The train dilemma forces it to be a conscious choice. Most of the time, inaction isn't a conscious choice. Instead, it's something that pretty much happens because of the way a person thinks. Choices happen all the time in life, but we don't really think about most of them. There are definitely cases where action and inaction are quite similar, but in the general case, I don't think that's the case.

Not sure why that kind of blind obedience would be considered a good thing.

But beyond that on a purely practical level, why would god need to do any such test?  Assuming god is omniscient, then he already knew how devoted Abraham is.  He knew that Abraham would be willing to sacrifice Isaac before he did anything.  So, he was just kind of fucking with him for no reason.

Yeah well that story ended up becoming one of they key parts of the most successful religion of the world, so I think it was effective in the grand scheme of things. Perhaps the test wasnt for God...or for anyone involved in the story for that matter.

So, psychological torture for the sake of publicity?  Purely unnecessary publicity, since an omnipotent god would by definition be able to spread his religion in any number of other ways.  Dick move if you ask me.

Are you suggesting he use his omnipotent power to force people to accept his religion? Im just trying to point out that the Bible is the most widely circulated text in the history of the world, so perhaps if the christian god is real, he mustve done a pretty good job with his instruction manual. Im not really trying to argue the merits of the story or Isaac, more the results.

Ah yes, sorry, I was thinking, more specifically, of conscious inaction - which I see simply as 1 action among many others. There are a lot of people that choose not to touch the lever in the standard train dilemma - that's something I have difficulty finding a logical explanation for.

However, as said (in the second example), these conscious decisions *not* to act at detriment of another person happen all the time, in society, and are generally accepted as lesser than what people would describe as an action to detriment of a person.

Of course, I distinguish between what we know and do not know. That's why I was talking about probability space.

Are you suggesting he use his omnipotent power to force people to accept his religion? Im just trying to point out that the Bible is the most widely circulated text in the history of the world, so perhaps if the christian god is real, he mustve done a pretty good job with his instruction manual. Im not really trying to argue the merits of the story or Isaac, more the results.

No, I'm suggesting that being omnipotent would mean he has basically limitless options on how to spread the word of his existence/power/making people fear him.  Subjecting a senior citizen to an incredibly cruel test with no witnesses that served no purpose as he already knew the result.  Also, telling people they should be willing to kill innocent people for him probably also not a great moral since there are some people who heard the story and still take this awfully literally.

Of course, whether or not the story got around isn't particularly relevant to whether it is either true or good.  Plenty of untrue or bad things wind up becoming pretty popular.  

Jews, Christians, and Muslims all get their religion from the same God as is in that story.  So no, I think he could have done a much better job of version control of his instruction manual.