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

[Esquilax]

Yes, but I would say, given human interpretation, the world is subjectively better not objectively better.

So your god- your giver of objective meaning- didn't intend to make things better with his moral commandments?

No not at all, not belief in God, but rather existence. To reiterate: If morality is given by God's commands (cause) then we can observe the result (effect). If we remove God's commands (or His existence and thus His commands) then we would have to remove the result. If there is no cause then there is no effect. This is, and I agree with you, much different than belief in God. Belief in God is not the cause (His existence/command is) and so removing it would not remove the effect. You can certainly not believe in God and still observe the effects of His commands.

More importantly, just taking his commands as discrete actions on their own, devoid of additional divine impetus, they'd still produce effects that are demonstrably beneficial or detrimental.

Yes I certainly do agree. Belief in God is not a requirement to either feel the effects of God's commands or to be obedient to them.

So an atheist could perform those actions, observe their effects, and extrapolate those effects through a simple "what if everyone behaved like this?" question, and hence formulate a moral system based upon the well being of people.

How is 'the cohesive running of a society' objectively measured so as to be considered an objective effect?

Well, when your society's murder rate skyrockets because suddenly everyone thinks it's okay to kill people, and thus the number of people around to operate the social infrastructure dips, I'd consider that a negative effect objectively, given our starting condition is keeping society cohesive, no? And hence any moral rule that restricts that action is beneficial in that it prevents a negative effect, yes?

This stuff isn't amazingly hard.

I am being playful in my response here. For a person who in an earlier discussion stated that changes in eye color is evolution, I in no way believe that if we woke up tomorrow to a mutation that allowed some humans to communicate with animals, that you would deny it as a speciation event and not declare it proof of evolution!

Not every mutation is a speciation event; changes in eye and hair color are mutations, but you don't consider redheads to be another species, right? Speciation events require large enough changes that, cladistically speaking, the two iterations of the species are quite starkly different from one another.