The philosophical question on the moral side to murder and my opinions -

[Sīn the Moon Daddy]

Humanity has no natural predator, and I feel like this is an issue that must be rectified for the good of our future. The weak must be weeded out, violently and without mercy. If you allow the unfit to fester and breed then you will be overwhelmed within a single generation.

Murder is not wrong when you are killing a useless eater. In fact, you are benefiting society, and even your own family. Each useless eater that is liquidated reduces the strain on an already overtaxed and overburdened social safety net.

What is a useless eater? In general, anyone with an iq of 75 or below will be unable to compete in the economy and should be euthanized. Those with genetic disorders or abnormalities should be euthanized. Those who have serious physical disabilities should be euthanized.

In short not only is murder not wrong, but by opposing these solutions you are standing in the way of progress.

 

[Corbin Dallas Multipass]

Humanity has no natural predator, and I feel like this is an issue that must be rectified for the good of our future. The weak must be weeded out, violently and without mercy. If you allow the unfit to fester and breed then you will be overwhelmed within a single generation.

Murder is not wrong when you are killing a useless eater. In fact, you are benefiting society, and even your own family. Each useless eater that is liquidated reduces the strain on an already overtaxed and overburdened social safety net.

What is a useless eater? In general, anyone with an iq of 75 or below will be unable to compete in the economy and should be euthanized. Those with genetic disorders or abnormalities should be euthanized. Those who have serious physical disabilities should be euthanized.

In short not only is murder not wrong, but by opposing these solutions you are standing in the way of progress.

I wouldn't try passing off this answer in your philosophy class though.

 

[Reginald Lurkington]

Humanity has no natural predator, and I feel like this is an issue that must be rectified for the good of our future. The weak must be weeded out, violently and without mercy. If you allow the unfit to fester and breed then you will be overwhelmed within a single generation.

Murder is not wrong when you are killing a useless eater. In fact, you are benefiting society, and even your own family. Each useless eater that is liquidated reduces the strain on an already overtaxed and overburdened social safety net.

What is a useless eater? In general, anyone with an iq of 75 or below will be unable to compete in the economy and should be euthanized. Those with genetic disorders or abnormalities should be euthanized. Those who have serious physical disabilities should be euthanized.

In short not only is murder not wrong, but by opposing these solutions you are standing in the way of progress.

I personally believe there is more value to human life than can be expressed in a cost-benefit analysis, to say I find your perspective cold and inhuman is an understatement.
Many (admittedly not the majority) 'useless eaters' provide value to the lives of the people around them that can't be quantified in terms of monetary value.

 

[MW 590]

More responsible? According to who?

If you do thing A then X happens. If you do thing B then Y happens. A or B could be "Nothing at all", it doesn't change the basic logic. By doing nothing at all, people die. By doing something, people die.

I'd say the idea of "Well if I do nothing it can't be my fault" is extremely self centered. You care more about your 'fault' than 5 people's lives? Isn't that kind of 'evil'?

The good place is a funny show, yeah it's afterlife is different from the christian one, but it kind of has to be to be a funny show. Also it doesn't claim to be based on Christianity anyway. I'd recommend you give it a watch and judge for yourself, it wasn't what I expected and I find it hilarious. I'm sure jesus is madder that you come to this site than watching a mildly blasphemous show anyway. I wouldn't worry about it, the dummy has to forgive you no matter what.

That is a good point but the argument that not taking an action to sacrifice 1 life to save 5 can be used in other scenarios where that would be considered morally wrong. The speaker in the video I watched gave another scenario where there is a fat man on the side of the tracks. Most people would consider it wrong to push the man onto the tracks to stop the trolley to save 5 lives, so how is steering the trolley to go on another track with 1 person different?

I did research on the Good Place and it sort of is similar to the Christian afterlife by having there be a good place for good people and a bad place for bad people but other religions believe in that afterlife system as well. The premise of the first season and the plot twist where the characters who thought they were in the good place found out that they were in the bad place all along is very interesting and I'm sure it is hilarious. I would watch the show if there was a different ending. They should have done it so that the people in charge reveal that they are demons and that the 4 characters are in hell because no matter how righteous, they still committed sins that they didn't repent of and were therefore undeserving of the good place. Then it should have revealed that there were temporarily dead in the hospitals and then they get revived by doctors giving them a second chance to repent and share their story to convert people to Christianity.

