I heard a true story the other day from WWII where two soldiers who were very close friends were traveling in a jeep and they hit a land-mine. The jeep was blown over and one was thrown clear, but the other was trapped. The jeep burst into flames and was quickly going to burn the trapped soldier. The other soldier tried to come to his aid, and get him out, but it was impossible, and there was no way of removing any limbs to free him – the solider was completely trapped under the burning jeep and was going to die – which he sadly realized. He looked at his good friend and as his legs began to burn, pleaded with him to use his side-arm to end it quickly and put him out of his misery before it consumed him. The friend stepped back as the flames got closer, loosened his pistol, took it in his hand, and pointed it at his friend who was now screaming in agony; he cocked it, and squeezed the trigger – but couldn’t do it. Slowly his arm dropped to this side as he watched his friend scream as he was burnt alive; cursing his friend that he didn’t have the courage to help him when he most needed it.
Did he do the right thing? The friend was going to die anyway, why not be merciful and stop the suffering? What would you do?
Hmmm, I’m sure I put that too-hard basket around here somewhere.
I’m looking forward to following this discussion. I had a conversation earlier this week on a similar idea — pain management for terminally-ill cancer patients.
Great topic, Filia.
Hey, great question. Who knows what they’d do in that situation? I’d like to think that I’d have the courage to put the guy out of his misery, but I can’t be sure. Here’s some more interesting questions you may or may not like to have a go at answering:
* Why would an all-knowing, all-powerful superbeing create our vast cosmos and then zoom in on one particular speck of dust and rejoice in the smell of burning goat flesh coming from it?
* Why would God wait billions of years for millions of species to live brutish, pointless lives and then finally intervene just a few thousand years ago, and then very quickly change his mind and say, “Never mind, I’m changing the whole game!”
* Why would a loving God condemn all those who don’t believe in him, and then populate the world with thousands of contradictory religions, not to mention thousands of contradictory sects within even the “correct” religion? To confuse us?
* Why would a concerned God only reveal himself to people in a way that is indistinguishable from the mystic visions of thousands of ‘false’ religions, or the hallucinations of schizophrenics?
* Why would a loving God give infinite punishment for finite failures, especially to a species he designed to fail?
(Hat Tip to http://commonsenseatheism.com/?p=1406)
I’d love to hear your collective thoughts on these questions as well as the question posed in the original post.
Kind Regards
Mike
I’d shoot.
Yet I disagree with euthenasia because in that situation we have hospice care and pain relief options.
A) I think he should have shot him
B) I can understand not shooting him as I’m not sure I’d be able to, but I think I would like to have
Same sort of question as those people that threw themselves out of the towers 9/11. They were going to die, were suffocating and cooking from fire, so jumped instead. Really suicide?
Hey Kiwi Atheist…just a thought. Have your read the Problem of Pain by C.S.Lewis? Might help a little with your questions
I’d shoot.
In theory anyway. I’d imagine shooting your friend in real life would be mighty difficult, even in that situation.
But then again I also don’t believe there’d be any consequences in the spiritual sense for shooting him
My take, which I’m sure won’t satisfy you but here goes (very brief, writing an assignment:)
* Why would an all-knowing, all-powerful superbeing create our vast cosmos and then zoom in on one particular speck of dust and rejoice in the smell of burning goat flesh coming from it?
I say he created the cosmos to demonstrate his vastness, and majesty. For me, seeing the beauty of the night, hearing about the infinite reaches of space etc etc, just makes me think more of God’s beauty and vastness
* Why would God wait billions of years for millions of species to live brutish, pointless lives and then finally intervene just a few thousand years ago, and then very quickly change his mind and say, “Never mind, I’m changing the whole game!”
Not sure what you mean by changing the game?
* Why would a loving God condemn all those who don’t believe in him, and then populate the world with thousands of contradictory religions, not to mention thousands of contradictory sects within even the “correct” religion? To confuse us?
God didn’t do anything. We did…the reality is that love can not exist without the option not to love. There has to be the option not to choose God; which we did. That choice has made it harder for us to search and find him, but to me the very fact that there are so many religions speaks very much to our transcendent reality; ie that we were made for god and even though that relationship has been messed up we still seek him.
* Why would a concerned God only reveal himself to people in a way that is indistinguishable from the mystic visions of thousands of ‘false’ religions, or the hallucinations of schizophrenics?
He reveals himself in many more ways than visions and voices.
* Why would a loving God give infinite punishment for finite failures, especially to a species he designed to fail?
He didnt design us to fail, he designed us to love, so to love we have to have the option not to love, not to choose him.
muerk (and anyone else),
The discussion I had the other day was to do with someone probably two to three days from dying from cancer and in incredible pain.
Is it OK to give him or her too much morphine, whereby the good of pain reduction is used to a level that causes death?
