Using that template: if I happen to believe that the pain and suffering of other people are good, I can also base my entire moral system on that. Some people get great pleasure from the pain of others.
Yes you can, but you will probably soon learn the consequences of expressing such impulses in a community that finds them immoral. And of course, such people do not think in terms of what behavior is moral.
Well if you believe we are just animals then you would not kill so much as a bug, I would think.
I kill almost nothing except some insects in the home that I cannot capture. I'll carry cockroaches outside if one gets trapped in a dog bowl.
I literally stabbed a fish this morning just to tan his skin. I don't feel any regrets.
I gave up fishing as a boy when I let a fish slip off the hook and fall back into the ocean, and realized that my contribution to its life had been to rip its mouth open and then drop it in salt water. That was also the age when I last shot an animal, a crow on the wires with a BB gun, in its armpit. It didn't die right away, but it's flying was labored. It still haunts me.
I'm thinking back to our discussions on abortion, where we take the opposite side regarding the mora status of aborting presentient fetuses. You have that same burden for them that I do for the beasts. I feel nothing for the fetuses, and find aborting them to have about the same impact on my moral sensibilities as a cholecystectomy. Why? In my case, no reason. These are moral intuitions, things I discover about myself, not things I decide or choose. In your case, it is not innate. It is learned, both your lack of regard and respect for the beasts as ends with inherent value rather than means with only practical value, and your revulsion to abortion, which seems to be concentrated in people that go to churches, but not elsewhere.
Our thoughts about what is moral can change by the moment. We need a higher standard than that to have objective ethics.
You've got it exactly backward. There is no higher standard of ethics than that which reasonable, empathetic people can contrive. Biblical ethics are neither lofty nor objective just because Christians pronounce them to be.
In your system, ethics are obviously completely relative. In my system, I have a list of commands that tell me what is moral and what isn't. I see no reason for objective morality in a system without a higher authority.
There is no objective morality, and no higher moral authority than man. What you call objective morals are the subjective opinions of ancients that you believe are something else, something better, because you have been told so and have uncritically accepted that claim.
But it is easy to see that that moral system is greatly flawed by today's moral standard, which have been updated by moral relativists (humanists) using the principles of rational ethics applied to empathy (Golden Rule). It's how the so-called absolute morality that your Bible prescribes was updated to exclude slavery and autocracy, and why modern society fights its homophobia and misogyny.
I have a moral code for the Bible that tells me I have dominion over the animals, and a responsibility to manage them correctly. That means eating them is fine and utilizing them for furs and leather is fine as long as a good balanced population is maintained to the best of our ability.
And we can do better than that. There is no respect for the beasts in that position. It's all about exploiting them. I would call that attitude immoral. You call it part of an objective morality of divine origin. There's the problem with that attitude. You need a more flexible moral system, one that can grow, one you have been taught is inferior for that ability, what you call relativism.
Imagine using that language about dominion and a duty to manage with people today. Isn't that what characterized European colonialism? Rational ethics has moved to oppose that attitude, which is now largely viewed as immoral.
