MollyMac

[QUOTE=Champion;4837600]They probably all thought they were going to heaven anyway, which would have been another factor in their decision. If you want to explore these ideas with humanists, you might care to look at my home page. You may find we're not such a weird minority after all.

whichphilosophy

Each situation would have distinguishing circumances. However a religion or lack of religion does not render a person more moral than another, but their actions will.

A famous Secular Humanist who gets very little credit is Thomas Szasz who campaigns against many aspects of psychiatry as he believes in an alternative route. (He originally successfully stood up with a few other colleagues against physical treatments such as lobotomy and ECT). In this, though isolated by some parts of the psychiatric profession he is still regarded as the most well known of psychiatrists.

Here is actions deserve credit but of course I don't see him becoming a Saint

long winded fool

Perhaps self-sacrifice in this situation would cultivate a selfless nature in the survivors? Selflessness in society in terms of charity, forgiveness, and love, are certainly beneficial. If the ones who give up the parachutes do so for this reason: that their death will be a model of selfless love for their neighbors and for society, then it seems a moral act of good to me.

Tigers!

But isn't this an awful lot to decide as the plane goes down and the ground gets closer & closer?

Tigers!

But who decides that bottom line? After all I could claim that your death will benefit the greatest number of people? Who are you to disagree with me?

Champion

I think I've clearly stated that conscience is mainly the product of societal indoctrination, but there is a huge difference between societal pressures [Celebrate Christmas or be ostrasized] and societal indoctrination. An example of societal pressure might be muslim women who wear burkas to avoid being beaten by self righteous men and muslim women who wear them out of a deep seated love of Islam. In the case of the titanic I believe it was the latter.

I agree that self sacrifice like this could serve humanity. I just don't see the motivation within Humanism to avoid selfishness.

I'd love to look at your home page, can you give me the url? I'm sorry if I've insulted you. I'll really should try to step a little more carefully when discussing other people's beliefs on morality

Headache

Titanic brings up another question...
By staying behind the men literally said that other peoples lives were more important to the men than their own life. In my world, my life is more important to me than any other persons life.

His Noodly Appendage

Champion: you're setting the cart before the horse.

The desire to make the world suck less is the motivation, in and of itself.

In practice, it's a successful strategy, because a world full of such people have greater aggregate survival rates.

But the motivation is purely emotional - it doesn't appeal to rational argument.

It's like sex. Those that fuck a lot, breed a lot - and it is their genes that spread the furthest. But individuals don't give a damn about gene frequencies - they just want to get laid.

MollyMac

Yes, of course it is.

The questions I was trying to address were the ones raised in the OP on the morality and rationality (or otherwise) of the decision to be made on who should live and who should die in this particular hypothetical situation. I'm not suggesting that, if the situation were real, the people in question would convene a meeting and attempt to make the decision on a strictly rational basis. My point was that, contrary to what Champion suggested, the act of volunteering to die in the circumstances may seem heroic and selfless but it wasn't necessarily the "best moral choice".

I can only repeat what I said later in the same post: "This isn't to suggest that any of us would be happy or even willing to draw the short straw and that we wouldn't all be desperately making the case for our own survival when it came to it."

Nor am I suggesting that the four guys in question would, if the situation were real, put it to the vote. In a life or death situation where time is of the essence and assuming nobody volunteers to make the sacrifice, they would need to decide very quickly on how to decide on the unlucky two. They might draw straws or they might just try to punch each others lights out. Both of these options raise interesting ethical questions, which humanists could discuss ad nauseum but these discussions would be during the post mortem.

MollyMac

Hey, hon, you didn't insult me at all!

This thread has been very interesting and I thank you for starting it. In the bit from my post that you quoted, I was referring to what Noodly said:

And I wasn't offended when he said it either, though obviously I don't agree with it.

You'll see the url of my homepage in my profile here but it so happens that someone else on my forum clocked this thread and reproduced your OP there. I haven't had time to contribute to it yet though others have. Here's the link.