Or how about if you give the person a button that releases morphine into their system when they’re in pain and let them know that doing that too often might/will kill them?
This is so hard…
(well, talking about it isn’t that hard when compared with actually having to make these decisions).
To follow on from Gianna’s responses in #6, God gave us free will and that’s why most of the bad stuff in the world happens — flawed human beings making poor choices.
Scribe:
You give the level of morphine that gives pain relief. If it happens to shorten their life then that is an acceptable indirect effect.
Did he do the right thing? The friend was going to die anyway, why not be merciful and stop the suffering? What would you do?
The problem here is the fact that he is going to die anyway…
1) if you don’t believe in God and after life, why bother? Once your friend die, he is dead so no matter you kill him or not now, it doesn’t make a different… so shoot it or not won’t matter… do what ever you feel like (the most common thing these days… just do what you feel like… there is not right and wrong… is all ideals… *laugh*)
2) If you believe in God… o that is a problem… there can be two arguments here that since he is going to die anyway, may as well give him a so call “merciful” dead…
or
Someone may say I am crazy for saying this but if you really believe in God, won’t you consider to pray for his soul and may the merciful God take his life and end his earthly suffering?
I personally think that when a person think that I can give him a “merciful” dead is the moment that the person thinks he is God… May be just me being crazy… who knows… Afterall, I am crazy
Hi kiwiatheist, i am sorry i don’t have enough time to answer all your questions, but i will try and answer a couple.
first, in answer to your question about God waiting billions of years etc etc.. here is a good article that answers that point, and then turns the question around onto you!!
http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/apologetics/ap0258.htm
Second, a lot of your questions are not framed as real questions, they are actually loaded questions. However i do believe that there are a couple of good objections hidden in your loaded questions.
First God does not condemn all those who do not believe in him. In the end you will be judged on how much love you have shown your fellow human beings (cf Mt 25:31-46). Second God did not populate the world with Contradictory religions, they basically arise naturally out of human beings desire to worship God and to live a type of Moral life. Unfortunately because of Original sin we became lost and couldn’t find our way back to God. Therefore God walked among us to try and lead us back into right relationship with him. Dont make the mistake of imagining that because all religions have types of rituals and moral codes, they are all the same. there is only one religion around that stats the God became a real flesh and blood human being and then allowed himself to be killed by us and then rose in the flesh from the dead. in order to show us that love is stronger than death.
Also never forget that we are free and if we are free then we have to be free to reject God and what he wants of us. Because the only way we can truly love (and that is what God wants us to do) then we have to be free, because otherwise it is not really love. Love by its nature is free.
Finally one point that you didn’t specifically bring up, but i think is lurking is the objection about why God does not make it more obvious that he is real and interested in us. Why doesn’t he make his presence felt in a more direct way so that there would be no doubt. The answer is that if he did, then people would become followers of him because they would realise that he has the power. But this attitude is exactly the thing he is trying to kill in us. he doesn’t want us to act out of selfish motives, but rather out of love. To love is to be free to love, not have him force himself upon us.
sorry i cant say more, but i am late
God bless
Great post Filia, I always look forward to thursdays on this blog. Bottom line is, I wouldn’t shoot. No matter how far you are willing to justify killing in the name of good, it just doesn’t fit. I’m sorry but if you were to “put him out of his misery” you are still killing a huamn life. How is this action different from killing an old person or even an unborn. Murder is murder. No matter how sweet you make it sound. So Gianna, you may want to rethink your decision
Matt thats a very interesting link, from a very honest author!
Look to be honest I’m not sure. I’ve wrestled with this question in regards to those who jumped from the Twin Towers. Do they turn up in heaven and God says “sorry but you committed suicide..” Or was a desperate move from people facing certain death, suffocating, literally hanging out windows to get air, and instant death as opposed to burning alive was better?
I recognise the difficulty in the argument especially since this is only a few steps away from a euthanasia idea. I’m not denying the difficulty in the decision.
But I’m not clear. 70% says it would have been Ok to shoot. That may not represent Catholic teaching, so I’ll certainly go away and think about it, but I don’t think it’s at all black and white.
howdy cobbers,
can i suggest that we keep this thread on the question that filia has posed, rather than turn every thread into an atheist/theist discussion. no offense to you guys, they are really worth while things discussing, but this thread is about the question posed by filia. if you want to discuss those questions, go to the thread that was discussing it the other day, or wait for it to come up again
filia, great question, i think he did the right thing by not shooting
if killing the burning guy is ok, then surely it would be ok for John, or indeed Mary, at the foot of the cross to grab the soldiers lance and put Christ out of his misery before He died, from the suffering already inflicted…?
should Mary have done that? because she was so merciful?
i don’t think there is any moment where we can ethically directly take the life of another innocent human being – because who are we to cut somebody off from their finality in life like that? what is the true good here? what is the purpose of suffering? is it without purpose or finality? and what is the finality of a human act? can we see a difference between the fire and chance killing him, and his friend killing him? is there an ethical difference?
