Hi H
I was troubled by your question. "What would an "amoralist"
(Hindu/Buddhist) response be to the question: Should you press the red
button that instantly vaporizes the Earth?" I realized
that the reason I was troubled was that it was an unfair question. I
think it is unfair is because it silently shifted the onus of
answering this important question from the "personal god camp" into
the "impersonal god" camp. The analogous situation would be if
Einstein was asked by creationists "What happened before the Big
Bang?" He does not have an emotionally satisfying answer, but recognizes
the absence of it, in contrast to the creationist response that postulates
an entity (itself questionable), in answer.
So the Buddhist response to the Red-button question would be "This
question is irrelevant philosophically", or "I don't have an answer, and
I bet you don't either" or more typically Buddhist "I don't know and if
you think you have a truly coherent answer I'd be very interested to
benefit from it" :-)
I am reminded of the joke wherein a bunch of creationists deride
philosophers saying "You philosophers are like a bunch of blind people
in a dark room, looking for a black cat that isn't there". The
philosophers respond "That may be true, but you creationists would have
found it."
&