Killing Baby Hitler
A moral dilemma?
If you could go back in time, would you kill baby Adolph Hitler?
- The Internet
In light of the current cultural climate where many believe Nazis are falling out of the sky I thought it appropriate to address this question. It is often presented as a thought experiment in ethics to reveal some sort of moral dilemma. On its surface the question appears to be deep, meaningful, and worthy of careful examination. But the reality is this question is shallow and presents with the deck stacked against the hearer. Because we live in a time that is rife with bad thinking, many people take the bait in an attempt to work through their own moral disposition —eager to show that they walk on higher ground.
I’d like to show you, that in the world we live in there are many distractions —noise that demands our attention, leveraging our brain cells so we become more emotionally charged while failing to think critically. We live in a world where people are constantly attempting to stack the deck of an argument in their favor in order to gain an advantage. So let me explain why this question is absurd, sort of like asking, “If God can do anything, can He create a rock too heavy for Himself to lift?”
In my past life, I was heavily involved in Christian Apologetics and street evangelism. Spending your time debating unbelievers in the streets and online sharpens one’s proverbial sword and critical thinking skills. You never really knew what type of environment you’d find yourself in. It was always a mixed bag of hostility, intimacy, real concern, fake intellectualism, pseudoscience, bravado, and interests in all things existential. I learned early on from other great thinkers and apologists that listening to someone’s argument is vastly more important than sharing your own. I also learned that people are really good at attempting to “stack the deck” in a debate in order to grant their position an advantage. This would often be done by creating a straw man or through presenting a circular argument that would “beg the question”. As an example, I would often be asked to “show God if He really exists” by those who claimed to be atheist or agnostic. But what they were doing, was seeding assumptions about the ontological nature of God —that He must be visible; He must be present now; He must come when called; He must appear according to the ideas of what the non-believer thinks God is— and then they would proceed to attack the very notion of God because He didn’t present as they had demanded. They were stacking the deck and at times unknowingly. If God does not present according to their circular argument, then they claimed God must not exist —cards stacked in their favor. If you’re not careful and are too eager to present your argument you’ll find yourself falling victim to such poor argumentation, trying to defend your idea on someone else’s perch instead of your own. This is what I see in the question concerning killing baby Hitler. So how should we think about this question? What is the real problem with it?
The question first stacks the deck. In this hypothetical scenario it grants only certain things in order to corner the hearer into a perceived moral dilemma. We are to assume that if one could travel back in time or live as a predictor of the future when Hitler was a baby —as to prevent the Holocaust— that death is the only option. But if we can grant time travel or prediction of the future, then why can’t we grant another option besides murdering a baby to prevent the Holocaust? Should we not grant the possibility of convincing Hitler’s parents of his future horrors in attempt to have him placed on a different path? Should we not grant the possibility of presenting young Hitler with the details of his future failures to possibly dissuade him? Should we not grant the possibility of warning the Germanic Jews of their future fate so they may avoid it? Why do we immediately jump to murder and not kidnapping baby Hitler to raise him up in forest away from the effects of bad ideologies that lead to genocidal acts in the future?
While the question itself makes no explicit mention of its assumptions, they are carefully stitched within the moral fabric of the question itself. Hitler was a murderer, so the question is really meant to probe the hearer’s moral framework to assess where their propensity to murder may lay. The question could be better framed this way, “Under what conditions would you murder an innocent child?”
As most people would consider themselves “better than adult Hitler” then murdering an innocent child —one who has committed no sin— appears to be morally sound. But that’s because the question is absurd. Baby Hitler and adult Hitler are not the same. Genetically they are but characteristically they are not. Failure to understand this opens the door to entertaining a ludicrous question that is posed as an intellectual wade into some sort of deep philosophical and moral exercise.
The second problem that I have with this question is that it desires the hearer to play God. But since it stacks the deck with murder being the only option, this god can offer no other solution. In this scenario you can only reign down hell fire on baby Hitler, or what kind of God are you to allow the future deaths of millions of innocent people? I believe this question could and should beg another question, “Why didn’t God stamp out Hitler the moment he turned murderous?”
This new question is much more difficult to answer and requires a deeper internal assessment of one’s moral framework. This question places a certain demand on created beings that only a Creator can bear. This question is hard to deal with and reason through. It is much easier for the created to play fake God, go back in time, and murder people before they commit any sins. It is much harder to grant alternative options to murder to prevent the future crime, not because the options are hard in and of themselves, but because the human heart would rather repay with murder in light of the Holocaust. In short, it is easier for humans to murder their way to peace and utopia.
Make no mistake. The question concerning killing baby Hitler isn’t about stopping or preventing the Holocaust. If it was, then the question would be presented as such. The question at hand is solely about defining the justifiable means to killing an innocent baby. It is a thinly veiled attempt at ascribing altruism. There is no real “salvation of the greater good” in this scenario. On its face the question lacks coherency while stacking the deck. There is no moral dilemma and while very popular, it’s just an absurd question that should never be entertained.
Disclaimer: I understand that this is the internet. Thus I’m aware of the great possibility that trolls and individuals who lack critical thinking skills may interpret this article as some sort of defense for Adolph Hitler’s existence or a plea for Nazis to rise up. Some people’s minds are so poisoned they may even go as far as to claim this article was written in admiration of Hitler’s life, completely missing the entire point of the article itself while making its point more salient.
Thank you for reading. If you enjoyed it, please restack and share it! Feel free to leave comments as I’d love to read the thoughts of critical thinkers.
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It’s Star Trek’s Kobayashi Maru. My answer is was and always will be no because we were not endowed with the right to do this. Also, there could have been someone worse waiting in the wings.
An incredibly well argumented case Gideon. Remind me never to challenge you in an argument without at least a month of serious background preparation! Seriously though, I am looking forward to reading more of your work. It's a pleasure to have found your writing.