Yes, matters of life and death can be expressed (or, as you said, "reduced," though I think the honor of being worthy of such analysis hardly "reduces" anything) in terms of mathematics. I just did it. Here, I'll do it again. One human life != a world of human lives.
Ending one life to save ten is not necessarily a bargain. For example, my life is worth at least ten others', depending on which ten. Is my life worth every other human life in the world? From my perspective, absolutely, and should it come down to it, I'll do my best to make sure I'm the one still alive. But from society's perspective, the perspective of every other human, and the perspective that survival of the species is a good thing, of course I'm not worth it.
If there were a God, and it demanded that the people of Earth decide more or less as a whole to either kill me or die but leave me alive, please don't tell me you wouldn't be complicit in a global decision to eliminate me. I won't believe you.
That is simply the same principal that I say justifies the death penalty, applied on an extreme scale. We lack the means to determine the impact of the death penalty and form an equation into which we might plug specific numbers, but I still support the death penalty, and you still don't. |
