From a religious viewpoint, I believe that many theists would would say that their god is perfect and the standard of morality to which everything is compared. Should something waver from this standard, it is immoral. A theist that believes in an unchanging god might then reason that a non theist, or a thiest that believes in a god that changes or is not eternal in its attributes, is not capable of operating under a seperate moral code because their code would be subject to change as they or their god changes. One is capable of acting morally if their actions fall under the fixed code, but their actions would not be moral because of their own seperate code, but because they coincide with the higher code.
Looking back to the example given from 1 Samuel, a Christian would likely reason that the actions of the Hebrew army were moral because punishment of "evil", as defined by their god, is a moral action. Things are very rarely black and white. While most would say that killing, for example, is not good, it can be justified and moral should the conditions satisfy the proper conditions.
If absolutely any theist I know tells me that it is okay to murder an innocent child because their parents belong to a region that treated your people badly, and because someone said that God said to, I would cut that monster out of my life faster than I typed this comment.
Again, it isn't a moral framework to say "whatever God says to do is good." That's just obedience. It says nothing about the morality of any given action, and provides us with no framework on which to build our moral code. It's just saying "that guy said he wants these kids dead, so the right thing to do is kill these kids." Absolutely hideous.
If absolutely any theist I know tells me that it is okay to murder an innocent child because their parents belong to a region that treated your people badly, and because someone said that God said to,
Obviously the child wouldn't be innocent in that case /s
