Morality versus afterlife

[orangebox21]

@orange.  
Let's not pretend that we weren't talking genocide just a minute ago.  Get your shit together.  OFC moral utilitarianism allows for the taking of human life.  That's a pretty standard feature of any practical moral system...don't you think?

I agree it should be.

Otherwise we'd have to call every person who's ever defended themselves or another immoral.

Here's the problem.  Under utilitarianism an action is morally justified if and only if it maximizes wellbeing.  So to claim that self-defense morally justifies killing is inconsistent within the utilitarian framework.  It's not the 'self-defense' of the action that morally justifies the action, but whether or not the action maximizes wellbeing.

Does moral utilitarianism proscribe killing people "to maximize wellbeing", no.

Do you see the problem?  If maximizing wellbeing is not the moral justifier of an action, then you're no longer operating consistently within utilitarianism.  Either utilitarianism justifies the taking of human life or it doesn't, and the basis by which this is determined is the amount of wellbeing.

Mostly because killing those people isn't something that's going to "maximize their wellbeing"...as has been explained to you more than once.

There is both the individual and the group to consider.

Relative to the individual I provided a critique in post #56.

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There are three states of happiness; happy (a positive happiness value), unhappiness (a negative happiness value), and neutral (zero happiness value).  If a person's life is a net sum negative happiness value how does your moral system not justify the killing of that person?  A person who is dead would have a zero happiness value.  Zero is greater than a negative number.  It's simple math.  So, in my understanding, utilitarianism teaches the taking of human life is justified under the previous conditions.

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Relative to the group, see below.

If you think that killing someone (or committing genocide, ffs) -will- maximize their wellbeing, or even the collective wellbeing, then by all means...make that case.

Couldn't you easily name 5 people who if never existed would have increased the collective wellbeing?