When is killing a newborn acceptable?

Originally posted by tetra50
Short answer:

it is never acceptable to kill an innocent infant.......

Thank you. See...not hard to answer directly.
But, would you live in guilt if say, that baby then grew up and murdered someone you loved? would you spend the rest of your life wishing you could have a do-over?

Since I am posting this after another poster who brought up god I will use that. Personally I am not a believer however lets just say God told you what would happen and gave you the choice. So the info is irrefutable.

reply to post by Grimpachi


sorry, Grimpachi. I don't believe in that, any more, obviously, than you believe or put faith in what I have written so far.....
Sorry, there is no time acceptable....

reply to post by SaturnFX


I think timing has a huge part in this.

Would I kill the newborn? I'm really not sure. Honestly I can't say. If it was baby Hitler than maybe.
With the knife situation I would not kill him as a baby.

In each of these situations we are defining that particular individual as a killer and that is the only definition of him/her. There could have been many, many instances in their life where they acted on many positive and good things. Yes I do believe in the death penalty and would stop him/her in the act.

I'm not trying to complicate the question but I feel it is an important side to consider. On the positive, Adolf Hitler brought post-WW1 Germany out of depression and unfair amounts of debt put on them by the allied forces. But if there was no way to change him from killing millions of people, he would need to be taken out.

Throughout history, many religions speak of kings and the like tossing babies, murdering them, etc due to prophecy (hell, that's what, a 50/50 chance max) of a child growing and killing them. self preservation.

Perseus was tossed into the sea with his mother because the king was told he would kill him. This is not some outlandish new question..it is an age old, ancient question...if you were the king, would you toss Perseus into the sea before he had the inclination to murder you as the prophecy foretold?

(needless to say, it didn't really work in their cases.)

Originally posted by Unity_99
It even goes further. Not only are you never ever ever to harm anyone, no matter what your job, in any universe in existence, but you also may not set rules or laws to deprive people of land, resources, or food, or put stipulations on them.

Um do you realize the world you described isn't this one? In fact everything you said not to do is what happens everyday on this planet/universe.

All have equal rights to land and food and resources and are not your slaves. You don't own them. And anyone who treats anyone as a slave, or deprives them of their right to live and flourish, is a MURDER, TORTURER.

We don't have equal rights not this planet anyway. wow Murder,torturer is that another saying for humanity?

And they're going to go through everything they put others through, not only from literal harm but all the joy lost, all their talents undiscovered, in depth, with feeling.

Yeah life sucks sometimes but we get through it.

[So lets hope they're not some corporate or banking elite or leader who has harmed many people, because you go through all of it, and that would be a hard trip in the abyss, which is really in your mind, the long way home. Don't harm. Bottom line.

I like the sound of your world/universe I wish mine was like yours but unfortunately it isn't. BTW how the hell are we communicating from my world to yours it sounds like Sci Fi? BTW do you guys have Sci Fi there? What color is your sky?


Take a joke. Remember this is all hypothetical as well.

Originally posted by ArnoldNonymous
But if there was no way to change him from killing millions of people, he would need to be taken out.

Actually, hitler specifically is more murky...at what point do you take him out? he never actually murdered anyone to my knowledge...his philosophies over time, his orders, his book, etc...all a growing cumulation. His influence for many years before power set up the structure that allowed for what happened to happen. at the height of his power, he could have been replaced without much difference happening in how things were done.

So, you would have to get him specifically many years before the ascent.


But to use the whole time machine thing...lets say..not that you could travel back in time to do that..but rather, future you popped on by for a 3 minute chat (say a window)..it was you, totally proved...and your future self told you that your nextdoor neighbor will become a monster unlike the world has ever known...and to kill the baby so it doesn't happen.
you see this man, radiation poisoning, a look of immense sorrow in his thousand yard stare, and suddenly he is sucked back to the future. Sadly you didn't get to ask any questions, only that whatever happens, it starts with that person, and it is very, very bad.

there...100% knowledge...hitler is now some baby named john that lives next door...what do you do? take em out, or simply let the (now known to be horrible) future unfold

(I really don't like going into that much info...but actually, that would make for a interesting sci-fi program).
Maybe you would watch closely that kid grow up..thinking he is fine, but behind the doors, on the net, he is starting a movement, etc...

