from it themselves?

Well the answer is that it is only if individual clean consciences matter more than the particular rules. What matters is that I am not a bad person and who cares if everyone else is evil. But this is a weird view – most people think that morality should prevent bad things from happening and minimize human suffering rather than being about individual moral purity – indeed, why would a focus on individual moral purity be anything other than selfishness gross indifference to the sufferings of others? The answer is "only if individual clean consciences" are the sole bearers of value. Now we've heard this before – it's the stock Christian view. What may happen in this world does not matter, what matters only is the life after this life – and for that the individual keep his character as clean as possible for his judgment by God.

So there you have it. I reckon that's a pretty persuasive set of arguments to show that people who often argue against the greater good are really endorsing what is a religious belief system, even if they don't think so. For the value of rule breaking, if it isn't tied to human suffering or welfare, must inevitably seek supernatural support.

PS. It was arguing with David Floyd that made me realize that rights based theories are at root religious.

[Arrian]

That's not the biblical story. Lot is old, and his daughters don't have any kids. So they get him drunk and sleep with him. And that's not done to repopulate the planet.

So my memory of the story was hazy. Bah. Do the daughters go to hell?

-Arrian