if shooting him is ok because he is going to die anyway, how it is different to any other euthanasia where a person has a terminal illness?
also, there’s a logical and ethical difference between administering temporary pain relief for the good of the mental health and well-being of the dying patient, which may have a unintended side effect of speeding up the oncoming and unavoidable death, and actually directly willfully shooting somebody in the head to end it all because they suffer too much, can everybody see the difference? once again its the difference between (1) the friend helping to reduce the pain of his mate, but not desiring his death, and (2) directly willing his death due to the suffering…
there is an infinite ethical difference here. what friend would kill his friend? if he does that, is he a friend or an enemy? normally the friend loves his friend due to the existant goodness of the friend (ontologically), which means also loving the life of the friend (at the level of becoming), so to deliberately end the life of the friend, and cut him off from his finalities in life, is not to love him, or be merciful to him, but to hate him, to fail utterly to respect the mystery of the friend, and the mystery of his life, even though his life is being taken slowly from him via another movement
if fire or other suffering will take the life of my friend, then i should do everything possible to snuff out the life of the thing that attacks my friend, not snuff out my friend! one fails utterly in a human sense if one deliberately kills ones friend – that is called murder in our society normally
peace all
go the Aussies tomorrow night!
Response to KA (not to original thread topic):
KA, late lunch break, so quick answers (but I bet it takes longer than it took you to copy-and-paste the questions…) – can be unpacked later if you really want, but my history of seeing these things is that the primary motive is to watch theists spin their wheels, and then when answers are provided another laundry list of objections is copied and pasted. KA, you’re ahead of the typical game though because at least you cited your source.
* Why would an all-knowing, all-powerful superbeing create our vast cosmos and then zoom in on one particular speck of dust and rejoice in the smell of burning goat flesh coming from it?
Because God is love. Love does what it doesn’t have to. Re: the goat flesh, one way to reciprocate love is to give up something of value to you for the sake of your beloved.
* Why would God wait billions of years for millions of species to live brutish, pointless lives and then finally intervene just a few thousand years ago, and then very quickly change his mind and say, “Never mind, I’m changing the whole game!”
See Matt’s link (thanks Matt, nice one – that link also highlights the weakness of oral debates, in that you don’t always get the best arguments or answers unless you have time to think). Interesting coincidence, last night was the first time I’d heard that objection posed in that way (I was listening to a panel discussion that included Christopher Hitchens). My initial thoughts were slightly different to D’Souza’s response: I figured the timing was perfect given that it was just 300 years after Alexander the Great had first laid the foundation for a known-world-spanning empire with a common language (koine greek) and economic infrastructure, which the Roman Empire was able to build upon in such a way that the message of Christ could be reliably duplicated and transmitted to the maximum amount of people with greatest clarity in the shortest time, and accurately preserved for the future. Difficult to do any earlier in history. But I think Matt’s link provides a better answer, with mine as a perhaps helpful supplement.
* Why would a loving God condemn all those who don’t believe in him, and then populate the world with thousands of contradictory religions, not to mention thousands of contradictory sects within even the “correct” religion? To confuse us?
If you’re talking about the Christian God, he is “fair” by definition. So he can take into account everyone’s actual level of culpability and judge accordingly.
And religions are man-made inventions. They point to the natural longing for the transcendent, but left to our own devices a lack of consistency is part of being human, so no surprise that various attempts are more or less successful. Which is why Christianity is a revealed religion, God’s call to man, rather than the typical alternative religion which is man’s search for God.
* Why would a concerned God only reveal himself to people in a way that is indistinguishable from the mystic visions of thousands of ‘false’ religions, or the hallucinations of schizophrenics?
This objection doesn’t apply to Christianity, since it is *not* indistinguishable from the alternatives. Such distinguishing features include the cosmological arguments for the existence of God, the moral arguments, and the historical arguments (*especially* the Resurrection of Jesus). The argument from personal experience is not the clincher in terms of the philosophical question of which religion is most likely true.
* Why would a loving God give infinite punishment for finite failures, especially to a species he designed to fail?
1. Why do you think such failures are finite? See here to unpack this.
2. And why do you think the design is for failure, since the Christian says we are designed for eternity with God and he provides the means to attain it?
3. And I think you need to review the standard Christian conception of hell, punishment and the afterlife. A good place to start is here.
If you want a more thorough answer to the bulk of these questions (i.e. on the assumption that you pose them because you are interested in the answers, and intend to give them due consideration), here’s where to go:
God apparently set humanity up for failure in the Garden, so doesn’t this show Him to be cruel, schizoid, or psychotic?
Feel free to let us know what you think of the response.