Originally posted by Grimpachi
How about this.

What if you knew without any doubt as fact that the baby would grow up and create and distribute a designer drug 10 times worse than meth essentially becoming the cause of thousands maybe tens of thousands of deaths ruining millions of family's.

There is no possibility of preventing the outcome aside from death and you will get one chance before losing all knowledge of the future.

No time travel just prior knowledge of the future for a limited time presenting an opportunity before losing that information.

Would you be able to act or would you let it happen?

Grim-

Like you stated in your rebuttal to me above, and I believe it is an important piece, you tried answering the OP in its original framework. It's probably the most important piece in fact. I think most of us have derailed our own posts in this thread, as the temptation to follow the quantum-brick road was too tempting for most of us.

So how about this...

-Your scenario I won't attempt to answer

-I really enjoyed the twist in your scenario, you will get one chance before losing all knowledge of the future.

-Would you be able to act or would you let it happen?
There are several options here: There is letting it happen, there is acting in a way to prevent it, and there is acting in a way which may or may not prevent it.

reply to post by tetra50


So you would let tens of thousands die for the life of one baby? Is that your final answer?

etc..this is a graphic question about something done a hundred times over that we accept as the norm. Its philosophy, it is a question of thinking and pondering in order to identfify parts of ourselves..not back out of thinking by simply waving your hands in the air and say its impossible, you refuse to think about the question posed.

reply to post by SaturnFX

DUDE


A hundred times over? REALLY? I would require some historical reference for this. For if you ascribe to the "hundred times over" theory, like me, framing it somewhat differently in saying we are redoing history every day, then, where is your evidence that there was a hitler, that lived through whatever, maybe my own attempts and/or assinations so we would never be having this f@#cking discussion anyway.....so that element within our population and probability of existence would have been eliminated entirely......that's the only way I would consider what you pose.

You focus on my replies, on the obvious, subject able environment that I object to, while yet, what is proposed in this thread, is antithetical to the survival of life. Period, end of story, by its assumptions and the idea of killing what you have theoretically assumed and cannot DEFEND
ITSELF, and thereby, eliminated ANY POSSIBILITY that your judgement for that infant and his/her developement and place in the historical constuct was SO CONCRETED, You could justify the murder of an innocent, a human who cannot defend nor hope to defend itself from you whom has already judged what its/hers/his life would be.....


and somehow within this construct of theoretical thinking, you have turned ME (the one who will NOT EVER SUPPORT THAT MURDER) into the illogical, judgemental being.

Beyond this being an intellectual excercise, does this not concern you somewhat, at least......

I take it you must be a man, then , with a dick , instead of a uterus, having never been nor even considered, being, a mother.....


sorry, can't grock what you are selling on this thread, IN ANY WAY WHATSOEVER< ON ANY DAY> You don't know I gave birth to Hitler or a Ted Bundy......If you do, then we should just take an FMRI at birth, by what you're proposing, and kill everyone who doesn't meet the societal quotient for "health."

You wanna be judged that way? REALLY>?

And this site is about rebellion, and the judgement of society. F2233ck me. This has gone amock.....in a very big, and disastrous and scary way.......

Originally posted by Grimpachi
I like the sound of your world/universe I wish mine was like yours but unfortunately it isn't. BTW how the hell are we communicating from my world to yours it sounds like Sci Fi? BTW do you guys have Sci Fi there? What color is your sky?


Take a joke. Remember this is all hypothetical as well.

I try not to get too down on Unity. He/she has a awesome view of how life should be. Granted, frustrating in some threads (like this one), but I prefer that universe over this one with all its murky shadows and such.

