Fletcher On Calculating Love

A macabre tale is told of the god Moloch. He came down to earth to the premier of one of the new nations in Africa, with an offer: "I will provide you with a modern highway network if you will sacrifice 45,000 people to me every year." The premier, aghast, cried, "No! Not a single, solitary soul!" "Phooie," retorted Moloch, "that is what I get in the U.S.A. annually."

[...] It is sentimenal, simplistic, and romantically backward to "feel" that love cannot or ought not calculate[...]

- Joseph F. Fletcher, Situation Ethics

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