My views on objective morality

[Chas]

Is the thinking that those things are bad so God must not have ordered them and those parts of the Old Testament are just the writings of warlike humans trying to justify their actions by claiming God authorized them?

I don't believe God ever ordered people to do things like the OT stories say He did. But it should be noted that many of those things are still a step up for those times. 

Slaughtering all of the people and all of the animals in a city is a step up?  A step up from what?

Like how in one OT story, there was a war and God told his people to marry the widows of the enemies who got killed. God told them to allow these women 1 month to morn, and then to marry them and take good care of them... and if the women later wanted a divorce, they should be granted one. 

...This is one of the more incriminating things in the OT because it's practically rape... forcing someone to marry their enemy with only 1 month to mourn the loss of loved ones. Do I believe this was a moral thing to do? Absolutely not! Do I believe God actually came down from the skies and ordered these people to do that? Nope! But as horrible as this is, it's still a step up for a time when it was totally normal to make sex slaves and/or kill the women of your enemies. 

Oh, so God ordering people to be a little less murderous is a step up? 

So I do believe there was a God inspired moral awakening in the people who wrote the OT. Awakening being the key word there.

'Awakening' is far too strong a word for the things God orders and condones in the OT.

This does not mean what they did was still moral. But it slowly began to awaken a sense of morality, or at least a sense of regard for your fellow human being. We evolved from animals, after all. We had a long way to go, and change wasn't going to happen over night. 

Sorry, but exactly how does it begin to awaken a sense of morality?  I think you are white-washing the horrors.  No, you are white-washing the horrors.

Modern day Christians follow the teachings of Christ in the New Testament, and if you're Catholic, you also have the Church right along with that. You seldom see a Christian open up the Old Testament to find out what the morality of a particular act is.

Modern day Christians rarely follow the teachings of Christ.  Open your eyes.