Two (not really) hypothetical scenarios for your consideration

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Scenario #1: A 10 years old girl is kidnapped, raped and murdered, and her body is never recovered, so that the parents could not have any closure.

Scenario #2: A few billion conceptions do not happen due to artificial birth control, AND/OR aborted in the FIRST trimester, when the zygote/blastocyst/embryo is barley more than just a group of cells.

Please analyze these two scenarios. Also please do not change them. If you wish to present your own hypotheticals, do it in your own threads.

I hope to see two kinds of responses:
  1. "scenario #1 is more reprehensible, BECAUSE… [and here comes the reasoning]
  2. "scenario #2 is reprehensible, BECAUSE… [and here comes the reasoning]
I would appreciate if you did not shoot from the hip, but would seriously think it over.
 
I’m sorry that its not the answer you want to hear, but it is the truth ----> both scenarios are deeply unpleasant to put it simply, and both are very reprehensible. Also, for clarification, in Catholic theology, artificial birth control and abortion need to be differentiated as they are separate issues for different reasons.
 
Zake said:
Please analyze these two scenarios. Also please do not change them. If you wish to present your own hypotheticals, do it in your own threads.

I hope to see two kinds of responses:
  1. "scenario #1 is more reprehensible, BECAUSE… [and here comes the reasoning]
  2. "scenario #2 is reprehensible, BECAUSE… [and here comes the reasoning]
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I refuse to play this game.

Evil is evil. Both scenarios are evil. One scenario’s evil isn’t lessened by the evil that is present in another scenario. A person should aspire to do only good and no evil.
 
Zake said:
Scenario #1 : A 10 years old girl is kidnapped, raped and murdered, and her body is never recovered, so that the parents could not have any closure.
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The kidnap, rape, and murder is evil, sinful, and reprehensible.
Zake said:
Scenario #2 : A few billion conceptions do not happen due to artificial birth control, AND/OR aborted in the FIRST trimester, when the zygote/blastocyst/embryo is barley more than just a group of cells.
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A conception that doesn’t happen doesn’t mean that a person is created and killed. It is sinful, but doesn’t rise to the level of murder.

A direct abortion of a child in the womb – regardless the point in the pregnancy it takes place – is murder, and is evil, sinful, and reprehensible.

Murder is murder is murder. Always evil, always reprehensible.

We can’t look at these cases and compare them merely based on the numbers of persons killed. Nor can we look at them – from the perspective of Catholic Moral Theology, which is the context which I think you’re asking about – from the perspective of the age of the person who is killed.

So… there is no such thing as “more reprehensible” or “less reprehensible” here, unless you examine it from a standpoint that is in conflict with Catholic Moral Theology.
 
Zake said:
Scenario #1 : A 10 years old girl is kidnapped, raped and murdered, and her body is never recovered, so that the parents could not have any closure.
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So how does anyone know what happened to the girl if her body was never recovered?
I feel like you’re trying to emotionally manipulate us.
 
Anesti33 said:
Is this some kind of trolley problem?
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Seems so, essentially.

In this case with a seeming intent to try to get an opponent to take a position like “X is worse than Y” so they can try to “Aha!” them down to “Y doesn’t matter at all, or at least not enough to ___.”

As if these exact thought experiments aren’t addressed by Catholic apologists on video, easy to search up. (E.g. I think Trent Horn did a great one on a hypothetical just like this and used it as a jumping off point for discussing how intuition isn’t always reliable in arriving at moral conclusions.)
 
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You can’t use AND in the second scenario. And to be honest, Zake, you’d be better off making a point or asking a question and seeing if someone wants to discuss it. Like ‘How do we determine value when it comes to human life?’
 
This is just a question of emotions and how they factor in to our view of morality.

Scenario #1 “feels” more reprehensible because there is the fact that the female victim was known by someone, probably had likes and dislikes, and can ultimately be relatable in some immediate fashion.

Scenario #2 does not “feel” as reprehensible because the humans, which you have tried to downgrade by emphasizing their state in development, are not directly relatable in a “I have interacted with someone like that” sort of way.

But in both scenarios, a unique human person (several in the second) has been destroyed, and that is injustice.

With that being said, I would argue that the number does not make either act more of less. The taking of innocent life involves the destruction of a unique person. Each individual death represents a different injustice unique to that person. The fact that many happened all at the same time “feels” more overwhelming and thus more reprehensible, but I would say it is really just many separate individual horrendous acts that each deserve the acknowledgment of injustice in the world.

In other words, every murder is unique injustice because every murder involves a unique and unrepeatable person and each ultimately results in repercussions in our world beyond comprehension (not knowing how things might have been if the injustice did not occur).

But, getting to your point, just because something “feels” less does not mean that IS less.
 
I would add in, the OP is probably also thinking in terms of, it’s not just the outcome of a life destroyed: the 10-year-old girl would have experienced fear, pain, etc (all things we all, of course, want to protect children from), whereas children at the zygote age wouldn’t have experienced fear and pain while their lives were being destroyed.

Your point is correct that this question plays on emotions. I’m just fleshing out that part of it.

Honestly it’s a very apples and oranges trolley problem. Kill one child in a way that maximizes the suffering they experience? Or kill a few billion children sans any suffering at all?

Both are horrible. Both are reprehensible. No one can morally take either action. The thought of ranking them is ugly.
 
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