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

[Esquilax]

To address the first question, I don't know if God arranged physical reality in the way you are proposing or not or had some other purpose in mind. To address the second question: no, given the premise that God gave the commandment, if you take away the cause you take away the effect.

What you're proposing is inherently contradictory, then. Let's be clear: you believe that god's moral commandments, if followed, would result in a world that is objectively better than one where they aren't, right?

Given this, then those objectively beneficial effects can be observed without believing in a god. You seem to be saying that if I don't believe in god then the beneficial effects of his commandments would somehow be invisible to me, but you haven't given any reason why. Is that what you're saying? If so, why is that? If not, then regardless of the cause, one can observe the effects and intuit a moral system based upon learning those.

Besides, you're making a fundamental mistake with your answer to my second question anyway; the "cause" of the effects on the real world wouldn't be god, they would be adherence to his commandments, which are actions that don't suddenly become impossible the moment one becomes an atheist. Surely you'd agree that an atheist isn't physically unable to obey the commandment "thou shalt not steal"?

Relinquish your grip on the idea that these commandments are the strict domain of god, and examine the commandments themselves; do they have a positive effect on the world, or do they not? Disregard heaven, disregard hell for the moment; our world, here and now. Is it better for obeying god's commandments?

I'd say yes, we wouldn't be able to determine this is a less than desirable outcome without a God given morality. To illustrate: Why do we already assume that causing pain to someone else is inherently bad?

That's super easy: our body has a pain reaction to notify us of physical damage that we incur, so that we can rectify it. Given that pain, in general, isn't good to us, we can extrapolate and say that it isn't good to others either. We are a social species, we rely on one another to survive, and so now that we understand that pain is bad, through simple biological necessity, we can come to a simple question: would a society in which people are allowed to harm one another indiscriminately be better for us, or worse?

I think the answer to that question is very easy to come to. Therefore, pain is bad.

After all it could benefit the individual inflicting the pain? How do we know that the joy you get from shooting me in the leg for no reason doesn't outweigh the pain I feel?

It's not just about me, it's about formulating a consistently applied set of values that lead to a more cohesive society. It's entirely possible that I'd really, really get off on shooting you in the leg (I wouldn't, by the way, but it's possible that my enjoyment could outweigh your pain.) But a world in which I'm not punished for that, and neither is anyone else, is a world of violence and distrust that could not function the way we need it to.

You proposed we can reason from the objective effects. While the effects may be observable objectively they are measured subjectively (your joy, my pain). Secondly, you and I don't operate in a closed system. You shooting me would have effects, both harmful and beneficial, on other people (Ex: paramedics, doctors, 911 operator, etc) Some of these people would benefit from you shooting me; or perhaps not, given their mood on that particular day. Given an unknowable number of variables and subjectivity, it is not reasonable for a person to objectively measure the effects of an event in terms of overall benefit vs. overall harm and thus determine morality.

Unless we're measuring via the yardstick of another objective effect, namely the cohesive running of a society.

A mutation occurs in the people species. This mutation changes the genetic make-up of the people species, producing a trait that allows communication with animals. People bearing this trait are now classified as the prophet species. As the process of natural selection occurs the more adapted species survives (prophet) and the less adapted species (people) do not survive (and this could reasonably occur through the prohpet species killing the people species). What does this have to do with morality? It's just evolution.

It's also not enough to constitute a change in species, making your model... moot. Incidentally, since none of us are appealing to evolution as a dictator of morality, it's rather a non-sequitur to begin with.