Journal+Topics

Each week you will be responsible for a journal entry in which you respond to an ethical dilemma whilst making reference to the religion we are currently studying. Your responses should be 2 - 3 paragraphs in length. See the Journal Rubric for specific evaluation criteria. Before mid-term and end of term you will select you best 4 journals for inclusion in your portfolio. Here are the topics:


 * Week || Topic ||
 * 3 || You are on a cruise ship when there is a fire on board, and the ship has to be abandoned. You board a lifeboat with four others. The lifeboat is almost about to sink due to excessive weight. If one more person enters the lifeboat it will sink and you and the four others will not survive in the choppy seas. One man is only 3 feet away, is about to jump into the boat, and sees you sitting close to a rope attached to the ship. You realize that if you cut the rope, the boat will drift away from the cruise ship, and the man will not be able to make it to the boat. If you cut the rope, this man will see you and definitely die, but the lifeboat will stay afloat and you and the four others will survive. ||
 * 4 || A friend confides to you that he has committed a particular crime and you promise never to tell. Discovering that an innocent person has been accused of the crime, you plead with your friend to give himself up. He refuses and reminds you of your promise. ||
 * 5 || Three of David's classmates have created an offensive website that attacks students and teachers. The principal wants to know who did it and David is the only one who knows. ||
 * 6 || You are stumped on an important math test and you have the perfect opportunity to cheat without getting caught. ||
 * 7 || Noah sees the same bully torment the same victim every day on the schoolyard, and nobody tells the teacher about it. ||
 * 8 || Andrew is caught in a conflict between trying to please his overbearing father and doing what is best for himself. ||
 * 9 || Brian has the perfect summer job, thanks to his dad. But when Brian finds out that some of his co-workers (including some with families to support) make significantly less money than he does even though they've been there much longer, he feels conflicted. ||
 * 10 || When Jay asks his mother how she would react if he tried drugs, he gets a stern warning. Then he discovers that she's been smoking pot. ||
 * 11 || It is 3 am and you are late getting home. As you approach the intersection you notice that no one is around. Do you drive through the red light? ||
 * 12 || Kevin feels that his baseball coach has given him an unfair advantage over other members of the team. ||
 * 13 || Katy cringes every time she hears her friends use words like "retarded" or "gay" in a derogatory manner. Should she object when it happens, or should she let it pass so people won't think she's weird? ||
 * 14 || Lisa is at a party where her friend Sarah is vomiting and losing consciousness from alcohol consumption. Lisa wants to call 911. Her other friends want to try to deal with it themselves so they don't get in trouble. ||
 * 15 || You are on a boat. Nearby are two large rocks filled with people waiting be to rescued. There are five people on one rock and four on the other. The tide is coming in and threatening to drown everyone. Your boat cannot rescue both groups. If you try, your boat will swamp, and you will drown with the rest. You can rescue one of the groups, but by the time that you return the other group will have drowned. Which group do you rescue? ||
 * 16 || It is wartime and you are living in a territory that has been occupied by the enemy. At the enemy’s headquarters is a doctor who performs painful experiments on humans that inevitably lead to death. Along with five others, you are taken to his facility. The doctor states that he plans to use you and the rest as subjects in an experiment that will result in your deaths. However, one individual is already tied to an electric chair that is just a few inches away. The doctor turns and whispers to you that if you pull a lever that is attached to the front of the electric chair, he will spare you and the rest of the individuals from the other experiment. If you agree to the doctor’s proposal, the man in the chair will see you pull the lever, causing his death, but you and the four others will go free. ||