Now, here’s my question for you (there’s only one, for now):
KA, what’s the basis for your accusations about the unfairness or immorality of God?
On the atheist view, as best I can understand it, since your thoughts are just the spontaneous electrical by-products of some chemical reactions in your brain, you’re just saying that sort of stuff because that’s what chemicals in that particular state in your particular skull do. They just fizz away, and you have fizzed up some words. Those words happen to appeal to some sort of moral standard, but how can chemicals and electricity have a moral standard?
In the Christian world view, your questions have some merit, which is why Christianity has developed the science of theodicy in order to deal with these sorts of questions. But if you have to steal from our worldview in order to object to it, it seems pretty clear that your worldview doesn’t have much foundation, which is a pretty good disproof of atheism.
Or if I adopt your world view, you’re just fizzing, you can’t help it, it’s what you do, and as Michael Ruse says, “any deeper meaning is illusory”, so I’ll leave you to it.
(Righto, 34 minutes, that’s the best I can do in my lunchbreak!)
Dave, good call. The end doesn’t justify the means
(unless you’re operating in an atheist worldview, when sometimes it does – just ask Lenin).
I could see myself pulling the trigger but:
Never mind: “would you pull the trigger?”
How about if you were the other guy: “Would you ask to be shot?”
Is that not a valid question?
Would any one hope that they had the courage to endure the pain and offer it up?
Remember suffering has been sanctified.
Excellent post Filia!
When considering extreme situations like this, we must never allow our emotions to cloud our reason and then lead us to support decisions which may feel good, but aren’t actually morally good.
Some important questions to help cut through the obvious emotional trauma of such a difficult situation as the one described here…
1. To whom does the life of the burning solider belong?
Obviously, as Christians we understand that the life of the burning soldier belongs to God, and therefore no one else has the right to take ownership of that life and then deliberately bring about its end by shooting the soldier.
And:
2. Would shooting the burning soldier be an act of deliberately killing an innocent person?
The answer is quite clearly “yes”.
Shooting the burning soldier would not be an act which targets his pain for treatment or relief which also happens to have a secondary effect of hastening his death – instead it is an act which targets the burning solider with death.
In this scenario deliberately killing an innocent person would become the means that is used to bring about the end of relieving that person’s suffering.
As Catholics we know that killing an innocent person, no matter what good end is achieved by that act, is an intrinsically and gravely immoral act.
And:
3. Is morally acceptable to use ANY means, no matter what it is, to end the suffering of another human person?
The answer to this question is always “no”.
Remember, as Christians we understand that suffering, even the most horrific suffering, is used by God to purify us.
I also have to say that I would be a bit concerned by someone who had absolutely no qualms about pulling out a pistol and then killing someone they know as a friend.
In this case I see a very heroic courage on the part of the soldier who didn’t shoot his mate – the fact that he couldn’t actually kill his friend suggests that even as he gazed on his suffering friend he still saw the good of his friend, and as he looked on the good of his friend he was not able to bring himself to be responsible for destroying that good.
To me the act of NOT shooting exudes far more humanity and compassion than the act of shooting another human person would, because to not shoot, one has to look on their potential victim and see their existence as a great and important good, with such dignity that it must not be reduced to the level of something that can be easily dispatched without even a second thought or a pang of the conscience.
Gianna,
In regards to the people who jumped from the windows of the World Trade Centre (WTC), my understanding of that issue is that they almost certainly weren’t deliberate suicides.
I know that some elements in the media presented them as suicides (and some even went as far as to suggest they were heroic acts), but in actual fact the experts I have read about this issue state that those people would have had no real sane idea about what they were doing when they climbed out of those windows.
Apparently the majority of those people actually climbed out of the windows of the WTC to escape the smoke and overwhelming heat and flames, and they clung to the building for as long as they could before falling.
If you look at the video footage that is available, you’ll see that many of them actually fell from the building, rather than jumped.
Experts who deal with this sort of trauma state that the people who climbed out of those windows and then fell to their deaths were acting purely at the level of a basic survival instinct, and so they took the only option open to them to actually escape from the flames, heat and smoke, and they climbed out of those windows.
Sane and rational judgement didn’t even come into their decision making processes, and it is highly doubtful that they even thought that much about what they were doing – they were being driven by blind fear, and all they were thinking about was getting away from the flames by any means possible, even to the point of doing something as extreme as hanging out the top story windows of such a tall building.
BTM,
If you have time, can you please address the situation I refer to above of administering morphine to a terminally ill patient who is suffering great pain?
It’s double-effect
It’s not necessarily wrong to give someone morphine TO relieve their pain even if it might have a second undesired effect of shortening their life.
Because:
It is one action with two effects one desired one undesired.
and both effects happen immediately following you giving them morphine
and the undesired effect must be unpreventable. (you can’t give them a drug that is going to shorten their life if there is another one which has the desired effect without shortening it.)
