Metamorality.

[lawtonfogle]

I am saying that life and death is not in any human hands regardless of what decisions we think we are making. No one dies unless God allows it. The time appointed for man to die is up to God. Admittedly, God employs our freewill in this appointment, but my belief is that when we are confronted with something that is greater than us, our "out" is always to depend on God for the answer.

Lisa

God has restricted His powers in giving us choice, and as such, a man can take it in their hands to force another to die. If not, then our free will is limited.

 

[Lisa0315]

God has restricted His powers in giving us choice, and as such, a man can take it in their hands to force another to die. If not, then our free will is limited.

No, God's will works concurrently with freewill. It is like an infinite embedded IF statement.

In this example, it would be, (IF psychopath offers these three options, and man chooses baby to die, God will do X, (IF man chooses other man to die, God will do X, (IF man does not choose and screams obscenities, God will do X, (IF man does not choose but falls on his face before God, God will do X, ELSE, X))))

 

[Isambard]

Well, the thing you have left out here is faith. If God allows you to be put into an impossible situation in which, no matter what option you choose, you sin, then, your only option is to drop to your knees and wait on God to deliver you.

So, in the hypothetical, and I know the thread you are referring to, the right answer (and I did not answer it correctly the first time) is to not choose and instead use the five minutes to pray for God to deliver you and the others.

Lisa

Your answer is a copt-out to avoid responsibility for your actions/inactions. That said, its never worked out historically either with examples ranging fron similar scenerios to what the OP mentioned, to bigger examples with more lives on the line, such as the decision for European countries (and eventually America) to get involved in WWII.

 

[lawtonfogle]

No, God's will works concurrently with freewill. It is like an infinite embedded IF statement.

In this example, it would be, (IF psychopath offers these three options, and man chooses baby to die, God will do X, (IF man chooses other man to die, God will do X, (IF man does not choose and screams obscenities, God will do X, (IF man does not choose but falls on his face before God, God will do X, ELSE, X))))

Except for a few points. This first states God's will is subject to change (or at least possible, as it is undetermined in future reference), and that God's will is time based. Also, part of this if statement includes If(man refuse God)then(man go to hell) which results in it is God's will that any man goes to hell, which I think is some theological flaw of some sort.

 

[TeddyKGB]

Actually there is. The Bible states that God will always give you a way out. So if every possible action (including doing nothing... think good Samaritan here) leads to a 'sin', one of them must not be a sin else the Bible lied.

That's not exactly what you wrote before. You wrote about lesser and greater sins. Doing the non-sinful action is uncontroversial.

 

[lawtonfogle]

That's not exactly what you wrote before. You wrote about lesser and greater sins. Doing the non-sinful action is uncontroversial.

I was giving a Biblical backing to someone else's statement.

Also, it could be that the 'lesser sin' is not, in this case, considered a sin.

 

[Lisa0315]

Your answer is a copt-out to avoid responsibility for your actions/inactions. That said, its never worked out historically either with examples ranging fron similar scenerios to what the OP mentioned, to bigger examples with more lives on the line, such as the decision for European countries (and eventually America) to get involved in WWII.

I disagree because initially I chose the man to die and save the life of the baby. I changed my mind when I thought about the question in this thread. If God always provides a way out, then, from that perspective, the only way out is prayer and allowing God to make the decision that is too great for me to make.

Lisa

 

[Isambard]

I disagree because initially I chose the man to die and save the life of the baby. I changed my mind when I thought about the question in this thread. If God always provides a way out, then, from that perspective, the only way out is prayer and allowing God to make the decision that is too great for me to make.

Lisa

So....in the historic example of WWII, doing nothing and waiting for God to act wouldve been the moral choice in your opinion?

 

[Lisa0315]

So....in the historic example of WWII, doing nothing and waiting for God to act wouldve been the moral choice in your opinion?

Yeah, you got me there. Let me think about it some more before I concede.

Lisa

 

[Bombila]

Perhaps a supposed situation not so rife with possibilities would elicit answers less likely to avoid the question. As soon as you toss in 'a psychopath', people start thinking about psychopaths, who might lie, who might have an agenda in addition to their proposed agenda, who might do any maniacal unpredictable thing. In fact, the situation would work better if no human threat was mentioned. Save the baby or save the forty year old from a fire, for example, or the baby or the teenager, or the man or the woman.

Not choosing might be an invalid answer, but what about leaving it to chance? In any of these baby/man, baby/teen, man/woman choices, all other things being equal, I'd have to say eeny-meeny-miny-mo or something, because I find myself incapable of judging if one or the other of these sets has more value, or more right to be saved.

 

[Rebekka]

I think this is what is known as Situation Ethics .

It is when a person (especially a Christian) is confronted with a situation in which a moral wrong must be committed in order to avoid a greater moral wrong from occurring.

I believe that any Christian is forgiven for committing the lesser sin in order to avoid the greater sin from occurring.

Not all christians - the catholic church teaches that it is never moral to commit a sin for the greater good.

