most cultures accept some form of "higher power" which gives a foundation to their values, all you've managed to point out is that in our secularized society we've shifted that power from God to other institutionalized authority figures, such as parents or politicians or whatever. although cooperation with other people is often the best means to survival, and is certainly encouraged as a principle within the species, particular situations often put the individual will in opposition to that principle. competition is just as much an inevitable part of life as cooperation. and often our desires and inclinations will oppose us to another being to the point where we might wish their destruction. if we measure the good by how it affects our ability to survive, there are situations in which our survival will be better ensured if we eliminate hostile forces.

I don't think the shift you speak of ever happened. I think parents\environment has been the moral compass for humanity. After all where did the bible and it's ethics come from?

Assuming all higher powers we know of are made up (which they are) it stands to reason to project that the morality of religion is simply a construct of more primitive human beings in an attempt to rationalize deal with death, sorrow, loss etc. The fallibility of humans allowed these texts to be filled with awful things and great things, such is the duality of man.

I think you're not enough credit to people.

Most people do not wish to harm anyone or anything, yes being impulsive and having the capability of destruction allows for instances of horrible actions, but the vast majority of humanity understands right and wrong and those who don't are unlikely to be swayed by some book or collection of stories.

If you look at it scientifically... it is against our biological imperative to destroy that which is similar to ourselves if it stands in the way of efficiently propigating our genes, or similar genes.

^True and beyond since, logically who wants to kill someone else?

A) Religious nuts
B) Insane People
C) Texans
D) ...

I believe C is B but at the same time I've never met a B who isn't a C. I've also never met a B or C who isn't an A or an A who isn't B.

Sounds like you're describing my ex-wife.

I think that both of those claims only work from a certain perspective. The idea that all morality is born simply from people adapting to others and their surroundings is valid, but unfortunately it does not lead to the idea that "murder is wrong." Evidence: suicide bombers in Palestine, serial killing gangsters on the streets of the city. You have described a mechanism for obtaining morals, but not one for validating them. The same thing can be said for the biological imperative, in many cases it is true, but often that which is most hazardous to your survival is that which is most similar to yourself. This is the concept of foils, essentially.

People who are born into situations in which conforming to the situation as much as possible will ensure their survival will find that the morality imposed on them by their situation is valid. Those who find the opposite, however, the disenfranchised both in the first and third world, survive by subverting the same morality.

All moral claims only work from a certain perspective. This is why debates like this could go on forever, and why you should never take Philosophy classes at university.

Suicide bombers are usually Muslim extremists though and they blow themselves up and the other people because they think they're going to heaven. So religion is to blame for that idea even though I guess you could place some blame on their society in the sense their leaders are using it to achieve their own political needs but their argument for why its right is based on the Qur'an.

I feel like we're going in circles

The basis of my claim: "People understand their own mortality and based on that understanding most (the vast vast majority) of sound mind are able to come to the reasonable conclusion that taking the life of another being with this same understanding is wrong"

Do you disagree with any of that?