Obviously if you give someone morphine TO end their life that is wrong.
wikipedia can probablly explain it better than I
Rather than shoot his friend would it have been possible to knock him unconscious?
BTM in extreme cases such as this could the bullet not be intended for pain relief and the death an unintended consequence.what is the difference with the morphine injection? The intent must be the consideration?
Wasnt it Kipling who was savaged by a lion and witnessed that he did not feel pain when hit by the lion but only after when he didnt die. God had compassion in nature? Is this scenario real?
Arguing the exception to the rule perhaps? Or is it just too hard without seeming simplistic.
Hi Matt,
Thanks to you and all the others who took the time to answer the questions. I admit to feeling overwhelmed here (such is the lot of the minority I suppose), but I would like to try and answer some of the questions you’ve all posed for me. I can’t say that I’ll have the time to do it all in one sitting, but, like eating an elephant, I’ll try and take it a bite at a time
@Matt. I followed the link to the article you suggested I read. I didn’t find it particularly convincing on a number of points, particularly when the writer made statements like this:
“Well, there is one obvious way to account for this historical miracle. It seems as if some transcendent being reached down and breathed some kind of a spirit or soul into man, because after accomplishing virtually nothing for 98 percent of our existence, we have in the past 2 percent of human history produced everything from the pyramids to Proust, from Socrates to computer software.”
On the one hand he’s arguing for the case that at the time of Jesus (whose existence, incidentally, I think there is good evidence for) only 2% of the entire world’s human inhabitants had lived, and on the other hand he argues against the case that since the time of Jesus only 2% of scientific advancement (for want of a better term) has taken place. It seems to me rather like a ‘have your cake and eat it’ argument!
I was particularly disappointed with the paragraph I’ve quoted. I do not believe for a second that there is “…one obvious way to account for this…”, nor do I believe that “…some transcendent being reached down and breathed some kind of a spirit or soul into man…” – I suspect that the vast majority of the world’s population would agree with me. Let’s not forget that Christians are in a world minority.
Why would you believe that Catholicism is the one true religion? I will allow you to expand Catholicism to Christianity if you like, but given that there are as many different forms of Christianity as there are other religions around the world, what makes you so sure that you’re right and the other 99.9999% (random figure, I admit, but I suspect it’s fairly close to the truth) of the world’s population is wrong?
As for quoting Mt 25:31-46 as proof that your god does not condemn those who do not believe in him, I could find you at least a dozen verses from the bible that say just the opposite (even when ‘taken in context’ as bible-believers like to say!)
Can’t say more at the moment as my brain hurts
I’ll try and get back to another point or two later today or tomorrow.
this is really funny:
kiwiatheist:
“Hey, great question. Who knows what they’d do in that situation? I’d like to think that I’d have the courage to put the guy out of his misery, but I can’t be sure. [attempted threadjack starts] Here’s some more interesting questions you may or may not like to have a go at answering:
…
I’d love to hear your collective thoughts on these questions [attempted threadjack finishes] as well as the question posed in the original post.
Kind Regards”
“Kind regards”?
Are you having a laugh? You post within minutes of the main poster, give cursory attention to the topic giving it 30-35 words, cut and paste a screed lifting from another site, and then cap it off with “kind regards”. That’s not really dialogue or discussion, that’s just bait garnished with perfunctory politeness.
Others might see it differently and charitably assume you really are as open minded as you proclaim to be but I see this as sport.
Best wishes.
There is a book written by a holy woman where she is visited by the dead in purgatory. In one episode she describes two men dying of a terminal illness. One of them is a priest. The priest is in pain and prays for a fast painfree death which he is granted. The other does not and dies suffering. During the visit to the holy woman, the priest laments his decsion explaining how much faster he would have gone to heaven and how much less suffering he would have had to endure in purgatory.
Well Border Collie, we have got our knickers in a twist haven’t we? “…bait garnished with perfunctory politeness…” indeed? Well, if you don’t want me here I’ll go. I don’t have to put up with rudeness. Does everyone think this way? Are you all frightened of a little off-topic discussion? I can’t exactly create my own threads now can I? As for sport, no, absolutely not, I can think of better ways to get my adrenalin going
Just for the record, here are some stats on the percentage of world religions, with Catholics making up 15-20% of the world, and Christians 30-35%. Thats a little different to 0.0001%.
@Dr Sam: I thought that the Catholic church had decided that purgatory didn’t exist, or have I remembered incorrectly?
kiwiathiest
we do value your contribution, and don’t want you to go – well, I don’t. I’m sure it’s possible on keep on topic and have your questions answered however. It would just be a matter of putting your perspective into existing topics – that way it will not frustrate the topics of the posters, and you will get a better quality debate and better answers, because all the commenters will be focused on the same thing as you are.
