Selling one's soul.

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Ok, let's say that one day you are walking down the street, minding your own business, strangely nobody is around at the time, and then you are solicited by a red person with horns, and donkey legs. He/She/It asks to buy your soul. You are convinced that this is a soul-buying demon of some sort.(if that seems implausible, the being does some trick that could not be done without magic) What is the minimum offer you would accept in exchange for suffering an eternity of suffering after you die? It can be anything: world peace, a turkey sandwich, etc, etc. Given that this is a demon, you should keep in mind what whatever you say as a "minimum" will be interpreted in a horrible manner unless you think it through, but this is a hypothetical, so what would you think of?

Now that you've admitted to a minimum(or the impossibility of one), is there an exchange that you would be ethically required to accept? As in, if you refuse to suffer eternally for let's say world peace, would you be a bad person? Or is there a point at which your sacrifice is morally obligatory?

(Btw, strip Russian Roulette is from this comic:
http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db ... 1587#comic )

On a more related SMBC note: http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1632#comic

How can one sell what does not exist?

ruveyn

Value is created by buyer interest. If some alien creature offered to pay a substantial sum for something I didn't think existed I would have second thoughts about what was worthwhile.

You do bring up an interesting point, that is, of whether it could ever be moral to do something that would place your soul in jeopardy. If you could save millions of lives (or even save millions of souls from damnation), but only by committing an unforgivable sin and thus damning yourself to Hell, would you be morally obligated to do it? I will assume the answer is "yes," because putting consideration for yourself above others to such an extreme extent would itself be sinful. So, what is the result of this apparent paradox? Does the selflessness trump the standard rules, giving you an exception where you are still saved because of your virtuous self-sacrifice? Or does it become a damned if you do, damned if you don't trap where no matter what you do you have condemned your soul?

An intriguing problem...

If convinced of the reality of an eternal soul, I'd briefly consider the possibility of accepting eternal damnation if my children could be guaranteed eternal happiness in heaven when they died. But then, I'd realize that demons can't offer salvation, so no deal.

I don't think there would ever be a moral obligation to accept damnation. An eternity is infinite; things like world peace would presumaly apply only to a finite number of finite lifetimes, even ignoring the fact that the world peace provided by a demon would likely not be terribly comfortable.

Gotta be the kids...
Cause once you corrupt them, they have much more time to corrupt others before they die.
If you corrupt them properly, you can get a memetic process going, and they'll pass the corruption right on down to their children, and to their children... it's a win win win system.

Interestingly enough, if i were a god, i would do the same... oh wait, that's a moot point, cause they're the same thing.