Fate comes to your doorstep and offers you an additional 30 years to your lifespan. Fate promises they will be wonderful and in good health. The catch is, one additional person will die this year in a fatal car accident. You will not know who this person is out of all the people who do die this year in a fatal car accident. (Do you accept?) You accept.
Later you learn that about 1.2 million people are killed in car accidents each year worldwide. Whose death are you responsible for?
Think of one of your very close friends. Let's say this person was killed in a car accident this year. Are you responsible for that person's death?
In a different scenario, let's say that Fate comes to your doorstep and offers you the chance to save one person this year from dying in a fatal car accident. The catch is, you must give up 1 year of your lifespan. Do you accept?
Let's say you accept. Fate says that the previous offer was a lie, and you actually must give up 10 years, and that he is surely not lying this time. You believe him. Now do you accept?
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1 comment:
This is interesting.
With regard to the second offer, what we don't know is how long our own lives will be. What if we were slated to die one or ten years from now? That possibility makes death an imminent prospect. You are essentially being asked to die for somebody else, on the spot.
Even from the most altruistic standpoint, you can question whether humanity as a whole would be better off being with or without you, without also knowing the relative value of the anonymous recipient of your sacrifice.
Even knowing humanity, Christ absorbed for us the wrath of God. That is something.
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