Where do atheists get their morality from?

[mralstoner]

How do atheists know what is morally right or morally wrong? Is morality cultural, gut feel, are there any basic principled you can use? Opinions?

Yes, for atheists, morality is about desires, which are about emotions/feelings. Like the other animals, all our impulses are driven by emotional goals. In theory, we can use reason and science to find the best way to satisfy those emotional goals. But ultimately it still falls to an individual's subjective emotions to decide what we actually do.

Whether atheists maintain cultural norms depends on their political leanings: conservatives value tradition because they desire stability, liberals can't wait to tear down tradition because they desire freedom. It's not clear what direction atheism as a movement is headed.

This emotion-driven model of human behaviour (sometimes called the Belief-Desire model) was advocated by philosophers like David Hume, Bertrand Russell, Epicurus, Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, and apparently even Aristotle.

Note, even Christians follow this model: they seek emotional rewards in heaven, and feel the love of fellowship and God. They are as equally hedonistic (for want of a better word) as atheists.

Here are two modern day advocates of emotion-driven morality:

Jonathan Haidt: The Five Moral Foundations (skip to 4:40 if in a hurry)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vs41JrnGaxc#t=320s

Richard Carrier: Is happiness the Goal of Morality?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctfh3O7ofl0