# Pastor Jones & His Moral Responsibility for Death (Or: The Cleansing Effect of the Intermediary)

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pastor-jones-his-moral-responsibility-for-death-or-the-cleansing-effect-of-the-intermediary/576899>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [April 2, 2011, 1:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pastor-jones-his-moral-responsibility-for-death-or-the-cleansing-effect-of-the-intermediary/576899 "2011-04-02T01:30:52Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 227

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**Author:** ![VarlosZ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/d78d45/32.png) [@VarlosZ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VarlosZ)\
**Post date:** [April 5, 2011, 7:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pastor-jones-his-moral-responsibility-for-death-or-the-cleansing-effect-of-the-intermediary/576899/227 "2011-04-05T07:11:54Z")

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This thread reminds me of one from six (six!) years ago, [about whether the U.S. was partially blameworthy](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=324526&highlight=responsibility) for terrorist bombings in London.

It turned into a thread of dueling analogies. Towards the end of the thread, I came up with [this one](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=6348158#post6348158), which I felt at the time was very clever:

> [@Does the US share some blame for the London Bombings?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-us-share-some-blame-for-the-london-bombings/311530/125):
>
> Scenario #1: I’m a roadie at a crowded rock concert. There is a wooden plank stretching across the rafters, over the crowd. For expedience, I place a heavy cinder block on top of this beam and walk away, even though I estimate that there is a 10% chance the plank will snap under the weight, in which case someone in the crowd will almost certainly be killed by the falling block.
> 
> Scenario #2: This is our gun/thief example from before. For the sake of simplicity, assume that the thief will be unable to get a gun from some other source. Again, I estimate that there is a 10% chance that he will wind up killing someone with the gun.
> 
> In both cases, the 10% chance comes through and somebody is killed.  
> I’m going to assume that you’d agree that I am responsible for the death in the first scenario, but you would say that I’m not responsible for the death in the second, because only the thief is responsible.
> 
> The obvious difference, of course, is that the plank is inanimate, whereas Scenario 2 brings a second will into to the equation. However, my question is this: from my point of view, why does that matter? Haven’t I made the same choice in both cases?

Lamentably, the thread was winding down and I never got a response.

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