Sacrifices for Purity

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I want to make this a poll, but there are just too many possibilities and factors as I see it. Anyway, this is intended to be something along the lines of 'Your life vs the life of a random person' only here we're talking human vices. How many lives would you sacrifice to permanently and totally rid the human soul of one horror (rape, murder, sexual abuse, etc.)? This horror would forever be forgotten, never to even be considered again by anyone, the entire concept is erased.

How many lives would you sacrifice? Would you be willing to include yourself? Those you love? Are we talking a city, a nation, a continent? How about everyone who had committed it? Everyone who had been a victim of it (extend to close friends and family for something like murder)? Please specify what you would want to erase as well. What would it cost to totally purify the human soul?

 

Since I don't believe in souls I wouldn't kill anyone and I don't see how killing people is a viable solution to prevent other humans from doing something.

The sacrifice wouldn't be the humans killed, but would be the freedom to perform the horror. If a person can not committ evil then they can not committ good.

 

The Bible says Thou Shalt not Kill. Killing people is one of the most Grievous of sins (the most grievous that you can do to another).

Further, it has been tried in past civilizations, but it never succeeded. In Ancient Israel, they executed anyone caught committing some of these things they ruled impure, but there was always someone committing these sins.

 

It could go both ways...and I frankly think this sort of thing wouldnt work, philosophical though the nature of the argument may be.

 

I would have no problem with that if I were a far-right bigot.

 

What I meant was if there was some way to totally excise that thought from human consciousness (or sub-consciousness), but whatever the process was, it required the sacrifice of human lives. So assume it is possible and that humans would be just as self-centered as before, only they wouldn't seek to fulfill that self-centeredness through this action. So long as we are talking about individual actions, there are always other ways to be evil.

The last question, "What would it take to purify the human soul" was meant as more of a mood setter than anything else. Personally, I think it would take the lives of every single human being, which would kind of defeat the purpose. Anyway, it wasn't meant to be the center of discussion.

Think of it this way, would you be willing to give your life to ensure, 100% that no one was ever raped again?

 

How is this question relevant for a Christian? I thought you guys believed that accepting Jesus as the Savior was supposed to cleanse the soul?

 

That refers to your personal soul, I was talking about the general soul of humanity. You can consider that as a sum set of all souls in humanity from this time forward if that helps. Anyway, I'm just asking to see what you think. As a Christian, I believe that all sins were permitted to exist by God, and thus there is a reason for them. "All things work for the good of those who serve the Lord" and all that.

 

Then the answer is simple - NONE. It;s not my place to decide what sacrfices other people should make, and since I believe that the "soul of humanity" is the sum of the souls of humankind, it's up to each individual to get his- or herself in order if we're to have a chance.

 

I don't understand this question at all. Are you saying that we should kill people to make other people forget about being raped? I don't see the connection.

 

Don't stretch too hard looking for an explanation, Abom & HB. This is just a hypothetical. Of course there's no way (that we know of, anyway) that killing people would erase a particular action from the world. But IF it could...

My answer is similar to dmc's, but with an addendum. What if the action was replaced by a worse one? What if getting rid of racial discrimination caused an epidemic of premarital sex and teen pregnancy as everyone suddenly found more people attractive? Yeah, the example is a little out there, but the point of it is that screwing with the delicate balance of human psychology is a bad idea.

 

Erasing concepts doesn't make much point, I think... Maybe if you led people to abandoning the bad ways. But as choice rather than programming, anyway.

I would shoot a perv to prevent him from raping someone, but I wouldn't shoot a perv to erase the concept of abuse. He's not responsible for the concept itself and the trade doesn't feel too good.

 

Oh I understand what he was meaning but I wouldn't agree even if it was possible. The idea of removing all rape from the world is attractive, I'll admit. But if there was no such thing as rape then there couldn't be any such thing as sex.

 

Ok, some interesting answers, but Ab's last point didn't make any sense to me. Without rape there can be no sex? How does that figure?

 

Because rape is simply one person forcing sex upon another. I really don't understand it exactly myself but if there's no such thing as rape what is forcing sex upon another, then?

Gah, it's just that I can't see there ever being some type of mental roadblock that prevents humans from doing something. It's inconcieveable and frankly just doesn't make any sense.

 

To be honest, if humanity were so entrenched in corruption that taking such means would be necessary, I'd rather the human race obliterated itself.

 

Rape is a violent crime, not a sexual crime.

As somone who has had both rape and sexual abuse affect those very close to me, I would give up alot to see it dissapear, if I thought it would rid us of this blight.

 

Rape actually is a sexual crime. Just because you want to emphasise the violent aspect of it doesn't give you the right to erase the sexual side. Or if you wish to comfort the victims of it, it's still misguided, if the method of achieving it relies on denying the truth in favour of some convenient ideological fiction.

Simply put, rape is sex under force. No force, no rape. No sex, no rape. Rape is as sexual as it is violent and it is a violent sexual crime, or, if you prefer, a violent crime and a sexual one. The sexual aspect is what makes it special among violent crimes. There is no ground to classify rape outside the catalogue of sexual crimes and there's no reason whatsoever to pretend it isn't one if it is, because pretending doesn't solve anything anyway. Especially not crime.

However well-meant your slogan might be, it ends up leading to rape being seen as just one of the violent crimes, somewhere between assault and battery, which is a gross misunderstanding. It's like telling armed robbery victims they've only been terrorised.

I'm actually surprised that, given the proximity to victims, you are still willing to deface the truth about it.

Hmm?

Your no rape ergo no sex kind of claim suggests that all sex is rape, which is false. You might want to rephrase your claim.

 

I think it was more along the lines of, "the only sure way to get rid of rape is to get rid of sex". Because with rape only being forced sex, if there's still sex someone's surely going to 're-invent' rape sooner or later, even perhaps by accident.

For there to never be any rape, ever again, even by misunderstanding...well, it'd be greater than all trees being catnip, but I just don't see it happening.