I used to spend a -lot- of time on a "spiritualist" chatroom back in the 90s, early 00s and knew many like that. simply couldn't answer a question without imparting their "realm" onto this. ask how they are doing and you are going to get a lecture sort of thing. I liked em though. Often they had something profoundly sad happen to them, and instead of just going nuts, they sort of adopt a non-physical view of life. As a skeptic, I am quite often envious of their rather simple view of the universe and absolute conviction of "that stuff".

Originally posted by Grimpachi
reply to post by tetra50

 

So you would let tens of thousands die for the life of one baby? Is that your final answer?

Are you reading comprehension limited, my friend?

I have posed the considerations well and thoroughly........


No, I thought someone told me they took an fMRI of your brain, and you looked startingly, in your mind, like Hitler, so we all decided you should be killed......to save tens of thousands.


ARE YOU EVEN GETTING IT NOW.
Never mind. Obviously, you are not.
Tetra50
God help you no one judges you thus on so little evidence, while you are just learning to smell, breathe, and someone has to help you out with crapping on your self in the way of a diaper......and I would judge you worthy of death, then....

F@#ck dude....may God help you....and the place you're in.....

Hitler didn't come to power by himself to kill millions single handed. If you go back in time to kill an infant Hitler who is to say the people that surrounded Hitler wouldn't choose some other charismatic leader to carry out the agenda who was convenient for them.

You would have to go back in time and kill Hitler, all the Nazi command structure, everyone who aided and abetted Hitler, and all his soldiers who killed innocent people. You would also have to eliminate everyone who helped create the social conditions that made Hitler possible, meaning civilians. Eventually you would have to eliminate the entire German people, afterwards the entire human race.

So you would let tens of thousands die for the life of one baby? Is that your final answer?

reply to post by Grimpachi


And are you really so egotistical and everything we stand for on this website, supposedly, that you could even extrapolate that from ANYONE'S birth. ....REALLY, Grimpachi? welll, I don't want to get into that with you, bc it would be a waste of my breath, and God help us, if judgement of us when we are born if it is that easy.

Good luck to you and your progeny, should you end up breeding, like most of us common humans you so readily judge.
Tetra50

reply to post by Cosmic911


Yeah thanks. It does get murky the more you or I try to define the parameters.

It is fun to do but it doesn't help I am afraid.

My answer will stay the same because I way the needs of the many over the needs of the few.

The original OP is actually hard to answer based on the fact he just defined a murderer not mass murderer.

That wouldn’t be a choice I would want to make on such little information. Was it first degree second degree? Who did he murder? A business tycoon, doctor, someone like me, or even a baby? Who did it affect? Did the would be murderer do anything with his life beforehand or was he a nobody gangster? There a lot of variables.

If I knew it was a mass murderer my answer is yes I could but other than that I am conflicted.

Originally posted by tetra50

etc..this is a graphic question about something done a hundred times over that we accept as the norm. Its philosophy, it is a question of thinking and pondering in order to identfify parts of ourselves..not back out of thinking by simply waving your hands in the air and say its impossible, you refuse to think about the question posed.

reply to post by SaturnFX

 

DUDE


A hundred times over? REALLY? I would require some historical reference for this.

For the literal, you can of course to history books. killing infants based on oracles and prophecy is fairly common in civilizations,
But I was actually addressing more of a pre-emptive strike on any perceived thing that may become threatening down the line, and hell, modern (day to day drone attack) history provides enough examples. You being here surely knows a bit of both. Your obviously a clever girl.

and somehow within this construct of theoretical thinking, you have turned ME (the one who will NOT EVER SUPPORT THAT MURDER) into the illogical, judgemental being.

