Is It Suicide or Sacrifice? When Giving Your Life for Others Means Certain Death

Can a kamikaze-style sacrifice ever be morally justified? We explore the ethics of self-sacrifice in sci-fi scenarios and real life, along with deep (and wild) questions about vampires, psychiatric visions, Jesus’ second coming, and even the Rick Astley paradox.

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Questions Covered:

• 02:23 - If someone were to kill everyone on earth to force Jesus’s second coming, would Jesus come? If the person did it to save everyone so they can all go to heaven, would this make them a good or bad person? 
• 05:00 - Are heaven and hell customized for you and how you lived? 
• 06:55 - If you sacrifice your life for God, do you go to hell for committing suicide? 
• 14:45 - Could a killer whale get a taste for human flesh? 
• 17:55 - I worked as a firefighter/EMT for a while and people prided themselves about having a stiff upper lip and a tough cynical personality. I got to thinking, some people are more docile, and some seem to pride themselves in having a rough edge. When we are perfected in heaven, will we all have the same disposition/temperament and just different talents and interests, or will our different dispositions remain? 
• 22:01 - How will a body not be destroyed when living on earth forever? For example—If you fall off a cliff or get crushed? 
• 28:57 - Can you please comment on the moral implications of the following? In Return of the Jedi, an A wing pilot gets shot down and plows his ship into the bridge of the Executor. Can a space pilot do this if death is a near certainty become a kamikaze? Or, in 2009’s Star Trek movie, Captain Kirk’s father stays behind and navigates the Kelvin on a collision course with the Romulan vessel to protect escaping shuttles. He sacrifices himself and the ship to save his son. Can the captain of a ship stay behind to again be a kamikaze to inflict heavy damage on somebody else and/or save other people if it means certain death? 
• 32:59 - My Mom and sister are both nurses in a psych ward. They have had hundreds of patients who claim to see Angel’s and Demons. Some patients who claim they have seen them also knew personal information they shouldn’t have about Mom and Sister. Do you think these people are actually connected to the spiritual realm in a way we aren’t or is it just a mental illness? 
• 38:08 - If a priest were to become a vampire, would he have to retire? 
• 41:30 - If Santa Claus (not St Nicholas) were to die would he go to heaven? 
• 44:01 - Will we see Wooly Mammoths in our lifetime? Will they really be Wooly Mammoths or something else that looks like them? 
• 48:46 - How does the Rick Astley paradox work? Here’s how it goes: If you ask Rick Astley for a copy of the movie Up he can’t give it to you because he can’t give you Up but if he doesn’t give you Up he lets you down. This has been my hardest question since I heard it. What do you think? 
• 50:54 - Sorry this is kind of a gross one. A few years back, there was a news story about a man who had his leg amputated and then had his friends over for a party where they ate tacos made from his amputated leg. While this is definitely strange, is it necessarily immoral?