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No

Only Judeism

Only Islam

Yes to both Judeism and Islam

[Frumple]

Because she has a job on this earth
That is to spread christ's word
If I kill her, I might as well condemn those ,the ones she is here to reach or at least plant the seeds of Christ in, to hell

Or, in other words, you care more about the possible salvation of some than the guaranteed salvation of a loved one (well, technically it's more the possible salvation of some vs the guaranteed salvation of an individual, but if the original framing is more emotionally charged, we can roll with that), and you're willing to allow that loved one to risk eternal damnation in order to possibly enable them to save those other few.

That's a pretty tricky one, from a morality standpoint. Guaranteed infinite reward is pretty close to impossible to top, and willfully choosing to deny someone that is something very hard to justify. It's also really hard to balance allowing a potential for infinite punishment by not doing so. It would definitely seem that, from your perspective, the best thing you can do for your family member would be to kill them (ruddy strange though that is). This would actually be true for any individual in similar circumstances -- no matter how many people they may bring to salvation, it's almost certainly not worth the risk involved.

Of course, you can also just say that, yes, you value the salvation of others over the salvation of your loved one, or that you believe that choice is more important than heaven, among other things. It almost certainly means you're not doing the best you could for the individual being considered for early ascension. There's not much on earth that can top an immediate get-into-heaven card. It's basically impossible to top infinite consequence in a finite time frame -- that's one of the basic premises behind a lot of christian evangelicalism, even, that infinite reward and/or punishment trumps finite concerns.

No
You have the choice to do your job
Killing them would also take away their choice

I don't think a little thing like finite agency could make up the difference of the potential for absolute and infinite torture, especially in the face of guaranteed infinite reward. There's not really anything can do in the finite realm that tilts those odds in the favor of the potential for infinite punishment. It's one of those nasty metaphysical consequences that tend to pop up when discussing things like that.

[timferius]

Just to clarify, you aren't trying to get me to murder my neice are you?

No, because I don't think things work the way you do.
I'm trying to understand why you think you shouldn't murder your niece. Unless it's for selfish reasons I don't see why you, with your belief system, wouldn't.

Because she has a job on this earth
That is to spread christ's word
If I kill her, I might as well condemn those ,the ones she is here to reach or at least plant the seeds of Christ in, to hell

and this, in part, is where my belief began to crumble. If god loves all his children, why does it matter if you worship and pray to him? If I live a full, amazing, kind and good life, and help tonnes of people, but refuse to take God in to my heart and worship him based on faith alone, I am condemned to hell. He should not care if his followers recruit to his religion, but simply that they promote and live good, kind lives.

[Frumple]

To be fair, YWHW being YWHW and perfectly willing to pull tricks on people, it's entirely within the realm of possibility (albeit damned unlikely, given its other actions in regards to egoism and whatnot) that it doesn't care about who you worship and the whole "spread the word" thing is, in fact, a red herring. A test, to see who will do the right thing -- live a good life -- instead of something else.

[TheDarkStar]

There's also that whole "We live this life to learn and grow" thing, kind of like a child learning.

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

Well technicaly you don't have to worship him every moment but just believe in him
And you are accepted into heaven
You get judged for not worshiping him but still get access


And yes I care that multiple people get saved over one person
No soul is more important than another
If she loves to save just one other person then that's one extra person that goes to heaven rather than hell
And what if she does become that person that gets tens, hundred, thousands, maybe even millions
Then by killing her I just sent all those people to hell as well

You don't know what a persons choices will be in life
If she becomes a religious leader to save many then by not killing her she gets to save them
By killing her those people never find faith and get eternal damnation 

[Graknorke]

The problem here comes when you are talking about infinite consequences for your actions. It kind of becomes impossible to make any meaningful comparisons at that point. Unless the possibility of one outcome is 0, you could say that the expectation is infinite both ways.

[Gentlefish]

-snop-

I believe The Parable of the Lost Lamb works well here?

[Arcvasti]

Just to clarify, you aren't trying to get me to murder my neice are you?

No, because I don't think things work the way you do.
I'm trying to understand why you think you shouldn't murder your niece. Unless it's for selfish reasons I don't see why you, with your belief system, wouldn't.

Because she has a job on this earth
That is to spread christ's word
If I kill her, I might as well condemn those ,the ones she is here to reach or at least plant the seeds of Christ in, to hell

a) How many people do you realistically think she will save from eternal suffering? Even one? Unless she's really dedicated her life to evangelism I doubt it. And are slight possibilities worth a 100% guarantee?
b) Those people would not be in the position of being damned to hell if they had already been killed as children.

