Just the people. What do you take me for, some kind of sociopathic monster?
I wouldn’t sacrifice my son for anything. Like **Shagnasty **and others have said: my son vs. China, sorry China. Include any other groups you like and my offspring wins.
Now, I would be willing to RISK my son on some important issue. I think every parent who’s child goes to war deals with that choice.
The correct answer in this case, I believe, is “F*** You”.
For a Klondike Bar.
I’d sacrifice both or either of my kids for a guaranteed lasting world peace, in HypotheticaLand. I’d kill myself immediately afterwards, but I’d do it.
Heck, I’d probably sacrifice either one to a cure for all cancers, or an end to all oppression of women worldwide. Again, in HypotheticaLand, where I knew the outcome was guaranteed.
In real life, I can’t think of anything, but I won’t say never.
I don’t see this as something to apologize for at all. It’s what biology programs us to feel about our offspring. I think the reason that it is considered such a big deal in the Christian view that God sacrificed a son is because it is a sacrifice that normal human beings would find impossible.
As for myself, I don’t have kids yet, but I can already see the evidence in myself of the same fiercely protective mama bear tendencies my own mom had/has, so I know what my answer would be already.
Sacrificing the population of China, Australia, AND the Indian subcontinent? Eh, your civilizations had a good run. Personally strangling 100 newborn kittens with my bare hands? Well, that wouldn’t be much fun, but you gotta do what you gotta do.
This sounds somewhat like the Trolley Problem
I’d probably sacrifice your kids for those things too.
Not my kid, though.
I’d never sacrifice my daughter for anything but knowing that, I feel incredibly guilty and selfish for thinking that she’s more important than all those other lives. Although they’re ‘anonymous’ to me, to other people they’re just as important as my daughter is to me.
Those other people aren’t the ones making the decision in this hypothetical situation. You are. So it is going to come down to whether your daughter or a mass of anonymous strangers is more important to you.
I would sacrifice my first-born if it meant my second, non-retarded child would live.
But again, you’re not responsible for everyone. You ARE responsible for YOUR kid. Keeping your child safe is the bare minimum that qualifies you to call yourself a parent.
This is why I keep my Charter Membership here. 
Username/Post combo rating: 8.7
Bravo.
What trips me up here is the interpretation that the allowing his son to be killed was the part that was a gift. In the theology I study the gift is the resultant “everlasting life”, not the dead son. So, based on that - and the fact that I’m not God so the result of our sacrifices could hardly be expected to be parallel - my answer to the OP is, nothing.
Furthermore, accepting the Biblical account, Jesus “was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God.” (Mark 16:19 KJV). So how much of a sacrifice was it for God?
Whoa whoa whoa… I was right up there with you until the Indian Civilization part. Does this mean I have to sacrifice my own kid to destroy your civilization to prevent you from destroying mine?
This is an interesting conundrum when given the international flair of these boards- who can sacrifice their child first to stop the other from destroying their civilization.
I always loved hearing from the Aussies on that other thread with the “Why us?” sorta things. China is a bit more foreign to many people, but Australia has quite a similar culture to the US (and maybe Europe, dunno, not from there).
So what if the choice was something closer to home- like Someone from the US had to get rid of Canada and England, or Vice versa for the parents in those countries. I’m sure nothing would change actually, but it’s always more interesting to hear the responses of people actually that we know and interact with when you start stating that your child is more important then their own cultures and well being.
It’s one thing to push a button and kill a random person a continent away that you can’t identify with. It’s another to be given a shovel, and directions to your neighbor’s house and be told “be done with it”.
:Shrug: Just my thoughts on the matter.
And don’t feel I’m picking on you Lavender, I just read your escalation and realized, “Hey, you’d pretty much be killing my entire family pretty much over there… Interesting how i feel irked at that, but not the China one” and just figured I’d ramble a bit on my thoughts on the matter. And you don’t have to go out trying to beat me to sacrificing your child, I still have to make one before I could do anything like that. So you’ve got at least an 8 to 9 month headstart on me.
You may not see a moral distinction, but I do. I’m not implying that one is ethical and the other is not, just that they aren’t the same thing to me.
It’s pretty much instinct to rank your kid’s life above all else. When I was 5 or 6 my Mom was driving a car in winter and slid into a ditch. She turned the wheel as hard as she could so that the object struck her side of the vehicle. Nobody was hurt in the accident. While we were sitting there waiting for the cops to show up, I asked her why she’d turned the car around and she matter-of-factly explained it was so she would die and not me. Completely blew my little kid mind.
For me it comes down to whether the suffering of a few of us is more important than the suffering of tens of thousands of others. The fact that the child is related to me is a happy accident of DNA, and while their deaths would mean more to me emotionally than the deaths of large groups of people I don’t know, rationally, there is nothing inherintly more worthy about them. It would hurt me to see them die, but I’m not more important than the pain and suffering of all those others, either.
My suffering and their relationship to me is worth something, of course. I wouldn’t sacrifice them to save myself or my husband. I wouldn’t sacrifice one of them to save one other person, or even two or three. I’m not sure where my line is, to be honest. But the millions that are and will be killed in war? Okay, yeah. Then the balance falls in their favor.
I’m not really freaked out by death, though, which might affect things. I figure either I’m right that there’s reincarnation and they’ll get another shot, or the atheists are right and their consciousness will simply cease. I’m almost certain the Christians are incorrect and they won’t burn in hell, so I don’t let it worry me much. They’re going to die someday, after all. My decision wouldn’t change that, just make their deaths mean more than anyone else’s has in the entire history of HypotheticaLand.
Ironically, I guess, the only thing that would make them more important than anyone else would be their deaths. Only by being killed in sacrifice would they be more valuable than the other millions of people they’d be saving.
I’m not? Shit.
[Moderator Request]I would like everyone to dial it back a few notches and just answer the question asked in the OP, please.[/Moderator Request]
Nothing. She matters more than the entire rest of the world. Australia and China? I’m not saying I wouldn’t feel bad about it, but there’d be no hesitation about letting them go instead of her. If the situation were the other way round and someone were letting me and my daughter die instead of letting their own child die, I’d feel even worse, but I’d completely understand their decision.
Just the premise of Sophie’s Choice gives me the shivers. It’s one of the few benefits of having an only child - I never have to choose, even in more likely every day situations.