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Perhaps. If God exists, it think it's more plausible for humans' moral instincts (telling them that mass murder is wrong) to have remained in tune with the truth of God and the Good, while Hebrew myths about a bloodthirsty, wrathful deity arose for the same reasons that a hundred similar ones did in many cultures; than for the moral instinct to be wrong, and those particular tales about a bloodthirsty deity happening to be correct.
This is not a human moral instinct. Humans are quite comfortable with mass murder. That's why we've done it repeatedly (that, and it's a very good strategy).
(I suppose we can argue about whether or not something is a "human moral instinct" if it's not shared by all humans. And it is true that some humans are uncomfortable with mass murder. But the fact remains that mass murder is a very typical human behavior.)
Depends on what side of the spear they're on.
At least people are finally catching on to the ultimate “Always has been.”
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Having a moral instinct ≠ being reliably bound by it at all times. Indeed, the most common manifestation of the moral instinct is feeling guilty after doing something that one knew, deep down, to be wrong. (Case in point, I think a majority of mass murderers in human history had a conscience, it was just drowned out by other concerns and they did the wrong thing anyway.)
Seems more parsimonious to believe that humans as a general rule actually have few-to-no moral qualms about mass murder as long as it fits into what you might call a mammalian herd strategy.
This is not saying that humans have no moral instincts simply because moral taboos are sometimes violated but rather than the moral taboos about mass murder apply only weakly if at all to group enemies.
However, I probably should back up a bit here - I've been using "mass murder" very much in the context of group warfare which is very different from mass murder in a serial killer sense, but the latter is much closer to the actual meaning of the word "murder." If your position is that Genghis Khan doesn't count as a mass murderer but Hitler does, my position is at least closer to yours than I conceived.
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