Although I understand and appreciate your approach the particular examples do not represent particularly good ones:
1: Pascal’s Wager:
For an atheist the least convenient possible world is one where testable, reproducible scientific evidence strongly suggests the existence of some “super-natural” (clearly no-longer super-natural) being that we might ascribe the moniker of God to. In such a world any “principled atheist” would believe what the verifiable scientific evidence support as probably true. “Atheists” who did not do that would be engaging in the exact same delusional thinking modern-day theists engage in: belief in “beings” despite the utter lack of evidence supporting the existence of such “beings” only in reverse, like flat-earthers.
2: The God-Shaped Hole:
The use of “Omega” here is a fair bit over the absurd line. It very much sounds like you wish to create the following situation for atheists: suppose there exists an oracle that can tell you that there is a “hole” in you and it’s “God shaped”, but cannot confirm the existence nor non-existence of the “God” that the hole is “shaped” like. Well, then my hole (being an atheist) is penguin shaped ;-).
It is clear that you want to create a world where some form of definitive information about some other “thing” is true while trying to maintain the “true” state of the existence or non-existence of that thing left undecided. Alas, your not allowed that degree of freedom. If definitive statements are made and accepted as true then the thing that the statement references also must exist in some meaningful way.
3: Extreme Altruism
Lots of leeway is left in your example to re-cast the moral dilemma, for example:
a. Charity X is, in fact, using the money you give it to feed people in Africa, but the population that is being helped lives in a fundamentally unsustainable environment. Suppose changes in weather patterns means that getting a meaningful sustained water supply requires considerable cost. In this case the charity itself is engaging in the morally wrong thing by not supporting efforts to relocate the people to a place that can sustain them better. Your analysis (not literally you, the “you” responding to pleas for money) leads you to extreme altruism. Others follow-suit creating an unsustainable dependant society. In the case of extreme charity you accidentally do harm: they’re alive, but utterly dependant of the charity of others.
b. Turn the entire situation amoral: why should their lives there be of such an importance to affect me, in any way, here? I.E. why is this a moral consideration at all? In this context person a may choose to contribute to charity X not knowing if “in the large” a “good overall outcome” will result from such a donation, regardless of amount contributed. Another way of looking at it is if I consider increased happiness being an important element of “good morality” (dubious?) then is my personal depletion of resources and the “net” increase in happiness in the receiving population a net increase of happiness overall? And is that the “right” thing? By who’s measure?
The above examples are not meant as a broad-stroke justification for a “let-em starve” thing. The issue simply concerns constraining the examples sufficiently to get the outcome you are looking for. To simplify matters this particular example is closely analogous to the trolley situation above: suppose the doctor offered to the patient with the good organs the option of donating all the organs to the patients in need, but as a result the patient would need to survive on uncomfortable synthetic replacements of his organs.
Although I understand and appreciate your approach the particular examples do not represent particularly good ones:
1: Pascal’s Wager:
For an atheist the least convenient possible world is one where testable, reproducible scientific evidence strongly suggests the existence of some “super-natural” (clearly no-longer super-natural) being that we might ascribe the moniker of God to. In such a world any “principled atheist” would believe what the verifiable scientific evidence support as probably true. “Atheists” who did not do that would be engaging in the exact same delusional thinking modern-day theists engage in: belief in “beings” despite the utter lack of evidence supporting the existence of such “beings” only in reverse, like flat-earthers.
2: The God-Shaped Hole:
The use of “Omega” here is a fair bit over the absurd line. It very much sounds like you wish to create the following situation for atheists: suppose there exists an oracle that can tell you that there is a “hole” in you and it’s “God shaped”, but cannot confirm the existence nor non-existence of the “God” that the hole is “shaped” like. Well, then my hole (being an atheist) is penguin shaped ;-).
It is clear that you want to create a world where some form of definitive information about some other “thing” is true while trying to maintain the “true” state of the existence or non-existence of that thing left undecided. Alas, your not allowed that degree of freedom. If definitive statements are made and accepted as true then the thing that the statement references also must exist in some meaningful way.
3: Extreme Altruism
Lots of leeway is left in your example to re-cast the moral dilemma, for example:
a. Charity X is, in fact, using the money you give it to feed people in Africa, but the population that is being helped lives in a fundamentally unsustainable environment. Suppose changes in weather patterns means that getting a meaningful sustained water supply requires considerable cost. In this case the charity itself is engaging in the morally wrong thing by not supporting efforts to relocate the people to a place that can sustain them better. Your analysis (not literally you, the “you” responding to pleas for money) leads you to extreme altruism. Others follow-suit creating an unsustainable dependant society. In the case of extreme charity you accidentally do harm: they’re alive, but utterly dependant of the charity of others.
b. Turn the entire situation amoral: why should their lives there be of such an importance to affect me, in any way, here? I.E. why is this a moral consideration at all? In this context person a may choose to contribute to charity X not knowing if “in the large” a “good overall outcome” will result from such a donation, regardless of amount contributed. Another way of looking at it is if I consider increased happiness being an important element of “good morality” (dubious?) then is my personal depletion of resources and the “net” increase in happiness in the receiving population a net increase of happiness overall? And is that the “right” thing? By who’s measure?
The above examples are not meant as a broad-stroke justification for a “let-em starve” thing. The issue simply concerns constraining the examples sufficiently to get the outcome you are looking for. To simplify matters this particular example is closely analogous to the trolley situation above: suppose the doctor offered to the patient with the good organs the option of donating all the organs to the patients in need, but as a result the patient would need to survive on uncomfortable synthetic replacements of his organs.