I saw this picture of a child taken about 100 years ago, and started thinking that now that he has lived his life, we can know whether he led a good life, or a bad life, but if we had god-like powers of omniscience, we would know this from the start, and if we did, what choices would we make about his life?


Now as a child his potential is virtually unlimited, he could grow up to be a great scientist who finds a cure for cancer that rids the world of that terrible disease, but another child is born who will cause a fatal accident that sees them both die in their teens, and no cancer cure is then ever found.
So,  should we kill the other child first,  to prevent the tragic loss of this great mind, and it's subsequent discoveries?

Alternately, this child grows up to be a violent mass murderer, whose life brings great suffering and misery to many people, should we prevent the doctors from administering life saving medicine to him when he gets dangerously ill as a small child, and so dies before he grows up to commit evil acts?

Just how relative is morality?
Are any morals ever absloutely wrong, like killing for instance?

Is committing violence against many, more morally wrong, than committing violence against an individual?

In war time we see mass killings as necessary, and acceptable, and rationalise them as pro-active self defense, like the hiroshima bombing for an example, but just how do these sorts of actions stack up with religious teachings about morality?

Anyway, here is a photo of a kid now dead, would you be able to walk up and club his brains out if you knew he was going to be bad?

Would you kill someone else to prevent his death if you knew he was going to be a great man?

I do not know what I would choose, I guess being a god would be a pretty tough gig.

I think if you are an atheist there can be no absolutes and therefore everythings is relative.

Is the act of murder not absolutely an act of evil?

Given the power of clairvoyance, the pertinent question would not be "is it wrong to murder this child?" but "is it murder to kill this child?".

And on the questions go...

Was the greater national karma of Germany fated to produce a Hitler? Such that the elimination of this Adolf Hitler gives rise to the opportunity for another... One that say hates Russians not Jews and so has Jewish scientists at his disposal for the creation of an atomic weapon.

mozzaok wrote on Jan 26^th, 2010 at 12:04am:

Psychopaths could do it. although in Himmler's SS, recruits who would be entrusted with committing the worst atrocities, were screened specifically to exclude psychopaths. As perversely ironic as it sounds, Himmler wanted only soldiers who took no pleasure in the acts they were charged with carrying out... Demonic idealists committed to the final solution.

But in the absence of clairvoyance, who could kill the child? In the absence of pathology or evil idealism, it would universally be murder in the absolute.

Soren wrote on Jan 26^th, 2010 at 10:30am:

Yes, a hypothetical under the strictest of parameters, being that the actor has infallible powers of clairvoyance and that the killing of the child guarantees a better possible world. In the absence of those parameters (i.e. the real world), the killing of that child is eternally and absolutely murder.

Soren wrote on Jan 26^th, 2010 at 10:41am:

And redeemed only by absolute morality.