Not at all, I never said it was illogical. It is a judgement call, a turd burger or a crap sandwich decision. Its similar to the whole your child is standing in the train tracks to the east, a bus full of kids are teetering on the edge of a bridge to the west..you can save only one...your child, or the bus full of kids...who do you save type moral dilemma question. regardless of how its answered, it is bad...I assume you have been asked that before and although didn't like the visual, as it provided a emotional reaction, it also maybe taught something about youself.
Its not illogical, its a decision..haunting decisions happen. to let something happen or not.

But that's sort of the point..to reflect on such things, to learn of yourself, and to see, in odd ways, how we take these same decisions on lighter things in life. If you are a politician, do you let the radical school of islam continue on..they are innocent, but they are definitely planning on a murder spree...drone hit, yes or no...
(you don't have to answer that btw...just clarifying to you how this philosophical exercise can have further reaching considerations than just this impossible scenario)

I take it you must be a man, then , with a dick , instead of a uterus, having never been nor even considered, being, a mother.....

I am a man, yes....not sure the relevance

sorry, can't grock what you are selling on this thread, IN ANY WAY WHATSOEVER< ON ANY DAY> You don't know I gave birth to Hitler or a Ted Bundy......If you do, then we should just take an FMRI at birth, by what you're proposing, and kill everyone who doesn't meet the societal quotient for "health."

I sort of see where your going with this...I think your sort of edging on progression of this (impossible) tech, right? like if society allowed such a thing today, then tomorrow it may be the rapists, then the drug dealers, then the people with serious issues, etc...eventually boiling down to only allowing perfect mind and body humans to live.
Fair enough..not the direction I was going with the thread, that's more brutal eugenics, but worthy of a discussion...not this discussion, but ya..I would participate in such a thread if you made it. would say no about infancy, but yes on a prevention / modification requirement at conception. Eugenics gets a bad rap due to primitive ways of trying to establish it.

And this site is about rebellion, and the judgement of society. F2233ck me. This has gone amock.....in a very big, and disastrous and scary way.......

This site isn't about rebellion...its about truth. truth comes in many ways, from information, to enlightening looks at yourself.
Socrates was put to death because he asked questions to people that made them uncomfortable...he was trying to show them truth in themselves, and they didn't like that. Better to kill the person whom asks the question than think of the question

reply to post by tetra50


Before you criticize reading comprehension you need to look in the mirror real good.

The parameters were clear it was an either or scenario. No wiggle room.

The child becomes a murderer Mass murderer to be exact in the question I posed and you answered.
No MRI, No possibility of it not happening except for one.

That one and only instance was to kill it. You chose not to so you except as fact your choice causes thousands of deaths.

It is hypothetical.

Ether or choice nothing follows. Can you comprehend that? It is pretty clear.

In this hypothetical you don’t get to walk out clean one will die or many will die. No exceptions. No ifs ands or buts.

BTW you replied twice to the same post in different ways are you unable to keep up? Did it just piss you off so much you felt the need to vent twice?

reply to post by SaturnFX


I wasn’t trying to come down on Unity I was trying to be comical at the end. Being late it probably doesn’t read that way.

I thought about asking for a ticket to that world it sounds great. I wish I could think of the world that way but I have seen far too much of it for that to ever happen.

Anyway I am off to bed. I really like the thread and I think most here would as well however they just can’t accept the proposition without creating an out or changing it so they could wash their hands metaphorically of the implications.

Oh well.

Originally posted by Unity_99

This is true for all people, even CIA, FBI, national security...And to all black ops...You don't get off the hook by claiming its your job or you're following orders. You don't get to follow bad orders...

edit on 27-7-2013 by Unity_99 because: (no reason given)

Are you talking about moral and ethical ramifications for criminal behavior? Because we're worlds apart if we're talking about anything else. It's illegal for this government and/or military to engage in politically-targeted assassinations, as outlined in the Third Geneva Convention, however, entire regimes have been toppled and replaced by the very agencies you named above. In fact, regime changes are a speciality of The Central Intelligence Agency, all in the name of national security.

