Hypothetical scenario....

You're an explorer. You come upon a vibrant, flourishing culture with great works of art and literature. The entire culture centers around its religion, and the entire religion is based around the idea of a five-year cycle. Babies are born every five years, and at the end of the five years, one of them is picked to be a sacrifice to the gods and is killed.

You have the power to stop this practice of child-killing, but it would mean destroying the entire culture of the people, since their whole culture depends on their religion, which depends on this practice. Or, you could leave the culture alone and say that it's not your business to intervene, but that would allow them to continue their custom of killing five year old children indefinitely.

What would you do?

I'm torn, as much as I'd like to just leave the culture alone as, well they might be right. (Moral relativism...?)

I'd also not be ok with the baby killing, I'd probably write a report on the culture but not interfere directly. Thereby taking an easy way out and letting the rest of the populous read the article and debate the issue till they reach a decision point.

Convince them that sacrificing plants is an acceptable substitute.

Well, assuming their religion is born from something tangible and not just a fairy tale about some guy say parting the sea, then how do you know they are not right? If you convince them to drop the practice because you dislike it, and then it turns out that their god truly comes and punishes them (somehow ignoring you), then guess who is the Evil in this scenario.

If I could stop them killing five year olds, I would.

Let them do it. If its legal in their country then I have no business to interfere.

↑↑So you would forcibly impose your morals on an entire, different society? Lemme ask even firster, are you sure you have a basis to believe you are right?

Yes, I would, and no, I have no reason to believe myself to be more... well, depending on how you define right. I don't think I'd be likely to be less right in any objective sense.

Obviously, I wouldn't be expecting to be killed by some enraged deity. If I was, I guess that'd serve me right for not making sure beforehand, though I don't know how I'd go about making sure.

I wouldn't interfere. At least not until learning what the baby-killing achieves in the long run, aside from the potentially edible carcass (which is probably tossed into a holy cleansing fire or something to that effect, but who knows?), and the feeling of a job well done for the priests. If they are simply going through the motions of a long-forgotten ritual that is meaningless, stopping it might be possible via replacement. After all, the Christians <bashing removed> do not actually imbibe flesh and blood of Christ or anyone else for that matter, theirs is a symbolic ritual. This might be adapted to other use, then.

But what if it IS meaningful? If their little spiteful evil god or gods or demons even only pay attention to the child-killing on this very planet, or it is to prevent an ancient curse from taking over some OTHER five-year old that will grow up to house an Eldritch Abomination? Too little input data to decide anything other than non-involvement.

edited 18th Apr '11 1:19:57 PM by Noelemahc

...Now that you mention it Bobby that is a good point. The problem is posited in a way that we don't know about that other culture except that they sacrifice children to a god. Absolutely nothing else. If the wording of the problem effectively prevents us from learning more, then I'd guess there is no answer that is more moral than the other, since the only thing you can know for sure is that you are acting in a way that makes only you feel more or less guilty.

However, what happens if we are allowed to delve further... and we fail?

EDITed for consideration of ↑

edited 18th Apr '11 12:43:35 PM by SilentReverence

O hai moral relativism.

I suppose if I enjoyed their culture enough, I wouldn't be that motivated to stop the baby-killing (although I suppose I am odd in that I find killing a baby less distasteful than killing a functioning adult).

But as for imposing your morals on another society? Sure, Why Not? Moral relativism is kinda a Logic Bomb; if I imposed my morals on another society, I'd still be in accordance with relativism if I said that following my own morals involves going out and converting/evangelizing other people. To say that one shouldn't ever interfere in other cultures/moral systems would require an objective moral statement.

If I'm to judge whether to change a culture, I'm going to be more interested in their socioeconomics, not their works of art and literature. What's the average standard of living? What's the crime rate? Other than sacrifice, what are the most common causes of death? How medically backwards are they? and so on. Seeing as how no information of this sort has been provided, my choice by default is to leave them alone.

Noelemahc, was the Christian-bashing really necessary?

Since the OP doesn't contain anything that suggests to me that their gods are real, I see no reason to assume that they are.

