S
stupidisasstupiddoes
Guest
Ok so I realise the simplistic nature of this thread won’t appeal to everyone but I’d appreciate answers at the level of principle. Let’s not get bogged down in specifics. The question is also about how the decision is made not intended to infer anything about people’s own life choices.
Imagine that on your 18th birthday you need to make a binary choice between 2 different lifestyles. You will be Catholic whichever you choose but you are given the probability of how well you will live a Catholic lifestyle depending on your choice.
The events of your life to come are simplistically divided into 4 categories of impact; very positive, positive, negative and very negative. I want to leave these fairly open to interpretation because they don’t effect the principle all that much. By for the sake of argument, a very positive event would be one that significantly effects a lot of people directly (e.g. founding and running an orphanage that saves thousands of children from poverty). A positive event might be raising your own family well or running the local youth club. Negative events would be common sins that are not moral sins. Very negative events would be mortal sins that directly effect multiple people.
Each lifestyle is a combination of many factors (e.g. who you marry, where you live, your occupation, your friendship groups etc).
If you choose Lifestyle 1 then there is a 20% probability that 5% of your life events will be very positive, 90% will be positive, 5% will be negative and 0% will be very negative. However, there is also an 80% probability that 0% of your life events will be very positive, 45% will be positive, 45% will be negative and 10% will be very negative.
You could summarise this as, there’s a 20% probability of being a very nice person and not harming anyone, but the pursuit of this style might backfire into one where you end up harming others and yourself. It’s also pretty unlikely you’ll have much impact on others beyond your local community.
If you choose Lifestyle 2 then there is a 20% probability that 10% of your life events will be very positive, 35% will be positive, 45% will be negative and 10% will be very negative. However, there is also an 80% probability that 20% of your life events will be very positive, 40% will be positive, 40% will be negative and 0% will be very negative.
You could summarise this as, you’ll have a direct very positive impact on many people, but in doing so you will expose yourself to temptations. It’s certain you will give into minor ones and possible you will end up with the worst aspects of lifestyle 1’s choices.
I realise there’s a lot of numbers there, so I assigned some weights to the categories (9, 6, 3, 1) and it can be expressed as:
Lifestyle 1 – 20% probability of 6.0 / 10 good in your life, 80% probability of 4.2 / 10 good in your life.
Lifestyle 2 – 20% probability of 4.5 / 10 good in your life, 80% probability of 5.4 / 10 good in your life.
How does a Catholic determine which is the morally correct choice between the two?
Imagine that on your 18th birthday you need to make a binary choice between 2 different lifestyles. You will be Catholic whichever you choose but you are given the probability of how well you will live a Catholic lifestyle depending on your choice.
The events of your life to come are simplistically divided into 4 categories of impact; very positive, positive, negative and very negative. I want to leave these fairly open to interpretation because they don’t effect the principle all that much. By for the sake of argument, a very positive event would be one that significantly effects a lot of people directly (e.g. founding and running an orphanage that saves thousands of children from poverty). A positive event might be raising your own family well or running the local youth club. Negative events would be common sins that are not moral sins. Very negative events would be mortal sins that directly effect multiple people.
Each lifestyle is a combination of many factors (e.g. who you marry, where you live, your occupation, your friendship groups etc).
If you choose Lifestyle 1 then there is a 20% probability that 5% of your life events will be very positive, 90% will be positive, 5% will be negative and 0% will be very negative. However, there is also an 80% probability that 0% of your life events will be very positive, 45% will be positive, 45% will be negative and 10% will be very negative.
You could summarise this as, there’s a 20% probability of being a very nice person and not harming anyone, but the pursuit of this style might backfire into one where you end up harming others and yourself. It’s also pretty unlikely you’ll have much impact on others beyond your local community.
If you choose Lifestyle 2 then there is a 20% probability that 10% of your life events will be very positive, 35% will be positive, 45% will be negative and 10% will be very negative. However, there is also an 80% probability that 20% of your life events will be very positive, 40% will be positive, 40% will be negative and 0% will be very negative.
You could summarise this as, you’ll have a direct very positive impact on many people, but in doing so you will expose yourself to temptations. It’s certain you will give into minor ones and possible you will end up with the worst aspects of lifestyle 1’s choices.
I realise there’s a lot of numbers there, so I assigned some weights to the categories (9, 6, 3, 1) and it can be expressed as:
Lifestyle 1 – 20% probability of 6.0 / 10 good in your life, 80% probability of 4.2 / 10 good in your life.
Lifestyle 2 – 20% probability of 4.5 / 10 good in your life, 80% probability of 5.4 / 10 good in your life.
How does a Catholic determine which is the morally correct choice between the two?