Fighting back before certain death

[PeteZaHut]

I was thinking about this morality issue and want to know what you all think.

It involves cases where you are certain you are going to be killed, so you feel the need to fight back, since you have nothing to lose.

One example is from the Flight 93 on September 11. That was the 3rd plane that took the plane to a crash in the middle of a field. The people on the plane knew that they were going to end up killing more people if they crashed into a building, so they fought back against the terrorists. That act was certainly heroic and obviously not morally wrong.

Another situation would be if a person has been captured by enemy soldiers and is about to be executed. You are 1 of 10 prisoners. The bad guys are going down the line executing everyone, and you are next. If you fight back, you could probably kill 2 or 3 bad guys, but you would still eventually be killed because you are surrounded by hundreds. Is it wrong to fight back in this case since you would still die? I would say yes, it is wrong, because you aren’t fighting back to save your life, you are just fighting back to kill a couple people.

 

[m134e5]

I think in that situation, fighting back would not be immoral, exactly, because at least you are trying to defend yourself- people have overcome impossible odds before…but I think it would be a better use of your last few seconds on Earth to pray that your soul be saved.

 

[Mirror_Mirror]

In the situation that you mentioned, I do not think that the word that I would use would be immoral, I would say that it would be heroic. You are taking the situation that you have been put into and taking an opportunity to SAVE lives, not TAKE lives. It would be the same as asking if you could kill someone that broke into your house and was trying to kill you and your family. If you were to kill them, would that be immoral? I would think not.

 

[wjp984]

I was thinking about this morality issue and want to know what you all think.

It involves cases where you are certain you are going to be killed, so you feel the need to fight back, since you have nothing to lose.

One example is from the Flight 93 on September 11. That was the 3rd plane that took the plane to a crash in the middle of a field. The people on the plane knew that they were going to end up killing more people if they crashed into a building, so they fought back against the terrorists. That act was certainly heroic and obviously not morally wrong.

Another situation would be if a person has been captured by enemy soldiers and is about to be executed. You are 1 of 10 prisoners. The bad guys are going down the line executing everyone, and you are next. If you fight back, you could probably kill 2 or 3 bad guys, but you would still eventually be killed because you are surrounded by hundreds. Is it wrong to fight back in this case since you would still die? I would say yes, it is wrong, because you aren’t fighting back to save your life, you are just fighting back to kill a couple people.

In the second scenario it probably would depend on your intent. If you believed you had some miraculous but highly unlikely possible fighting chance of escaping and two soldiers stood in your way who you would need to kill then it would not be immoral. However, if your thinking simply is I’m going to die so I’m going to take a few people with me as some sort of revenge then you are really taking your chances. I would think it best to follow the example of Jesus and pray for your captives and and then ask for God’s mercy as you await your execution.