The healthiness and the age of the donor and recipients come into play. But if it didn't you are actually wrong as far as the good of society is concerned. Suppose you lived in a land where a diabolical killer chooses five people at random every day to kill. But before he does he lets the people of the land choose someone at random do die in their place if they choose to. The people knowing they are facing this everyday decide to vote on whether they will invoke this alternative not knowing whether they may be the one who is chosen. They would vote overwhelmingly yes.

Similarly if the trolley scenario came up every hour and everyone was equally likely to be the one or the five, a law would be passed making it illegal for a passerby to NOT pull the switch.

Obviously in any of these scenarios they are abstracted as being perfect so such issues don't come into play. The people lying on the tracks or needing surgery are just as likely to be healthy as the single person, the surgery goes off with 100% recovery rates, etc.

Then explain to me why it is not legal to harvest a person's organs in cases where it saves more lives.

You think that I think it should be legal?

No.

Right. But your rarity argument is flawed and in the abstract case so is your best for society argument.

I took a class in college called Killing and Letting Die. David, I think to would have enjoyed that class.

There is definitely a subset that believes that inaction removes you from the moral situation(or rather never places you into it).

I actually wrote my final paper in that class about a story talking about the whole selecting a person to harvest the organs. I think it was called The Lottery or something. I basically wrote about how everyone is results oriented in thinking they are healthy. There's some fancy philosophical argument I invoked to argue with but I can't think of it. I doubt I can find the paper now.

sure looks like you benefited from that college education

Why?

I believe quality of life is far more important than quantity. I also believe the world is overpopulated, which greatly increases human misery. My views are taboo in most circles, but I see no reason they can't be part of a consistent ethical system.

Due to overpopulation, I would happily refuse to divert the train and thus kill five random people rather than one. I don't see anything at all theistic about this judgment.

Actually, you don't have to force it at all. You only need take advantage of the human trend to view action as more accountable. In countries where you have to refuse harvesting (as oppose to accept it); donors are far more common.

The classic case is Germany (tick to say yes) vs Austria (tick to refuse), two very similar countries culturally. They have 10% and 99% organ donation rate respectively.

Firstly it seems that you aren't looking for an atheist argument you're looking for a secular one. The distinction seems important given that secular ones are also available to theists.

A categorical imperative doesn't require God, on its second formulation Kant defines it as not treating a person as a means and it can be argued, made clearer in other forms of the trolley problem, that by diverting the train you are so it's excluded.

You are allowed to hold this view, but I don't think your reasons stem from a purely moral perspective. If overpopulation increases human misery, and the simple answer was for there to be less people, then you should be willing to kill at random, and even take your own life for the greater good. It's not as easy as: less people is better than more people, if it was, your theory would run into the problems I mentioned, there are caveats that cannot be ignored.

It is better if five people die than one! Why didn't I didn't think of that? I believe you have succeeded where I suspect Kant has failed.

To be fair, overpopulation was not a big European problem in the early 1700s. This was before the European boom.

wow did not expect this turn

If the trolley was going to kill the one would you divert it towards the five? If not why not?

Yeah it's why those favouring organ donation prefer opt out rather than opt in.

There's a couple of principles involved in this discussion, the first is the distinction between acts and omissions, or doing and allowing, and the other principle the trolley problem tests is the doctrine of double effect. Simply the consequences that we can foresee but not aim at may be acceptable where it would be wrong to aim at those ends. Civilians casualties in war being one, the use of pain relief to bring about death another though this is more controversial as there are those, myself included, who believe that bringing about death in certain circumstances is a morally permissible act.

To test this principle one of the presentations of the trolley problem has a loop back on the track, only if there's an obstacle on the track will the train be derailed, fortunately for the 5 there is a person on the loop who will derail them. Now in this account the death of the guy on the tracks is not just an unintended but foreseeable consequence, it is necessary to derail the train and so fails Kants CI on treating the individual as a means but poses interesting questions for the original account.

The trolley case is different not because it is rare but rather because the people involved can more easily be imagined to be random. And if it is random than every member of society would want five random deaths to turn into one random death. Its that simple.

People learn that they need donor organs every day. While not all of them were equally at risk I still consider it random for the purpose of this discussion. Tomorrow it could be you or me.

And if you were as likely as anyone else to need a transplant to save your life you would benefit if the law of the land was to kill at random one healthy person to save five. That law reduces the chances of you dying.

( I think part of the problem is that people visualize the process. So make the process that when a surgeon has five recipients he pushes a button and one random resident instantly dies. And the recipients of course are totally cured.)

I think part of the problem is that you don't visualize the society that has this type of greater good law. Every had to live in constant fear that at any time they could be taken to have their organs harvested.
I'd make certain I live in a fortress, severely limit my outside interaction and be heavily armed at all times.

I think you are missing a key aspect of this hypothetical that wouldn't be true in real life. And is something I neglected to mention before when comparing it to the trolley problem. Which is that the murder of a healthy person only occurs when the recipients are certain do die without it. Absolutely certain.

Every day people die waiting for donor organs. I don't think I am missing anything. You are not trying to start a semantic discussion of what constitutes absolute certainty, are you?

Anyway, you ask for an argument from an atheistic perspective. I gave you one. Too bad you personally don't find it convincing.