Five people are tied to a track. A trolley comes along and will kill
them unless you push a big person in the way, resulting in his
death. Even if you think it is wrong to push a person to derail a
trolley from killing people tied to the track, you also think it is
wrong for five to die when only one has to. So what do you do?
Does the trolley problem paralyse? Yes. People, especially Christians, lie that they are clear that the end does not justify the means. So they lie that they are clear that pushing is not even to be considered as an option. But surely they will struggle with the loss of life and with knowing that doing nothing is doing something. Letting a trolley kill can be as much of a weapon as shooting them dead. If you are truly paralysed, then you may toss a coin. You cannot take responsibility. Denying paralysis is a form of self-righteous hypocrisy.
You don’t want the five dead, but you also do want them dead under the circumstances.
The God who makes it law that you can sacrifice many lives for more to live in war, and bans the pushing, is not making any sense.
1 If God makes it law that you cannot push, for that is using a person as a thing
2 If God makes it law that you must push to save the five
Then God is paralysing and is paralysed. Moreover, He created the reason for the paralyzing.
Trolley problems are day-to-day things. Why else do you think you have a million conflicts a day about what to do or not to do? The trolley problems refute any suggestion that moral laws are set in stone and have come from God. God can’t command both do and don’t. Morality would have to be redefined as pragmatism. (You might be told that is what it has always been all along!) It would clearly be a human, secular thing, not a religious thing. We would have to oppose anybody turning morals into God, for that is stupid and/or deliberate cheating.
If a trolley is going to kill five people, and the only way to save them is to push a person who you miraculously know will not die, but who will suffer serious injuries and suffer constantly for the next seven decades, then what do you do?
Clearly, if you cannot use a person as a means to an end, you still cannot push.
What you get from this is that morality is made into a fanatical idol, where all you care about is, “I am not an ends-justify-the-means person,” and not the damage done. It is a good proof that psychological egoism—that even when a person seems selfless, they are not—is true.
Imagine if a crazy god had set up this trolley problem. The hurtling trolley is going to kill five people in the cruellest way. If you arouse malice toward them, he will save them. Or might save them. But if you do not, he definitely will not. Your evil intention gives them a chance.
Ignore the point, “If you work up hate for them, then it is not hate at all when your motive is to save them.” We are assuming, for the purpose of argument, that the malice is real.
Virtue ethics would say that the evil intention, however harmless it may seem, is not worth it. Virtue ethics worries about what kind of person you are. So, as long as you see the justice- and love-oriented inner you, nothing else matters. Christianity is based on virtue ethics. We have shown that behind virtue there is actually a lot of egotistical arrogance. It could be the cleverest form of it ever devised.
Saving the five at the price of one. Saving the one at the price of five. We are not the kind of beings that should have that stark choice. After all, we have a general record as poor humanitarians and as fakers of compassion. Once we do evil, even if we say we had no choice, the fact remains: we are the kind of beings that abuse. We are walking threats of potential abuse. We are so good at lying to ourselves. We do it without knowing we are doing it. We thus will lie to ourselves about how good we tried to be when we faced a trolley scenario.
These exercises show that our morals are really about feelings and not about doing the best thing. They are not about being honest but about looking honest.
APPENDIX - MORAL LAW IS CANCELLED FOR THOSE WHO FACE TROLLEY PROBLEM
The trolley problem asks if I should stop a trolley from killing five babies on a track by pushing a big person in front of the trolley.
Religion says pushing is wrong, for the end never justifies the means, and life is life, and you cannot degrade it by counting, "Okay, five lives matter more than one."
Many would say you should push, for the greatest saving of lives is what comes first.
A moral law with no condemnation or suitable penalty for breaking it is not a moral law at all. Yet it is clear that both those who say push and those who say do not push would say, "Nobody knows how they would react in such a terrible situation. Whatever you did was understandable and should be met with compassion, not judgment." They need to admit that morality breaks down where it matters—in the big situations. We meet mini-trolley problems daily and are collectively part of a potentially massive one. E.g., do we declare nuclear war against an existential enemy? How rare a major trolley problem is does not matter. This is about what we value and are prepared to do. That is something we carry with us all the time, subconsciously and consciously. It means that when we condemn and punish, we exhibit arrogance and vengefulness for our morality excuses whatever happens in a trolley dilemma. We are inconsistent.
The "cancellation" of moral law for you, admits you are paralysed and should be treated without judgement. We must remember that we often tell ourselves that we were caught between a rock and a hard place.