As a Canadian you might not be as well versed with the U.S.'s nasty dealings with targeted violence, again, committed by such named agencies above, as I am, but needless to say it would be a gross misconception to believe the United States has answered legally and/or morally for all it's misdeeds committed in the name of national security. Immediately springing to mind are some of the black programs operated by CIA during the 1960's involving the use of illicit drugs and other chemicals on unsuspecting participants. Programs like MK Ultra primarily. Let's see, drugs like '___' were particularly popular and a favorite of CIA psychiatrists. I don't recall anyone or any agency held responsible for some of those experiments and blacks ops. Drugs purposely dispersed into subways, or administered to "Johns" by prostitutes under the direction of the CIA. More recently we could discuss the use of drones by the Obama Administration in targeted assassinations of American citizens and foreign nationals/terrorists, etc.

So yeah, I disagree and so will many other people on ATS that "bad orders" can be followed by a variety of employees/agencies without fear of reprisal. The Patriot Act has also given the U.S. cart blanche on anyone/anything it has deemed an enemy of national security. Check out all the shenanigans coming to light regarding the National Security Agency. National Security Agency, the name alone should scare the hell out of you.

Originally posted by Grimpachi
Anyway I am off to bed. I really like the thread and I think most here would as well however they just can’t accept the proposition without creating an out or changing it so they could wash their hands metaphorically of the implications.

Oh well.

Well, even demanding not to answer is in itself an answer (if they choose to see it). a inability to make a decision. This is something investigated in military...give a impossible set of choices and see who chooses..not what they choose, but just a decision to make a choice, knowing that all roads suck.

Originally posted by Grimpachi
reply to post by tetra50

 

Before you criticize reading comprehension you need to look in the mirror real good.

The parameters were clear it was an either or scenario. No wiggle room.

The child becomes a murderer Mass murderer to be exact in the question I posed and you answered.
No MRI, No possibility of it not happening except for one.

That one and only instance was to kill it. You chose not to so you except as fact your choice causes thousands of deaths.

It is hypothetical.

Ether or choice nothing follows. Can you comprehend that? It is pretty clear.

In this hypothetical you don’t get to walk out clean one will die or many will die. No exceptions. No ifs ands or buts.

BTW you replied twice to the same post in different ways are you unable to keep up? Did it just piss you off so much you felt the need to vent twice?

edit on 28-7-2013 by Grimpachi because: (no reason given)

Reading comprehension? did you read what I wrote? I don't believe in the premise.....perhaps that is the true problem here. but If you had any intellect, you would not insult my reading comprehension over that, but recognize I simply don't accept that premise, to begin with........

If you want to descend to insults to support your position, I can go there, too, unfortunately. Are you too stupid or have no "intake assimilation valve" to "get it?" In other words, have you no comprehension for what you are READING?


Sorry, I'll be the bigger man--with no balls, as I am a woman, and perhaps this is the true disconnect. I know what it means to carry, nurse, deliver, and care for a child and understand the innocence (READ=BLAND SLATE, thereof) where, perhaps, you have no concept of that.......

Tried not to descend to this level, but YOU BROUGHT IT THERE.......AND I WILL FIGHT YOU ON THIS CONCEPT EVERY STEP OF THE WAY.


How would you like someone to judge your life and soul aforehand....as you have done here.......and I am your mother and hand you over to murderers.....no questions asked, assuming everything about your future with you small, dependent, helpless....DO YOU UNDERSTAND THE HELPLESSNESS OF AN INFANT.
F##ck, I feel like I am in hell, and everyone I meet is the devil justifing "dashing your children's heads against the walls of hell/heavean."

Good God, help you. I am not a rabid religionist.. but you and this thread have horrified me to my core..........

To think, within the multiverses and quantum entaglement and knowledge of both, anyone thinks they have such a right to think the KNOW what will come of an innocent, dependent life....

but the disconnect here, must have something to do with my being a woman and a mother, discussing this issue primarily with men......with dicks......nuff said, sorry. You said some offensive things, too.
Tetra50