Completely fair point, respectfully withdrawn and revised to: “Most” animals don’t engage in this sort of behavior.
I’m not sure how intelligent it is to destroy millions of our own due to territorial pissing contests (that could easily be resolved by peaceful coexistence), differences of political opinion, the color of skin, or the delusion that the invisible man wants more blood for the blood god, and more skulls for the skull throne.
Mind you, as an Englishman, I’ve heard my own country criticised for much the same reasons given our gun laws and media fairness laws. I’ve not killed anyone recently. We’re still dealing with a minority here.
Agreed. I truly wish we could consider the beam in our eye on this one.
Agreed, bar the last part given there’s little fun in dying, (as many of these terrorists do in the very perpetration of their acts). They believe in the justice of their cause and the means.
Ah, that’s why I said ‘intelligent species’ rather than ‘wise’.
Some Doper (can’t remember who) put it this way: If you need some book or some clerical figure to tell you that murder is wrong – if you can’t figure this out for yourself – then you have major problems.
Well, we do refer to ourselves as* homo sapiens sapiens.* We’re obviously so wise that we had to remind ourselves to be wise by saying it twice, and not only that, it didn’t even sink in on the second try. Perhaps a third?
Hey, we told ourselves that we shouldn’t murder, and wrote it down on tablets and books and so forth and distributed that all over the world, and a bloody lot of good that did. Emphasis on bloody.
In a way, you’ve summarised the issue with the original post.
“Thou shalt not kill.”
Yep, fair enough, we all got that.
Then religious turned that into “Thou shalt not kill, because…”
That’s when the arguments started.
Well, give it [del]time[/del] a handy, resource-rich landmass without a flag… 
Ah, I did say ‘recently’.
We Brits used to be pretty good at it, but we kind of lost the knack back there somewhere.
As I recall, Jesus approved of what we were doing at the time.
Ponderosa Pines kill their own babies, does that count?
Where did you get this idea?
Where did you get this crap? I must insist on a cite for this load of lunacy.
Probably from the common idea that so-called absolute morality supposedly comes from God, therefore anyone who doesn’t believe in God has to be an extreme moral relativist.
Of course in reality the believers are if anything more into “moral relativism”, since they base their morality on an imaginary god that being imaginary naturally decrees an “absolute morality” that just happens to perfectly match that of the person who declares what God’s “absolute morality” is.
My view is that if you demand I come up with a rational reason you shouldn’t kill me - because you can’t think of one - you are some kind of psychopath or homicidal maniac.
According to the OP it is a view held by a sizeable part of Middle-Eastern Muslims.
Which I readily believe to be the case.
Again there is a bit of a bait and switch here.
What you could counter with is that the atheists doesn’t hold himself to the lowly level of a bug but the opposite: He holds the bug to a higher level, closer towards the high level he holds his own in.
Of course the bug is a good example, because I swat mosquito’s as readily as a Muslim swats any of Allah’s creations.
Anyway, the atheists clearly holds ‘creation’ in a higher regard than the believer.
Theists believe in an afterlife. Atheists believe that this one life is all we get.
Therefore, life is more precious to an atheist than it is to a theist.
Oh, wait a minute Mr. Terrorist: Before you set off that bomb, can we have a philosophical discussion about my atheist moral values? I think you will be fascinated to learn that…
KA-BOOM!!!
I thought it was your Muslim acquaintances that were making these baseless assumptions about atheists?
It was fairly clear from the OP that those acquaintances were fictional.
Sarcasm aside, I don’t see how even sincerity carries the day for 'em. I mean, even if for the sake of argument it’s someone who sincerely desires to carry out the will of God because it’s the will of God – uh, okay: how’d they reach the conclusion that doing the will of God is commendable and praiseworthy?
Deciding to reject or follow a religion’s commands is a choice you have to make without recourse to the trump card of Do It Because God Says So; if opting out is a matter of subjective philosophy, then so is opting in.