So it is your own private intuition which rules.
Tell me then, since all sentiment and moral values are usually held by atheists to be epiphenomena, a swirling of cerebral biochemistry in response to cultural trends, coupled with instinct -- and sifted by the imperfect, impersonal sieve of survival value over time and populations --
since death comes to everyone anyway, and natural selection operates without pity to kill individuals and populations alike --
where's your beef?
Cheers!
Yes, private intuition, but not completely. Every individual reacts to situations based on instincts and conditioned learning. In human societies, that would be consensus rules that formed to keep the social order intact, more or less, so that the individual may accrue the benefits of being part of that society, and the society as a whole may benefit from the contribution of that individual. You wouldn’t have a tenth of the chance you had in surviving as far as you did, were you to have been a “lone wolf”, living a solitary existence. For you to enjoy the protections and benefits of society, you are expected to follow those consensus rules. Killing, murder, infidelity, etc. all promote factors which break down society, and lo and behold, you have disparate cultures independently forming similar rules on these topics (of course, with the “free love” era we are in, we are already seeing the effects of that violation in our own societies today).
Let me answer you by asking you this question: Were you totally, completely, utterly comfortable with 1 Samuel 15:3 as you chanced upon it? Is (or was) there anything inside you that made you find the verse troubling? If not, why not, and if so, why? If your god had granted you the power to edit, would you rather have preferred that the verse about this god-entity ordering a man to kill infants to have not been associated with that same god? Answer honestly.
As for the beef, it’s in my plate. Fifty percent, Grey_Whiskers. 50%. That’s how many human conceptions end up being spontaneously (naturally) aborted by the mother’s body almost always without her even knowing about it... that’s nature for you. In all its callous glory.