Consider the following. For the sake of argument, assume you had to choose between these two options:
- The ability to take action and the taking of action to prevent one man – Sam Adams – from murdering another man – John Smith.
- The ability to, and taking action to punish a man – Sam Adams – for murdering another man – John Smith – by whichever means you’d like.
I suspect the skew toward the first option will be dramatic across every demographic. Why is that? Because no amount of punishment will bring Mr. Smith back to life? Probably – that’s my opinion at least. So as far as I can tell, the near universal moral choice would be to not have the murder take place instead of punishment after the fact.
Consider this example – choose between these two options:
- Having the ability and taking action to save a child – Mary Smith – from being gang raped to death over several hours.
- Having the ability and taking action to punish a gang of child rapists after the rape and murder of Mary Smith by whichever means you’d like.
Again I suspect the skew towards option 1 would be common across every demographic. Why? Because no amount of punishment will undo the suffering and death of Mary Smith? There is nothing one could do to a gang of child rapists that would undo the damage they did. Not having the damage done in the first place is clearly a better option.
Preventing the atrocity is the universal moral option.
Consider these articles:
- 8-year-old child raped to death: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/09/09/bride-aged-8-dies-internal-sexual-injuries-wedding-night-_n_3892892.html
- 5-year-old child anally raped to death: http://onefuriousllama.com/2013/02/05/islamic-cleric-rapes-tortures-and-kills-his-daughter-and-pays-a-fine/
- Tens if not hundreds of thousands of children abused: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_sex_abuse_cases
- More child abuse: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/18/nyregion/after-sexual-abuse-case-a-hasidic-accuser-is-shunned-then-indicted.html?_r=0
- Over 3 million children starve to death each year: http://www.wfp.org/hunger/stats
There is a quote that says:
“If I could stop a person from raping a child, I would. That’s the difference between me and your god.”
Human morality is clearly superior to that pushed by, at the very least, the religions of the Abrahamic tradition.
