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

[Esquilax]

What do you mean by 'objective meaning'?

Externally granted by some function of the universe. I mean, you do take god's commandments as inviolable and given by a perfect source, yes?

Sure, but why deny the cause while enjoying the effect.

We would need evidence of the cause first, before we could believe in it. So far all we've established is that X action produces beneficial effects, and that this was written in a book. Since we've just shown that human beings can notice this, it rather detracts from the notion that such things must be divine in nature.

Yes, although the atheist would have no rational foundation for his/her explanation apart from circular reasoning and the moral system would be subjective.

How would reasoning that out be circular? What part of "X action produces Y effect, and Y effect is beneficial/detrimental for my group, and therefore it should be encouraged/discouraged if I wish for the group to flourish," is circular? As for subjectivity, kinda, i guess. Two problems though; the effects of the actions are objective in that they are concretely real and not up for debate, and more importantly, the only way you could say that a subjective morality is bad is if you could demonstrate that there's something objective that could provide a better one. After all, if our own thoughts are all we have and there's nothing above them, what alternative do we have but to use them?

All agreeable statements. The number of people killed by other people is objectively measured. What those numbers mean or how they are interpreted is subjective.

Only slightly: a society requires at least some people to... be, right? I mean, that's just objectively true. Larger social groups can accomplish more, that's also just true. And a world in which everyone is allowed to kill anyone else runs the risk of losing all those people that are required to form a society, and therefore, in an objective sense, there's more of a risk associated with allowing indiscriminate killing than with preventing it.

The fact that you named the statistic (at least some number within that category) 'murder' presupposes morality.

I don't need to presuppose morality; morality demonstrably exists in people. We're arguing about the source of it.

You view a high murder rate (people killing people) as a negative effect (as do I). However, some people hold to a different interpretation of the number of people killed. Take for example people who subscribe to the Georgia Guidestones. One of their commandments states that in order to keep a society cohesive, earth's population shouldn't exceed 500 million people (some would even go with less: Ted Turner and Dave Foreman). To them a high murder rate within society would be beneficial because it accomplishes the goal of reducing population down to a number that creates a condition to keep society cohesive (ie a population of 500 million or less). And thus people killing people would be moral. It is the individuals subjective interpretation of the objective data that does not allow for an explanation of morality.

Yes, people can disagree on moral precepts. That's where evidence and rational argument comes in. I'm not claiming that human morality is perfect or unanimously agreed upon, just that it can be determined through discourse and evidence without the need for a divine source.

Point taken. Although you would agree that eye and hair color are preexisting genetic information. Communication with animals would require not just different preexisting genes being activated but entirely new functioning genes. As a note they (prophet species) must not have been able to mate with the human species since we don't see them today!

All mutations are derived from pre-existing genetic information, whether they result in an entirely new trait, or just a modification on an existing one.