Professor Dressler: a quote from Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov.  In it, Ivan poses the following question to his brother Alyosha:
"Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last, but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature---that baby beating its breast, for instance---and to found that edifice on its unavenged tears, would you consent to be the architect of those conditions?  Tell me, and tell the truth?"

Mr. Raju: In the novel, Alyosha comes to believe that we are all responsible for the sins of others, so it doesn't matter who committed the act, because all of us must deal with it, and so we must take unto ourselves the culpability of others. Society will not have reached its goal of "making men happy in the end", he believes, until men realize we are all guilty for the crimes of others. Therefore, Alyosha's question is a trap, for the killing of an innocent baby precludes us from being happy because all of us would have the guilt and culpability of killing that child. He cannot justify killing an innocent person because the social harm is our collective culpability.

Me: Mr. Raju's comments on communal responsibility bear a striking resemblance to "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" by Ursula K. Le Guin, which was always taught as a Jesus-reference: http://harelbarzilai.org/words/omelas.txt  In this story (as I recommend everyone should read), there is a more than perfect society that is wonderful and good in every sense of the word.  It is not only happy (as at least one person said is not enough), but is also an improving society in every area of culture, science, philosophy, etc.  The catch is that there is a child locked in a closet, scorned and dying to get out.  Every person in Omelas knows that this child is there and also understand that if they let the child out of the closet their entire town's prosperity would be gone that day.  The story says this to partially answer the question:

"To exchange all the goodness and grace of every life in Omelas for that single, small improvement: to throw away the happiness of thousands for the chance of the happiness of one: that would be to let guilt within the walls indeed."

From there, what we are really asking is, are you willing to face your wounds and confront what you are hiding, or will you pretend you have no heart-wounds and live in a feigned blissful ignorance?

Though this question is very different, it stems from the same line of thought.  To explain the jump I made, the original question talks of a new universe where we get to play God.  Or, for all practical purposes, we can even talk of this universe under the Christian mentality, where a Christian, in theory, believes that God is the creator of this "fabric of human destiny."  Christians also claim that Jesus was a perfectly innocent being who was made to be tortured to death (supposedly theologically at the hands of every person in the world who ever lived, as Mr. Raju suggests the brother eventually understands) in order that those who accept his death as having paid the price for their wrongs will get to go to heaven (i.e. the ideal happy place).  I don't know if it is meant to be this way in the story, but it appears that Ivan is asking his brother: can you possibly believe in, or support, the God of Christians?

Now, we can't possibly expect to make judgments on any god at all, because if a god exists there is certainly no way we can condemn god when god's ability to reason, by definition, would be beyond our own.  But it does make a difference that the God of Christians did not condemn a random person for the greater good, but theoretically put himself to death (how that works, I have no idea), since Jesus is supposed to be fully God.  If this was Ivan's intent, the question now develops to: would you create a fabric of human destiny... ... ...but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to death yourself for the sake of all the others?  This seems more the appropriate question.

Not to get into a debate against Christian theology, what I see as the next logical step is the popular Christian saying: "Take up your cross daily and follow me" (which I believe was said by Jesus).  My understanding (which may be very flawed) is that those who have a cross to take up are expected to do as Jesus did and sacrifice their self-seeking nature (however moral and lawful this nature might be lived out) for the betterment of all others, as determined by the path Jesus leads them on for that day.

But as the years went on, people naturally skew good principles so that today we have people who have sacrificed to the closet every wound or insufficiency in their heart that they may live out what appears to be a good and perfect life.  I cannot count the times people have told me, "He/She just seems to have it all together and I feel like I'm falling apart."  Nobody has it all together.  We live just like those in Omelas, each on a personal, individual scale.  Collectively, we unspokenly agree to hang out with others in this context.  Surely there are sore, wounded parts of our hearts that are dying to be heard that we might be healed and rid of them from our town (i.e. conscious, soul, heart, whatever) forever.  But woe to the thought that people might think poorly of us if they saw what we were hiding in the closet.  We're all hiding something and we all know it.  Or, we pretend that we are not hiding anything, but instead nobody has asked the right questions yet and if they were to ask then we would talk.  Or maybe "I'm not hiding anything because I have my one or two friends that I tell everything to."  But until we feel comfortable wearing our deepest shortcomings, imperfections or wounds on our sleeves, we are like those of Omelas.  Note, though, that I am not talking about hiding the wrongs we have done, but wounds we have been victims of and imperfections inherent in who we are.

That is why the quote in the short story says that to let that child (i.e. our true selves, or at least part of) free would be to "let guilt within the walls indeed."  This guilt is not the guilt of what we hide, but the guilt of hiding it at all - treating a completely innocent part of our hearts like this child just because we perceive it as unbearable to face.  In such a case, it would be foolish to sacrifice this innocent piece of our lives because doing so only serves the purpose of making everyone else believe that they must do the same.  On the outside, everything looks perfect, but our hearts may be bleeding (and not in the ordinary way that hearts pour blood through veins and arteries).

Back to the main topic, in short, I tend to agree with the possible Christian standing on this matter.  While Mr. Slaybod would kill the innocent "even if it means sacrificing my freedom in the process," I would ONLY adhere to this rule if I were the one to be killed and nobody else's freedom is in jeopardy.  Under no other circumstances would I "consent to be the architect of those conditions" nor would I condone the actions of another or even a god who would.