"For the good Buddhist, the attitude must be, "I haven't experienced murder to be bad, so I don't believe it to be bad."

Iona, this such a total misunderstanding of how Buddhism works it's asinine (like your understanding of science).

Buddhism can be summed up in one phrase: compassion towards all living beings. HH Dali Lama tells us we don't need to believe in Buddha, or bodhisattvas or any other beings to practice. We need to develop our sense of responsibility for ourselves and others, to see as well as look, to listen as well as hear. Be curious; question everything, strive for the truth.

A buddhist knows murder is bad because a conscious, sentient, living being is suffering. A buddhist will question everything (even his own teachers) to try to find fault in their arguments because like scientists they are interested in fundamental truth; they want to understand the real nature of everything. They do this through meditation (stillness of the mind) and personal experience, through mindfulness, contemplative meditation and living in the moment - just being. They take no-ones words for granted and eschew the sort of theist claptrap spouted by the deluded, fanatics and established churches alike. Their motivation is love and the well-being of all sentient beings, and the fact this is a personal responsibility and not the instruction of a supreme being.

Try reading some D.T. Suzuki and you'll find your eyes being opened. Try reading some of HH Dali Lama's texts and try to gain an understanding of your subject before posting complete tripe like the above on forums. At the very least, cultivate a desire for the truth and widen your horizons as you do yourself no favours talking this sort of shite. The world isn't contained in one book, or many books or in all the books ever printed - it's out there and incredible, complex, beautiful, dangerous, humbling and utterly fantastic, as is the rest of our universe, who we are part of. The internet is a wilderness of mirrors ready to snare the unwary and let themselves be led from reality and is a distraction from the real, which is far more interesting.

You owe it to yourself.