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Old June 17, 2009, 06:16 PM   #212
spacemanspiff
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Join Date: January 16, 2002
Location: alaska
Posts: 3,498
Quote:
One can cause injury to others through inaction as well.
I call that an untrue statement. If I choose not to act on behalf of someone else, am I the one causing their injuries? No, it is the person actively hurting them that is to blame.
Quote:
In the example I gave above, to WA, "retreating in safety" from a restaurant where an active killer is shooting people when you have the means and opportunity to stop him can be considered both "moral" (you retreated rather than to employ deadly force to protect yourself) and immoral (you let some number of others die instead of using the means at your disposal to prevent those fatalities).
Take that scenario and play it out a little further. You are eating at a restaurant your wife and child are with you. You are carrying your sidearm.
A man enters, and pulls a gun to rob the host at the register. He fires the gun in the ceiling, and is paying little attention to the crowd, he only wants the bag filled with the money from the register.
You have the choice, to move your family towards the kitchen were you can escape through the backdoor, or you can choose to engage and have a gunfight across tables of other restaurant patrons.


You can 'retreat in safety' and keep you and your loved ones as secure as possible. Are you responsible for the safety of everyone else in the restaurant?
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"Every man alone is sincere; at the entrance of a second person hypocrisy begins." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use." - Soren Kierkegaard

Last edited by Shane Tuttle; June 17, 2009 at 07:31 PM. Reason: Removal of religious content...
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