Sorry, I got carried away there. Edited my post. If the gods aren't real, we have to study the actual ritual more in-depth, to see what impact its removal or modification could possibly have BEYOND the religious ramifications.

edited 18th Apr '11 1:21:16 PM by Noelemahc

So long as you remember that you don't see any gods ≠ there are no gods, or anything consequential to a religion for that matter. Nothing in the scenario indicates that there are, or aren't, any gods, but also it doesn't indicate that the sacrifices are or not needed to fuel a Precursor machine that plays an important part in the ecosystem, like oxygen recycling for example.

But failing any evidence to that effect, that is a sufficiently improbable scenario that it's not worth allowing the killing of numerous 5-year-old children on the off-chance that something bad might happen.

I don't value "culture" as an inherently valuable thing in itself. If there's a culture that involves killing people period, obviously you destroy the culture.

I don't understand any alternative.

edited 18th Apr '11 1:58:46 PM by GameChainsaw

Greater good, let one die so many can prosper.

In this situation you have a moral duty to point out that, according to your own moral code, killing innocent children is not acceptable.

Imposing your moral code on them is not acceptable. They may believe, however, that it is perfectly acceptable to impose their moral code on you. Peoples who have no experience with other belief systems tend to take their moral codes very seriously.

My line on when it is or isn't acceptable to impose ones morals is crossed when the other sides morals involve casual murder.

Imposing moral codes on people isn't acceptable? Since when? You do it all the time. You actually kind of just did there, by telling me what actions on my part are or are not acceptable. Should this culture be allowed to just kill people haphazardly because it's their culture? How about raping people, from their culture or neighboring cultures? If a culture says that mankind needs to be wiped out to appease the gods and they start building a nuke, yeah, they need to be stopped.

Save the kids, kill the culture. At least their art and history will live on, like those of other dead civilizations.

Yes, that means imposing my morals on other cultures. That's what morals are—the desire to impose my will on the universe.

Ritual murder isn't quite casual but I'm with you, Game Chainsaw. Their culture sounds like it's probably horrible. Yes, it's all subjective. So? I'd destroy it. Societal collapse has all sorts of positive effects:

Destratification: Complex societies stratified on the basis of class, gender, race or some other salient factor become much more homogeneous or horizontally structured. In many cases past social stratification slowly becomes irrelevant following collapse and societies become more egalitarian.

Despecialization: One of the most characteristic features of complex civilizations (and in many cases the yardstick to measure complexity) is a high level of job specialization. The most complex societies are characterized by artisans and tradespeople who specialize intensely in a given task. Indeed, the rulers of many past societies were hyper-specialized priests or priestesses who were completely supported by the work of the lower classes. During societal collapse the social institutions supporting such specialization are removed and people tend to become more generalized in their work and daily habits.

Decentralization: As power becomes decentralized people tend to be more self-regimented and have many more personal freedoms. In many instances of collapse there is a slackening of social rules and etiquette. Geographically speaking, communities become more parochial or isolated. For example, following the collapse of the Mayan civilization many Maya returned to their traditional hamlets, moving away from the large cities that had been the centers of the empire.

Destructuralization: Epiphenomena, institutions, processes, and artifacts are all manifest in the archaeological record in abundance in large civilizations. After collapse, evidence of epiphenomena, institutions, and types of artifacts change dramatically as people are forced to adopt more self-sufficient lifestyles.

Depopulation: Societal collapse is almost always associated with a decline in population densities. In extreme cases, the collapse in population is so severe that the society disappears entirely, such as happened with the Greenland Vikings, or a number of Polynesian islands. In less extreme cases, populations are reduced until a demographic balance is re-established between human societies and the depleted natural environment. A classic example is the case of Ancient Rome, which had a population of about 1.5 million during the reign of Trajan in the early 2nd century AD, but had only 15,000 inhabitants by the 9th century.

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edited 18th Apr '11 2:26:43 PM by LoveHappiness

I'm not sure...Killing a culture is not something I am comfortable with but sacrificing children...

I'd likely do nothing.

^^I don't see taking apart the entire culture as a positive thing. All those things you put there have negatives as well as positives. Decentralisation, for example, can lead to local corruption and a lack of organisation. British councils are notoriously inefficient. The only time its legitimate to go in and wipe someones culture is when that culture involved killing that is so entrenched that the entire culture would have to give to get rid of that need for killing... a rather chilling testament on what such a civilisation would be like.

EDIT: Also, I wouldn't class massive depopulation as a positive.

edited 18th Apr '11 2:29:42 PM by GameChainsaw