Why would Jesus be mad about me coming to this site? I didn

Humanity has no natural predator, and I feel like this is an issue that must be rectified for the good of our future. The weak must be weeded out, violently and without mercy. If you allow the unfit to fester and breed then you will be overwhelmed within a single generation.

Murder is not wrong when you are killing a useless eater. In fact, you are benefiting society, and even your own family. Each useless eater that is liquidated reduces the strain on an already overtaxed and overburdened social safety net.

What is a useless eater? In general, anyone with an iq of 75 or below will be unable to compete in the economy and should be euthanized. Those with genetic disorders or abnormalities should be euthanized. Those who have serious physical disabilities should be euthanized.

In short not only is murder not wrong, but by opposing these solutions you are standing in the way of progress.

You have demonstrated the flaws in utilitarianism. It leads to disturbing ideologies like yours.

 

[Corbin Dallas Multipass]

The twist where you are pushing one person onto the tracks is interesting. Like you said, it's the same choice, bit it feels very different.

I think there's another piece to the problem. You have to be able to live with the choice you make. In fact, looking at how people approach the problem, that's actually the main concern.

So in a sense, not killing the 1 man to save the 5 is sacrificing 4 lives for the sake of your own conscience, and is the most selfish choice. Huh...

 

[Fagatron]

It is a difference of commission vs omission, but some people like @mr.moon1488 think that omission is just as bad, so it is less bad to run over 1 person. I thought that my original answer was the Catholic answer to this dilemma but now I am not sure. I will therefore ask the ex priest @Fagatron about this.

I'm sorry for the slow response @Jacob Harrison. I've been very busy and wanted to make sure I could answer properly. I'll try to keep it brief though because there is a lot of material on this subject.

In the traditional scenario of the trolleys there are only two acceptable options.

1. Do nothing.
2. Throw yourself under the trolley if that could stop it, but this is allowed only if you don't actually want to die (because dying in the course of living out your faith is noble, denying God's will for when you die by commiting suicide on the other hand is a sin).

This might sound strange at first but hear me out. The concern of Catholics always should be to perform the least amount of sins. I know this doesn't happen in practice but in theory, a Catholic should always refuse to take actions that result in sin. Not making a choice can be a sin (i.e: If you don't try to prevent someone getting an abortion) but very often it's the correct answer.

In this scenario, killing either the group or the single human, results in an unlawful killing (no human has the right to influence another humans time of private judgement/death, with exceptions) and the one who pulls the lever has committed a mortal sin and is now destined for hell (Catholics are called to be Holy, that is loyal to the dictates of God, not "good" in the secular understanding of helping others flourish). Reducing the amount of human suffering is irrelevant in this context as Catholicism does not consider suffering to be necessarily bad and a just punishment for original sin (in fact John 12:8 alongside the words of Mother Teresa are regularly called upon to remind Catholics suffering will always exist and can have important spiritual benefits; e.g you need poor people to offer charity in order to fulfill the duty to minister to the sick). By taking no action, no sin has been comitted. The people who are struck may or may not go to hell but that's irrelevant to the salvation of the individual. Salvation is the core base of Catholic concepts of right and wrong, anything that God leads one away from salvation is wrong no matter how many people it makes happy.

However, to focus back on unlawful killing for a moment just to explain the phrasing there are cases where a Catholic is not only sin free to kill, but is morally obligated to do so. The Chatechism of the Catholic Church condemns those who condemn the death penalty chiefly on the grounds of St. Thomas Aquinas and the Council of Trent's decrees that the answer to unrepentant heretics or those who refuse to convert to Catholicism should be ostracism or death. Ostracism if the individual does not pose a risk to the growth/mantainment of the faith, or death when it does. Which one should be chosen has been a topic of great debate; earlier men like Aquinas strongly advocated for the death of non-believers and heretics ("Best to lose the branch than the Tree [to an infection]") wheras by the time of Trent Catholics were encouraged to shun Protestants (and them likewise the Catholics). If you're a cynic like me you might observe that it became acceptable not to kill Protestants around the same time there were sufficent numbers of them to actually prevent Catholics from doing so, likewise this doctrine appeared for the first time at exactly the same time the Early Church was sufficiently powerful and well placed enough it could attack and persecute Pagans without consequence.

