How about a game of tactical thermonuclear war?

[andrewducker]

Over here is a discussion I got into predicated on this:

Which is worse - rape or murder?

Got your answer?

You probably answered "murder". Now, would you let your children play rape games? Would you play them yourself? If you answered "no" to either, your next question is: Why are the murder games okay?

Comments

[kashandara.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure you're right in your assumption that most people would say murder. I for one answered rape.

[andrewducker]

However, the societal concensus seems to be that murder is worse (punishments for it are far worse, for instance).

Rape leaves you mentally and physically bruised and battered. Murder leaves you without a life. Seeing as I don't believe in an afterlife, I view a bruised but alive person as better than no person at all.

[luxcanon.livejournal.com]

Perhaps.

Then again: everyone dies, so in the final analysis 'murder' seems to imply only those deaths which are brought about by another of the same species, and in particular, only that subset of those which meet with Official Disaproval.

On the other hand, not everyone gets raped, and I know of no Official rapes.

When hearing about a murder, the first question in my mind is usually, 'Why did it happen? Could it have been justified?"
but when I hear about a rape, I think "Kill the Bastard now, so it won't happen again."

[andrewducker]

Well, there have been deliberate policies of rape from everyone from the Romans to the Japanese, as well as the unofficialy official rapes that have occured pretty much every time a city has fallen in the history of recorded warfare.

But I think we have to differentiate between "worse for the victim" and "a worse act to commit" (the two varying, depending on your moral code). Certainly, rape is possibly worse to commit, as there is never a justification. But Murder is a worse thing to happen to you, I'd say, especially as not doing so would be a grave insult to all those people who have been raped and then have lived lives afterwards. To say to them "better that you had been murdered" would be a grave disservice.