Do you consider yourself a moral person? How would you act if you were presented with a situation where you were forced to make a difficult choice, where depending on what you decide, someone will die?
Time Magazine blog has a Morality Quiz, where you can compare your choices to those made by other readers. For instance, take this scenario:
Scenario 3a: The Trolley
An out of control trolley is heading down a track toward five unsuspecting people and will surely kill them all. You could throw a switch diverting it to a siding, but an equally unsuspecting man is standing there and the train will kill him instead. Could you throw the switch, killing one to save five?
http://www.time-blog.com/graphics_script/2007/moralityquiz/index.html (Illustration by John Ritter) - via Scribal Terror
I hate to take this kind of test.
I agree that it is in the box thinking, and these are very unrealistic scenarios. And may I ask what the five very stupid people are doing on these tracks?"
They are having a prayer session that you'll pull the switch.
Stand by and do nothing, then call the resulting deaths "God's will."
You often hear of people dying or being kidnapped on the news and they will mention "she/he was a good Christian... attended church every week", as though that makes them better people.
What options involving a “higher power” do you want?:
“The hand of God comes down and derails the car before it can kill anyone” or “God intervenes and the soldiers go away before they can hear the baby cry.”
Well I can tell you right now that at least the “smothering baby” scenario has happened in real life, and mothers have smothered their own babies, and no “higher power” has intervened.