And if your worried your topics won’t be got to – well, you’d be surprised at the amount of topics that are covered. Ultimately it’s the responsibility of those who are posting week in week out to keep variety, I think they all do an amazingly good job. You could ask them to post on a certain topic if you really think we are missing it. It’s up to them though. Posting off topic – as we have found in the past, disrupts the whole site and makes it a general pain to come here. It’s a good courtesy not to.
and i repent of my religion statistics post :oops: *pulls plank out of eye*
@dangermouse: Thank you for your guidance, I am relatively new to this blogging scene and, as I said in my first post, don’t aim deliberately to cause offence. I am genuinly interested in your thoughts and reasoning which is (from what I’ve read so far) heaps better than mine.
I will endeavour to stay on topic in future and if the bulk of opinion is that you’re comfortable with an alternative view of the world, I’ll stick around
Incidentally, when you did your world religions stats, did you include those with no religion as well? (I know of some folk who believe that atheism is a religion!)
Kind regards
Mike
can I ask that no-one puts me out of my misery if I am going to die? I agree with BTM
If you follow the link (the ‘here’ bit in post #29) then you should find the site I used. It’s from adherents.com, and does include atheists, agnostics, secular humanists etc etc… combined they come to about 16%.
Thanks for your courtesy,
and I’m glad you’re staying
Purgatory exists. It’s protestants that don’t believe in it. It exists whether they believe it does or not. For us it doesn’t really make sense to be with God without some kind of clensing of the soul.
@DrSam: Thank you for this. I think I remember now. Has it recently been decided that unbaptized infants no longer go to purgatory before the judgement?
kiwiatheist,
I have enjoyed reading your posts. I don’t agree with you (axiomatic) but I do enjoy your tone, politeness and sincerity.
At being frank we can sometimes get a bit tetchy about perceived ‘threadjacks’. It has been a problem in the past, in that it has stifled genuine discussion on genuinely interesting threads. Don’t take it personally.
From what I have seen, your posts are interesting and light-hearted when necessary; you are clearly a guy (or gal…hmmm, let me rephrase)…you are clearly a kiwi (!) with a sense of humour.
Stick around – oh, and don’t forget to become a Catholic.
Thanks FXD, much appreciated. KA – Guy!
Oh, as for becoming a Catholic, perhaps when hell freezes over
Hi Kiwiatheist, its late and my brain is fried, but just a couple of points.
“Let’s not forget that Christians are in a world minority.” Actually all Christians together make up around 35% of the worlds population, which while not being a majority is still the biggest group off all groups, including non-believers who only make up 16%
Second there are a multitude of reasons why i believe Catholicism is the truth. However no time to do that. There are libraries of books about this though. But instead of quoting those i will just make a simple logical point. Just because people argue about the truth does NOT mean that
a) i am necessarily wrong,
b) we cant find the truth or
c) that the truth doesn’t exist.
And being in the majority or minority should have no bearing on the truth of a matter. As for the rest of the world making up 99% of the population… i think you will find that Catholics make up around 17% of the worlds population.
God bless
Kiwiathiest, also i forgot one thing… go and read Dean’s post, #16 and check out his question for you. it is excellent.
Hi Scribe,
According to Catholic teaching, in the case of pain management it is perfectly acceptable to increase a morphine dose in order to keep a terminal patient comfortable, or pain free, even if increasing the dosage of pain killers is likely to hasten the patient’s death.
The pain killing drugs must never given with the intent of directly killing the patient though – as this would be immoral – but as long as the purpose and intent of the increased dose is pain relief, then the hastened death of the patient becomes an unintended secondary effect of a genuine therapy.
This is a classic case of the moral principal of Double Effect.
Coincidently, it is also one of the most commonly used straw man arguments that people engage in when attacking the Catholic teaching opposing euthanasia – as many people wrongly think that the Church does allow for increased pain meds if it is going to hasten death.
Does that answer the question?
BTM
couldnt a bullet in the post scenario be given for the same reason?
I appreciate the moral danger but isnt it all about intent?
Very good point Dei Verbum.
If such an action had been possible, then it would certainly have been a morally acceptable one.
Dei,
Yes, intent is important in Double Effect situations, but so is the means that you actually propose to use.
In this case, the means being proposed for the purpose of pain relief is the direct killing of the innocent human person suffering the pain.
Shooting a person has no genuine therapeutic value, and it does not actually target their pain – you are not shooting at that person’s pain or at the cause of that person’s pain – instead shooting them is an act of direct killing.
In such a situation, the death of the trapped soldier is not actually an unintended secondary effect of another primary effect, instead it is the only means being employed to bring about an end to his pain.
KA: “Has it recently been decided that unbaptized infants no longer go to purgatory before the judgement?”
Firstly, I think you are confusing limbo and purgatory.
Secondly, the Church officially teaches that purgatory exists.