Out of curiousity, WHO are we sending to heaven? A baby doesn't have much of an identity. Identity is shaped by experiences. Minute-old babies don't have very many experiences.

Also, its interesting to see this not be shot down. I've actually had quite a bit of thought about this myself and have come to the following conclusions:

Its super impractical, for one.

As for spiritual things: The act of murder is sinful, no matter what the extenuating circumstances. Christianity is VERY clear on this. Killing for the greater good or in self-defense is still wrong. Something organized, efficient like this would be the most horrible atrocity ever committed, REGARDLESS of the extenuating circumstances.

Also, a scheme like this relies on God existing. He doesn't like it when people kill babies. Unless he's the one doing it, that is. I mean, he called down the plagues and such on Egypt mainly because of that. So you lose either way. Either God doesn't exist and you murdered thousands of infants for no reason. Or God does exist and he is pissed.

Lives are not ours to give or to take. They belong to God. Or, if He doesn't exist, they belong to the person living them.

[Frumple]

Is for spiritual things: The act of murder is sinful, no matter what the extenuating circumstances. Christianity is VERY clear on this. Killing for the greater good or in self-defense is still wrong.

This is explicitly outside the realm of the bible's text

Killing in self-defense is fine. Killing for the "greater good" (in particular, through war or executions) is also not sinful, insofar as the text itself is concerned. Murder is sinful, but there's considerably more to killing than murder, and much of it is not inherently sinful by the measure of the biblical texts. It's either not mentioned or outright endorsed, depending on the situation.

Regardless, there's been no question as to if the act of killing the child itself would be sinful or not -- that was explicitly noted straight from the start. The question isn't if the act would be terrible, but whether it would be selfless to do so even in the face of that, when considering the scenario of a guaranteed entrance to heaven for the deceased.

As for the identity bit, I'm not entirely sure that part matters to those that hold that the unborn are ensouled.

[Graknorke]

Out of curiousity, WHO are we sending to heaven? A baby doesn't have much of an identity. Identity is shaped by experiences. Minute-old babies don't have very many experiences.

I think we're operating under the Christian assumption of a non-physical soul that has the intrinsic characteristic of being a person.
And regardless, killing 8 year olds should still be good enough. They could arguably be too young to be held accountable for sins they may or may not be responsible for.

As for spiritual things: The act of murder is sinful, no matter what the extenuating circumstances. Christianity is VERY clear on this. Killing for the greater good or in self-defense is still wrong. Something organized, efficient like this would be the most horrible atrocity ever committed, REGARDLESS of the extenuating circumstances.

The point is that it is a selfless act. You are damning yourself in order to guarantee eternal contentedness for another. It may be wrong according to the Bible, but I think you can agree that by your own personal judgement it would be a good thing.

[Powder Miner]

When it comes to abortion, I'm for it, at least in the first trimester, where there's no indication of any real humanity yet-- the second trimester's where brainwaves start happening.
Yet, I'm Christian.
How do I reconcile these? It's simple:

I believe that before those brainwaves are there, the soul simply doesn't exist-- it's a lot similar to how some of Judaism feels about babies, but reaching a little farther back.

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

If we are giving opinions on abortions


I am 100% against it
That fetus has the potential be a human and by that it could be a person that does great things
What if the human you are killing was meant to be the next Einstein
Sure it could also be the next Hitler
But you just don't know

And as for even doing it in the first place
Why should you

Ok you were raped and got pregnant
It's not the baby's fault you got raped so why kill it?
It's the rapists fault and even then they don't get killed all the time do they?
But the in many circumstances the child does

High risk pregnancies
Sure there is a great chance your child will suffer in life or not even make it out of the womb alive
But that is for god to decide
I was high risk, with the two before me being died before birth and the one after me dead as well
But hey in still here and my mom could have easily aborted me and kept me from a possibly terrible life
There isn't a single health issue that I have that I got from birth

It's gods decision on that baby's life not yours
Why punish them for what they didn't do?

[Graknorke]

Cryxis, the potential argument is so full of holes.
By that reasoning, a woman who could be pregnant and isn't is commiting "potential murder" or however you would define it. As would a man doing anything but giving each of his sperm cells the highest chance of fertilising an egg.

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

Sperm and egg have nothing to do with this

It's only the fertilized egg
Once it's fertilized it's life is up to god

[Graknorke]

Sperm and egg have nothing to do with this

It's only the fertilized egg
Once it's fertilized it's life is up to god

The gamete cells are alive too. And have the potential to become people.