There's also the Just War doctrine were a theoretical Catholic state and population is obligated to go to war and kill when according to 2309 of the Chatechism of the Catholic Church.....

The strict conditions for legitimate defense by military force require rigorous consideration. The gravity of such a decision makes it subject to rigorous conditions of moral legitimacy. At one and the same time:
- the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;
- all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;
- there must be serious prospects of success;
- the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.

These are the traditional elements enumerated in what is called the "just war" doctrine.

The evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good.

Historically the approach was a Catholic state is obligated to wage war and kill if a fellow Catholic state suffered aggression from a non-Catholic power; or if a non-Catholic power was determined to be persecuting Catholics within their own borders such as not allowing missionaries or worship. "Those who have responsibility for the common Good" was historically the Church itself and chiefly the Pope but the phrasing of the modern version is unclear. It can easily be applied to a government, but it's my personal opinion it's kept vague so it can be interpreted to be a modern government but actually still mean the Church itself as well. I'm of this mind because this sort of vauge statements are very in keeping with the modern Catholic approach; Francis' vague airy statements can sound very liberal but when you actually peer in they're not what they seem.

I should add the disclaimer this is all purely from a letter of the law theoretical black and white approach. Francis himself has said he thinks there are better alternatives to the death penalty while likewise observing it would be heretical to ban it, and most Catholics are far more strongly influenced by enlightenment ideas about rights of men and preventing pain than this theology which I've never actually seen anywhere but seminaries, university and the Traditionalist Catholic blogsphere.

 

[ICametoLurk]

lol morals

just go and kill someone already

 

[Lemmingwise]

View attachment 843956

No, just for fun.

 

[ICametoLurk]

Legalize murder, no lives matter.

 

[ProgKing of the North]

Legalize murder, no lives matter.

Every person should get one free lifetime murder.

Use it wisely.

 

[LyapunovCriterion]

In these experiments there's always a misconception between murder and manslaughter. If you're not actively trying to hurt or kill someone, I don't believe it would qualify as murder (I'll let someone with better logic than me intervene on this one). On the other hand, if you're merely trying to reduce the amount of casualties than it would, in the worst case, be manslaughter.

 

[ES 195]

I never understood the trolley question. Without any details your only moral options are to kill the one person to save 5 or decide that you have no right to choose and hit the 5. Legally you would probably get off killing the one person and get nailed if you kill the 5.

The one with the person to push is a much better moral choice since you're not in a losing position. If you remove the person being fat (because then they deserve to be pushed) the greatest option is to jump on the tracks yourself to save the people. Obviously this doesn't fall under killing someone so I personally its wrong to kill someone to save others in that context because your forcing your will on someone else and taking their life. You are technically a hero but deserve the charge of murder and whatever consequences come with it. Also it would most probably give the survivors some sort of survivor's guilt since it wasn't a sacrifice but a murder.

 

[nonvir_1984]

Depending on how the instructor uses it, the trolley problem is intended, as folks have noted, to get you to reflect on your beliefs and hopefully see that deontology and utilitarianism do conflict and that no one can be totally deontological or totally utilitarian - and that any moral choice depends on the circumstances and the specific attributes of the case.
This has led some philosophers to conjecture that there is a more fundamental moral principle operating that enables us to select the way to approach a moral choice in a specific circumstance. So, sometimes we must be utilitarian and other times deontological.
It also demonstrates that in some parts of philosophy there is no right answer, but what you learn are skills, such as accurate listening, attending to the points being made and addressing questions and avoiding shit-talking.
Unfortunately, outside of KF, those talents are not much appreciated.