Thirdly, the Church does not, and never has had any official teaching on limbo, which some theologians have suggested is where unbaptized infants etc… are in a state of mere happiness. Fourthly, I think you are referring to a incident where the Pope reiterated that limbo is not a theological necessity, nor is it taught to exist by the Catholic Church, instead he talked about it being a theological concept.
Last point I would like to write is that it is kind of rude (not just on this site, but most blog sites) to keep threadjacking. So please keep on topic.
If you would like to have a discussion, make a blog, its not hard, and then people from this site can go to it and answer your questions.
Until next week,
Pax
BTM
In such a situation, the death of the trapped soldier is not actually an unintended secondary effect of another primary effect, instead it is the only means being employed to bring about an end to his pain.
This reminds me of the death of King Saul (2 Samuel 1:8-10 so that the atheists can keep up
. I’m in a strange position because I accept that shooting the burning friend would be sinful, yet I would still do it. If there was any other way to relieve the pain, then I would take it, but death is so immanent, so unavoidable.
At least in other situations there can be comfort in the face of pain. How does one provide comfort to a person on fire, trapped under a vehicle? You just have to stand there until the screaming stops.
As it is in the case of a terminally ill person in the final weeks, days or hours of their life.
Remember Muerk,
The comfort we give doesn’t just have to be physical, it can also be spiritual, in fact as Christians we understand that spiritual comfort is actually more important than physical comfort.
I pray that neither of us is ever faced with such a terrible and extreme situation, but if I was I would hope that I would have the presence of mind to start praying the Divine Mercy Chaplet for my trapped and dying friend.
Such an act has eternal ramifications and it provides far greater benefits for the dying person than shooting them would.
I do know one thing for certain, I would never kill someone trapped in that situation by shooting them, because in doing so I would be usurping and playing God and I would be ending something that I have no right to end.
As Job reminds us:
“The Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.”
In response to the question of Filia –
from the perspective of Catholic morality there is no dilemma. As BTM said, it is always wrong to deliberately take the life of an innocent human being. Also, it is wrong to do evil that good may come of it. If that is not true then morality ceases to have any real meaning or content.
It would be a horrible agony to watch a friend die in agony – helpless to do anything about it – anything moral, that is. It would be worse to end a friend’s life in an immoral way – to murder a friend because he asks you to.
There is thus a terrible sense of being torn – because one desires to end the suffering of a friend, to relive it – but not to end the life of a friend – to kill him.
As for those jumping out of the towers, I have never thought of them as commiting suicide – but of taking a very slim chance that they might be able to survive the fall, when they certainly couldn’t survive just staying there.
I guess it could have been suicide if that was their intention – God only knows that but I have always assumed it wasn’t.
As for giving morphine, albeit with the risk of ending life, but not with that intention, but to relieve the agony of someone dying – as Rosjier explained, that is the doctrine of double effect – and not a case of doing evil that good will come of it.
It pays to have reflected on these things in advance so that our raging emotions will not be our only counselor in the actual situation.
So if my intention was to relieve my friend of pain, could I then club him over the head in an attempt to knock him out (to relieve the agony of burning to death), but with the risk of ending life? Sort of like the morphine situation described by poorclear.
Thanks for all the advice and guidance from those who obviously care. One thing that can be generally said about Christian folk (there are always exceptions, aye?) is that they are nice, kind people
So, on topic then:
1. What if the 2 actors in your scenario were atheists who had stridently expressed a disbelief in any sort of afterlife?
2. What if the burning man was an atheist with similar views, but the looker-on was a Christian (not necessarily Catholic)
3. What if the situation in (2) was reversed?
Yes you could Guy.
Knocking someone out is not an act of direct killing, so you would not have killed him.
While he would still burn to death, he would do so unconscious and therefore free from any pain.
kiwiatheist,
It is irrelevant what religious persuasion the two people in this scenario are.
A person is a person no matter what their religious creed is, and killing an innocent human person is always a gravely immoral act.
Either way, wouldn’t you just do it then go to confessional and Bob’s your uncle again? no?
fishe,
you have expressed a common (and ironically, common protestant) misconseption about the sacrament of confession.
The crucial point about confession is having an interior desire to change. The sins confessed are not forgiven if you are not sorry for them, and if you do not wish to do them again.
Scribe,
BTM is right on the morphine for pain relief – this is standard Catholic moral theology and often comes up in end of life cases. Consult any Catholic priest.
I agree with BTM, Poorclear and others above that killing the soldier is morally wrong. It is euthanasia.
I like the clubbing on the head solution. Much of the problem arises from the military technology which makes it so easy to kill and so tempting to do so. For what it is worth, a council of the Church once condemned the use of the bow and crossbow (and by implication later developments like firearms).
We need to accept that we are humans and have limited powers. In some hard cases there are no very appealing solutions. We just have to accept that and resist the temptation to resort to sin as an easy way out. That’s what Jesus did on the cross. In the long run it really is redemptive, as someone pointed out above.
