Poll: Would you kill an infant if it meant saving the lives of a large group of people?

[Fudd]

grawr double post

 

[Fudd]

Stupid poll is stupid. This basically comes down to deontology vs concequentialism and not logic vs emotion. To say that if you wouldn't murder a baby then you're an "emotional thinker" (read: moron) is idiotic and fallacious. If you murder a child you deserve to die regardless of any and all underlying circumstances. Because, at the end of the day, either YOU are murdering an innocent child for purely selfish reasons (your own survival) or a group of soldiers is murdering a group of people. Which of those actions is your fault? See, by not being an evil baby-murdering psychopath, you aren't the one taking action. You can't be blamed for something you didn't do.
Also, watch this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwOCmJevigw

Frankly I've always found the argument that inaction is morally neutral to be silly at best. The fact is that if the child is not silenced in one way or another the failure to act, the failure to prevent harm, does lie just as much with those who could have taken action and did not as it does with the soldiers. Yes, the implication is that we, as individuals and as a society, are in some way responsible for a great many evils that we do not directly take part in, but at least it does away with the myth of a pure personal reslity for "individual" actions.

I never said it was morally neutral, I implied it was morally right in the "don't-murder-the-baby vs murder-the-baby" dilemma. While you can choose to feel guilty for not being a cold blooded murderer, you are not at fault for something that you did not do. You're not responsible for the actions of the soldiers that kill the group, the soldiers are. You're only responsible for the deaths of those people if you kill them yourself or give the order to kill them. The baby has done nothing to deserve to die, and you are therefore committing an immoral, heinous action by killing it. If you kill the baby, you and the people you are with are just as deserving of death as the soldiers hunting you. If you're okay with that, fine, but don't try to pretty it up and make it seem like you're somehow in the right.

Unfortunately the choice to do nothing, in this case, makes you complicit in the deaths of the others you are hiding with. In the choice between two evils we must be able to discern the lesser of them and take that path. There is no real right in this situation, both decisions are morally wrong, but I would hope that when the time comes you would be able to make a sacrifice of your moral indignation at having to make the choice and choose the lesser. Again, inaction does not, and cannot be seen to, absolve one of moral consequence. You are guilty either way.

 

[Fudd]

Besides, killing the child is not inherently a selfish choice. I, for instance, would much rather not kill the child. It would weigh incredibly heavily on my conscience and I would certainly die to save the child in most other circumstances. My life being saved by its death would not factor into the decision. Instead it is a matter of the others being saved by the sacrifice of my conscience. Were I selfish, I would hold my moral conviction about killing the child to be more important than the lives of the others in hiding with me. That is the selfish choice.

 

[UlytimateDestruction]

If you murder the infant by using guns they would hear the noise and come find you. The more logical and sensical route is to cover the infants mouth up and perhaps tape them to something if they don't stop. Since there is no way out or past the quards what would be the point in hiding in a refugee the whole time?.