Why did God murder children for making fun of a bald guy?

[Chad32]

Can the origin of morality be other people? Viewed on a small scale, if I were to get my morality from you and you get your morality from Fred and Fred gets his from John and John gets his from me, then have we answered the question? It's somewhat circular. If things are passed from person to person we eventually run out of people. When explored this way there are two solutions: 1. Someone outside the human race gave it to the human race, or 2. Morality is ultimately determined by each individual person. If morality is ultimately determined by the individual then we would never have a valid reason to bring an accusation against anyone other than ourselves. Each of us would judge what is right in our own eyes.

Other people and personal experience is the only place we can get our morality. Even if you want to get yours from a book, you're still assuming the people that wrote the book are correct about being inspired by a higher being. A higher being we have yet to prove exists 3,000 years or more after people started writing about him.

Morality isn't perfect. All we can do is what we think is good for society, and finding ways that demonstrably help more than harm is a good way to know what's right. That means that considering women equal to men is good, despite what it says in the bible. Owning people as property is wrong, despite what it says in the bible. Going to another town and killing everything in it because people have different beliefs from you is wrong, despite what it says in the bible.

Morality is a fluid thing. That's why people have big problems with the old testament. It's the first impression of what your god is like, and it takes up 2/3 of the bible. Having passages later about being nice to people isn't going to override that. Saying do unto others as you would have them do unto you doesn't make us forget the part in the old testament about slaughtering entire villages and enslaving people from other cultures.