Gianna,
I’m not sure that those who jumped from the twin towers necessarily intended suicide. They may merely have concluded that death was certain if they remained where they were but that jumping has a small probability of success. I remember a case of a WWII bomber pilot who jumped from a plane at a great height without a parachute and survived by landing in a German haystack.
kiwiatheist,
Ask your questions and don’t be offended by accusations of thread jacking. Human conversation naturally wanders from the initial topic. Sorry, but I lack time to answer your questions today.
God Bless
Chris, BTM, Rosjier (and anyone else who responded),
Thanks for your info. I understand the principle of double effect and its application in the case of morphine for pain relief, but my concern was that it had the potential for blurring some lines.
@BTM: You said: “It is irrelevant what religious persuasion the two people in this scenario are.
A person is a person no matter what their religious creed is, and killing an innocent human person is always a gravely immoral act.”
That’s an interesting answer. I would argue that your moral position is derived to a large extent from your religious perspective on the question. Now while I will argue until I’m blue in the face that morality is not dependent upon religious belief, your answer does seem to carry with it a large spoonful of religious intent. For a start, is it immoral to kill a person who is just about to kill you? In a war situation, is it immoral to defend your country by killing the invader? The soldier on the other end of the gun is just as innocent as you would be. Do you get where I’m going with this?
Scribe,
A good understanding of Catholic moral theology in terms of understanding moral object, remot eintent and proximate intent would probably help you. There is some good stuff available on applying this to concrete cases of medical ethics.
eg http://www.ascensionhealth.org/ethics/public/issues/all.asp
God Bless
kiwiatheist,
I will argue until I’m blue in the face that morality is not dependent upon religious belief
I agree. You have hit on what Catholics call the Natural Law.
is it immoral to kill a person who is just about to kill you?
Yes, if you intended to kill him. No if you didn’t intend to kill him.
In a war situation, is it immoral to defend your country by killing the invader?
Yes (although others here will disagree).
The soldier on the other end of the gun is just as innocent as you would be.
Exactly. In Catholic moral theology, the direct and intentional killing of innocents is intrinsically evil (always evil regardless of intent or circumstance).
Do you get where I’m going with this?
I think so.
You are about to find out that the belief of some believers sometimes starts to break down in hard cases. We believers are human too and we don’t always practice what we preach.
God Bless
kiwiatheist,
Some of Chris’s answers in #59 are not in line with Catholic teaching. People are entitled to defend themselves against an aggressor intent on killing them.
Chris is right to say that In Catholic moral theology, the direct and intentional killing of innocents is intrinsically evil (always evil regardless of intent or circumstance).
A person running at you with a knife or a gun has relinquished the right to be considered “innocent”.
Chris is an extreme pacifist. While laudable in many cases, the response of asking someone about to kill “please, don’t kill me” is not pacifism — it’s insanity.
KA, here’s a resource that you may find helpful when asking for a Catholic perspective on some of these issues: The Catechism of the Catholic Church. It’s really good place to go for answering a lot of the good and legitimate questions that you raise.
Nice to see you say, “I will argue until I’m blue in the face that morality is not dependent upon religious belief”, since that happens to be the Catholic position too (like Chris said, we call it “Natural Law”). But there’s a difference between the epistemology of morality (how we know what is right) and the ontology of morality (what grounds it, and its objective status). I think this is a big problem for atheism, which is what I was getting at in my question to you in #16.
Anyway, here’s an “official” Catholic answer to the two questions you posed in #57.
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Legitimate defense
2263 The legitimate defense of persons and societies is not an exception to the prohibition against the murder of the innocent that constitutes intentional killing. “The act of self-defense can have a double effect: the preservation of one’s own life; and the killing of the aggressor. . . . The one is intended, the other is not.”
2264 Love toward oneself remains a fundamental principle of morality. Therefore it is legitimate to insist on respect for one’s own right to life. Someone who defends his life is not guilty of murder even if he is forced to deal his aggressor a lethal blow:
If a man in self-defense uses more than necessary violence, it will be unlawful: whereas if he repels force with moderation, his defense will be lawful. . . . Nor is it necessary for salvation that a man omit the act of moderate self-defense to avoid killing the other man, since one is bound to take more care of one’s own life than of another’s.
2265 Legitimate defense can be not only a right but a grave duty for one who is responsible for the lives of others. The defense of the common good requires that an unjust aggressor be rendered unable to cause harm. For this reason, those who legitimately hold authority also have the right to use arms to repel aggressors against the civil community entrusted to their responsibility.
[Source]
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Hope that helps.
To put it into context, this is the kid of killing in modern war we are talking about.
http://vox-nova.com/2009/05/07/another-massacre-courtesy-of-the-u-s-military/
God Bless