It is morally permissible to kill one innocent person to save the lives of more innocent people.

As Con all I must do to win is either prove Pro's contentions are wrong or my contentions are right. Or I simply have to prove the resolution "It is morally permissible to kill one innocent person to save the lives of more innocent people." is a faulty statement - which it is. How can one be innocent if their continued existence causes the deaths of more people? They can't be. Even if it was Mother Teresa with leprosy, she would be guilty of causing the strife of others as long as she lives. Therefore, the resolution is wrong in stating a man can be innocent, yet still jeopardize other's lives. Even further into it, Most philosophers agree that the only truly innocent person is a newborn baby until he experiences an act of evil or aggression. From that point on the baby will no longer know unconditional love and will make biased decisions based on that bad experience. This can be proved by a kid being punished for running away. The next time he thinks to run away, he'll consider what happened last time. This is why the punishment is always worse the second time someone is caught. However, if you feel this argument does not prove the resolution wrong, I will cross examine your contentions and provide some of my own. "Contention 1: Positive consequences" Neither A, B, C or D say why it is "Morally Permissible" to end one's life. Taking one's life is always morally wrong. It doesn't matter that saving many may be better for society. It would be an immoral way to improve society because it would be done through the act of taking one's life. In D, Pro said "Mill is saying that moral actions promote the general happiness and reduce pain in society." Again, taking one's life is immoral so this statement is more or less counterproductive for his case. "Contention 2: Situational Ethics" This puts forth no points that differ from ones stated in Contention 1 other than "By not acting, more people will die, which makes it immoral. John Stuart Mill again writes: "A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction, and in either case he is justly accountable to them for the injury."" This could not be more wrong. Here's an example: Jim drinks and drives. He ends up getting in a crash and killing Greg. Greg dies because of Jim's direct action. Where as Christy, the girl at a party with Jim, had the inaction of not taking Jim's keys. But according to Pro, even if Christy did not know Jim, the fact that she did not take a random man's keys causes her to be just as guilty as Jim for Greg's Death. That's ridiculous. Our judicial system even supports this by only punishing drunk drivers, and not the ones who didn't take his keys. There is a major difference between action and inaction, and inaction is not near as bad as immoral action. "Contention 3: The Harm Principle" This still states just about the same as Contention 1 and 2. It is a ridiculous concept to say that taking one's life to save more lives is morally permissible. It would be a completely unfair decision of who dies and who lives. You must take into consideration the fact that each person is an individual. And ending anyone's life is wrong, but ending one life may be even more wrong than ending another's. Taking the president's life may dramatically affect over a thousand people and give some kind of effect to the entire nation through the repercussions that would follow. So, if it came down to saving the president or killing him to save 5 homeless people, the world would make the obvious right decision of saving the president. Now onto my contentions: Contention 1 - Utilitarianism is evil because it justifies its actions with potential outcomes, rather than facts. My study of Russell's version of act utilitarianism has taught me that any philosopher who promotes act utilitarianism has to concede that its classic formulation "always act to maximize the good in the world" is indefensible for two reasons. First, the actual consequences of any given action are never available for examination at the time of the action, since they have not yet happened, and so they cannot be a factor in an ethical decision. Second, it cannot make any sense to say one's actual choice is objectively a better choice than its options. Since none of the options were chosen, we cannot be sure what to compare with the consequences of our actual choice. The maxim has to be reformulated in a subjective format, as it is in "act so as to maximize the expectable good in the world." The act utilitarian has to be satisfied with intended or predicted consequences, and not actual ones. Contention 2 - Utilitarianism allows for bean counting of human life which ultimately allows for no meaning for life. If there are no ethical absolutes, human persons, rather than being the norm and source from which other things receive their value become simply items or commodities with a relative value - inviolable only up to the point at which hit is expedient to violate them in order to achieve an objective. It would then make no sense at all to speak of the immeasurable value of the human person. Far from being immeasurable - that is, beyond calculation - the value of a person would be quite specific and quantifiable, something to be weighed in the balance against other values. Contention 3 - The most morally wrong actions cannot be justified even in the face of extreme catastrophe. The following was taken out of the book "Absolutism and its Consequentialist Critics" by Alan Gewirth where a man is forced to torture his mother or a gang would start a nuclear war: Ought Abrams to torture his mother to death in order to prevent the threatened nuclear catastrophe? might he not merely pretend to torture his mother, so that she could then be safely hidden while the hunt for the gang members continued? entirely apart from the fact that the gang could easily pierce this deception, the main objective to the very raising of such questions it a moral one that they see to hold open the possibility of acquiescing and participating in an unspeakably evil project. To inflict such extreme harm on one's mother would be an ultimate act of betrayal; in performing or even contemplating the performance of such an action the son would lose all self respect and would regard his life as no longer worth living. A mother's right not to be tortured to death by her own son is beyond any compromise. It is absolute. This states that even if torturing his mother saved many lives, it would still be entirely immoral.