You're demanding that atheists solve riddles that even religion offers no clear answers to.
What is the right answer to your riddle according to religion? Is killing animals forbidden? What is the morality of killing animals as a sacrifice to God? Are dogs sacred like cows according to some religious beliefs? Are they acceptable to be eaten eaten as food? Halal? Kosher? What if they're being rounded up and slaughtered to process for their meat to distribute as food - or to feed the homeless? What if the puppies have rabies and are being euthanized in the interest of public health/safety? In Australia, the government rounds up and euthanizes feral cats because they breed excessively, spread disease and are extremely destructive to native species. We kill rats in our cities for health/sanitation reasons since they spread diseases. Does religion have anything useful to contribute regarding the 'morality' of these practices? Is anyone even particularly concerned about the 'morality' of killing rats (beyond the most fanatical animal rights activist)? Why do you imply that without a belief in God, wanton killing puppies would not be regarded as morally dubious? What scripture verse is this? The one right after God commands sheep to be slaughtered as an offering?
In some countries, dog meat is a perfectly acceptable food. Horse meat as well. We round up and slaughter pigs for their meat. What's the morality of that? Must you be religious to oppose this as a vegan? Why not dogs? I think the reason horse and dog meat is not embraced as food in the USA has more to do with a cultural aversion to eating what we regard to be our 'pets' - not any religious mandate from God. Pigs are as intelligent as dogs, but we slaughter those en masse in industrialized operations and not every Christian is a PETA activist.
The fact that one would even think to consult a God (any debate to his existence aside) when confronted with a fellow human who is suffering in a way you too can suffer is baffling to me. I for one assist the needy when I can because I hope that someone would do the same if/when I find myself to be the one in need. That homeless person might be the one that ends up saving my life or coming to my aid someday. A belief in the existence of God is irrelevant to me in deciding how I should conduct my interactions with fellow humans. I'm actually quite shocked at the number of people who only do (or don't do) things merely because they believe a God told them to do it (or not do it). To me, that's a baffling mindset, and one that suppresses our innate ability for empathy and cooperation crucial to our species survival. It replaces it instead with a borg-like hive mind adherence to what others tell you a God said you should and shouldn't do.
The ability and desire for humans to care for each other comes from evolutionary traits that we developed because it propagates the species and is crucial for survival - not because A Christian God told us we should.
A mother cares for her crying child because she is inherently driven to do so, just as other species care for their young - not because of the existence of some God who commanded her to do so.
I wonder what it is like to wander the world so incapable of independent thought and so numb to empathy that one must interrogate the infallible orders of some deity to know how to conduct oneself appropriately from situation to situation. That must be dehumanizing and stifling beyond belief.
If an elderly person tumbles in the road while trying to cross it and injures themself, do you pull out your Bible to see if there is a commandment from God telling you what you should do in this particular situation while they writhe in pain? And if there's no particular one you can find, are you then absolved of any guilt leaving them there as you walk on by? Do you only assist others because you live in fear of God's wrath if you don't?
I think it is the religious worldview that is an unhelpful and even destructive way to organize a society around rather than the atheist one which releases people from rigid ritualistic adherence to symbolic gestures of piety rather than genuine compassion for their fellow man.
And of course that's when God hasn't ordered all of the competing religious factions to declare holy wars on each other and engage in 'moral' conquest of those who do not abide by the same orders from the same God whose existence (conveniently) can't be proven or disproven.
Of course the burden of proof for the non-existence of God others believe in is laid at the feet of the atheists. "You can't prove God isn't real" is illogical and invalid as a proof. You can't declare victory in the existence of God by insisting it can't be disproven when no proof for it exists in the first place. That's a deist problem, not an atheist problem.
In that case, Santa Clause is also real because it is impossible to prove to me that he isn't.
