The problem with this idea is that it ignores countless hundreds of years of ethical reasoning. Such ethics problems are usually put forward as "choice A or choice B" type scenarios, where the user *must* choose one of two options and then explain the reasoning.
One such question would be "A train is hurtling down the tracks, out of control. On its present course, it would hit and kill 5 people who are trapped on the line. However, you are at the switch, and can change the course of the train in time so it goes down a different set of tracks. Unfortunately, on this set, there is one man trapped on the line, and the train would hit and kill him. What do you do?"
The question is a good ethics one, because even if the person you are asking refuses to do anything (on moral grounds), they end up responsible for the deaths of 5 people. Most people choose to switch the tracks; some do it because they believe that the lives of many are worth more than the lives of one, some because they rationalize that the chances of one man freeing himself are greater than 5 people freeing themselves.
Taking the "innocent baby" example, there are questions that can be formulated to show the ethical problems behind the statement "Killing an innocent baby, for whatever reason, is evil". Suppose you had a time machine, and you went back in time to when Adolf Hitler was born. You know that this innocent baby will grow up to kill more than 6 million people, and wage wars that kill far more. For the purposes of the scenario, you only have a limited period of time to do anything in the past, so you have no chance of removing him from his family in the hope that he will grow up differently. Your choice is whether to kill the baby who would grow up to be one of the most evil men of the 20th century, or to leave and let history pan out the way it has.
Again, most people in this scenario would kill the innocent baby. The rationalization being that one baby's life isn't worth the lives of all the people that the baby would grow up to kill.
So the problem isn't really one for the atheist; it is more one for the "ethical" believer. So what would your answers be?
One such question would be "A train is hurtling down the tracks, out of control. On its present course, it would hit and kill 5 people who are trapped on the line. However, you are at the switch, and can change the course of the train in time so it goes down a different set of tracks. Unfortunately, on this set, there is one man trapped on the line, and the train would hit and kill him. What do you do?"
The question is a good ethics one, because even if the person you are asking refuses to do anything (on moral grounds), they end up responsible for the deaths of 5 people. Most people choose to switch the tracks; some do it because they believe that the lives of many are worth more than the lives of one, some because they rationalize that the chances of one man freeing himself are greater than 5 people freeing themselves.
Taking the "innocent baby" example, there are questions that can be formulated to show the ethical problems behind the statement "Killing an innocent baby, for whatever reason, is evil". Suppose you had a time machine, and you went back in time to when Adolf Hitler was born. You know that this innocent baby will grow up to kill more than 6 million people, and wage wars that kill far more. For the purposes of the scenario, you only have a limited period of time to do anything in the past, so you have no chance of removing him from his family in the hope that he will grow up differently. Your choice is whether to kill the baby who would grow up to be one of the most evil men of the 20th century, or to leave and let history pan out the way it has.
Again, most people in this scenario would kill the innocent baby. The rationalization being that one baby's life isn't worth the lives of all the people that the baby would grow up to kill.
So the problem isn't really one for the atheist; it is more one for the "ethical" believer. So what would your answers be?