See the catechism of the catholic church # 1756 and 1789: One may never do evil so that good may result from it. (See http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p3s1c1a6.htm#1789 . This line of thinking is also used in the explanation of why contraception may not even be used for good reasons, as the church sees it as intrinsically immoral. The same goes for abortion, although I think it becomes a grey area when it comes to ending ectopic pregnancies.)

We had a thread about this recently in OBOB, the question was: is it allowed (or 'moral') to lie in order to save a life? (Lying is seen as always immoral according to the catechism.) So, may you choose a lesser evil in order to avoid a greater evil? Concrete situation: (the old story) you have jews hiding in your attic, the nazis come at your door and ask you whether you have jews in the house. If you say no, you lie. If you say yes, the jews will die.

According to catholic morality, you still should not lie - although most catholics did not agree with it; they would lie (well, that's always an assumption, but at least they thought they would lie in that situation) because indeed, it doesn't seem moral to let people die just because you didn't want to lie. The lie is trivial compared to people's lives.

That doesn't mean that the catholic church would not forgive people who choose to do the lesser evil to avoid the greater one - but officially I think they would need to repent and confess the lesser evil. And, well, I don't equate the catholic church with God. Even if the church does not forgive the lesser sin that is committed to prevent a greater one (if the only option to prevent the greater evil was to do the lesser evil), I, like you, believe that God would.

 

[Lisa0315]

Not all christians - the catholic church teaches that it is never moral to commit a sin for the greater good.

See the catechism of the catholic church # 1756 and 1789: One may never do evil so that good may result from it. (See http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p3s1c1a6.htm#1789 . This line of thinking is also used in the explanation of why contraception may not even be used for good reasons, as the church sees it as intrinsically immoral. The same goes for abortion, although I think it becomes a grey area when it comes to ending ectopic pregnancies.)

We had a thread about this recently in OBOB, the question was: is it allowed (or 'moral') to lie in order to save a life? (Lying is seen as always immoral according to the catechism.) So, may you choose a lesser evil in order to avoid a greater evil? Concrete situation: (the old story) you have jews hiding in your attic, the nazis come at your door and ask you whether you have jews in the house. If you say no, you lie. If you say yes, the jews will die.

According to catholic morality, you still should not lie - although most catholics did not agree with it; they would lie (well, that's always an assumption, but at least they thought they would lie in that situation) because indeed, it doesn't seem moral to let people die just because you didn't want to lie. The lie is trivial compared to people's lives.

That doesn't mean that the catholic church would not forgive people who choose to do the lesser evil to avoid the greater one - but officially I think they would need to repent and confess the lesser evil. And, well, I don't equate the catholic church with God. Even if the church does not forgive the lesser sin that is committed to prevent a greater one (if the only option to prevent the greater evil was to do the lesser evil), I, like you, believe that God would.

Yep, but in this case is choosing one person over another or not choosing at all both sins? If so, which is the lesser sin?

Lisa

 

[Rebekka]

Yes, precisely, and making up solutions which require the OP to add caveats ("You can rely on the psychopath doing as you ask"; "You do not have a way of preventing him from killing"; and so on) completely defeats the object.

It's fine to give interesting reasons for your choices, but it's simply silly to go off on fantasies about roundhouse kicking the psychopath or escaping and going back in time to save everyone. An ethical thought experiment exists to ask a question. This one asked, Which is more valuable: the life of a baby, the life of a grown man, or the principle that you shouldn't be the cause of a death? Any answer which avoids answering this question is a needless distraction.

I agree with this.

Still I think Bombila makes a good point about the connotations of 'psychopath'; I, too, would have preferred if the thread was about a more neutral situation, for example a fire. And I didn't really choose, either - I would randomly pick the man or the baby by indeed saying an eeny-meeny-miny-mo thing. I don't see this as cheating, as I would still save either the man or the baby, but I don't want to make that choice so I would make it random.

I couldn't vote in the poll though.

 

[Rebekka]

Yep, but in this case is choosing one person over another or not choosing at all both sins? If so, which is the lesser sin?

Lisa

My point was that doing the lesser sin would still be immoral according to catholic teaching (though most likely not according to your regular priest; also, it's more complicated because in order to sin mortally, you have to commit it in full freedom, which is debatable in this scenario), so even if there is a lesser sin, that is irrelevant. I think the catholic option would be to do nothing (which lets all three of you die), because then at least you are not doing the evil yourself, you're not responsible - it's the psychopath who kills, not you.

Still, there is also a teaching on conscience: it is your duty to listen to your conscience (it is also your duty to have an informed conscience), and if your conscience tells you that you have to save those two lives by ending one, then you are sinning if you choose the option of not doing anything.

I don't like the psychopath scenario, but if you replace it by the fire (or drowning) scenario it doesn't make sense anymore to not choose at all: in that case it would definitely be immoral to choose to do nothing. The thing is, saving a life by jumping in the water/going into a burning house is not morally ambiguous, it's all-good, while killing one to save two is a moral dilemma. In the fire situation it's reduced to the choice between the man and the baby. You don't have the third option.

 

[quatona]

Why is it that I always read the thread title as "Metamortality"?

 

[cantata]

Why is it that I always read the thread title as "Metamortality"?

Me too!

 

[Rebekka]

Me three.

 

[Lisa0315]

Me Four...NOW...