I have to disagree with Jesus Christ on sacrifice. I think that the universe or God doesn't want you to sacrifice yourself or other people. God doesn't want you to sacrifice anyone, including yourself. I feel that sacrificing yourself sacrifices other people in the future. If you can't take care of yourself, you lose the ability to take care of other people. Also, sacrificing other people sacrifices yourself in the future. I think karma comes back to you in the future if you sacrifice other people and it happens to you.

I think the universe wants you to do neutral things or positive things. It doesn't want you to do negative things. If you do negative things, you eventually regret it. People can't survive constantly letting themselves be attacked, I feel. If you have 2 negative choices, then the choice is neither- God wants something positive.

Therefore, I disagree with Jesus's concept of self sacrifice for others. Do you disagree or agree with Jesus's concept of self sacrifice?

PS. Hi everybody. I'm excited to join this forum. I've been interested in discussing ethics for a while now and I hope to have lively discussions with the people on this forum.

Welcome to the forum Raw Vegan,
Interesting to read you don't agree with Jesus on sacrifce.
How do you define sacrifice?
Giving you life for someone in a war situation?
Donating a kidney?
Spending time teaching someone without reimbursement?
Letting an old person ahead of you in a queue?
The way I see it each and everything we do affects the people around us. Even the expression on our faces affects the mood of strangers.The concept of "sacrifice" is only necessary becasue we are reluctant to recognise this fact.
To use my father as an example. He and others, while prisoners of war in Burma, shared their meagre food portions with their less healthy companions.
How proud am I that he did this. In what way would it have better if he had not made that sacrifice and just looked after number one?
How ghastly and despicable that choice seems by comparison.

I don't agree with him on the permissibility of eating swine.

If you are looking for a religious discussion, I offer the folowing quote from a well know graduate of the US Naval Academy.

"History does not record anywhere or at anytime a religion that has any rational basis. Religion is a crutch for people not strong enough to stand up to the unknown without help. But, like dandruff most people do have a religion and spend time and money on it and seem to derive considerable pleasure from fiddling with it."

If you are looking to discuss "sacrifiece" I offer the following from the same individual

"Of all the nonsense that twists the world, the concept of 'altruism' is the worst. People do what they want to, every time. If it pains them, to make a choice- if the 'choice' looks like a 'sacrifice' -- you can be sure that it is no nobler than the discomfort caused by greediness... the necessity of having to decide between two things you want when you can't have both. The ordinary bloke suffers every time he chooses between spending a buck on beer or tucking it away for his kids, between getting up to go to work and losing his job. But he always chooses that which hurts least or pleasures most. The scoundrel and the saint make the same choices...."

Insisting that religion has to be rational is playing God in my opinion, however, I respect many people who belong to the atheist belief system, so I'll move on.

If the supposed religious prosthesis aspects of altruism you mention are removed, foundations for a successful society remain. Can you honestly say you'd rather live with a selfish individual who didn't wash, stole and told you lies, then a clean and honest person? What's true for the microcosm is also true for the macrocosm.

The scoundrel and the saint make the same choices................please explain.

Christine,

While not my quote, I'll offer my interpretation of the original authors words.

Whether saint or sinner the motivation for the choice is the same. It is either the most pleasure or the least pain.

i think you missed the point when you brought up your examples. First there isn't a altruistic delimna associated with your choices.

Lets modify your example would you choose a lifetime monogamous relationship with an individual who didn't wash, stole and told you lies, but was randy as a billy goat or would you choose a lifetime monogamous relationship with a clean and honest person but had zero interest in sex.

A cloistered life would be preferable to marriage with either of the candidates you describe, but let's fast forward your characters a step further.

Cooper the randy one, is the scoundrel in the story. He finds a partner and has a son. Unfortunately Cooper can't tolerate his son's typical baby and toddler behaviour and the child ends up dead with multiple broken bones and perforated organs.

Newton is the saint. He also finds a wife and through medical intervention a son is born, but he's disabled. Newton embarks on a decade long programme of excersises and other interventions to give the child the best possible start in life.
Please explain how Cooper and Newton are making the same choices.

Both took actions that caused themselves either the least pain or provided themselves the most pleasure.

Both took actions that caused themselves either the least pain or provided themselves the most pleasure.

OK, it's a bit of a stretch but I'll accept that killing one's child may result in momentary pleasure or cesstion of pain in an individual with absolutely no foresight or common sense at all.
That being the case, shouldn't the genes of those who kill for reasons of personal satisfaction be biologcally engineered out of the human gene pool?

I don't believe human beings are driven by such base urges as you suggest. What about soldiers who die in war? Are you saying that the lives of soldiers given for their country are lost for reasons of pleasure, or lack of pain?

Christine,

I spent the better part of my adult life serving in the military, during that time I was called on to go to four different wars. Obviously as I am posting i wasn't called on to make the ultimate sacrifice. But my motivations for serving weren't altruistic. I have to look at myself in the mirror everyday.

Quoting from my favorite Annapolis graduate again.

The basis of all morality is duty, a concept with the same relation to a group that self-interest has to individual.

Perhaps it is a debt of honor. I know that i enjoy the freedoms I have today because someone else secured them for me. If I expected my family to continue to enjoy them, then I had to do my small part to try and keep those freedoms that were earned by others.

The idea that self-sacrifice is all about yourself is intriguing, and something I've always kind of thought of. But, does it really matter, how does this conclusion contribute to the argument that "self-sacrifice isn't ethically right"?

Here's my question for the OP. If you could live but hundreds had to die, would you find that it's morally right to live, even if dying meant the hundreds lived? If self-sacrific was wrong, then soldiers, policemen, firefighters, anyone who riskes their lives are doing a moral injustice every day. But would society really be better without them? If noone gave up a piece of themselves for the greater good ever, how would that make the world better?