Where do atheists get their morality from?

[Cyberman]

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"Where do atheists get their morality from?"

Same place as you do. A combination of cultural upbringing, empathy for others, societal acceptance and other similar factors. As any other social species, humans demonstrate tolerance for co-operative members of the group and abhorrence for those who abuse and manipulate the group. That's why we applaud someone for helping an old lady across the road and lock up someone who mugs that old lady for her pension. In less enlightened times, people who violated the social mores for personal gain would have been punished by death or banishment from the group. This still happens in what we in the so-called civilised world (and America) might consider less enlightened nations, and most notably in the animal kingdom among other social species.

Any good to you?

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I can't disagree with most of what you said. I'm not sure I agree with this idea I think you said - that animals put each other to death or banish each other for violating social mores for personal gain. Most animals don't seem to have social mores so much as patterns of reactions. Some more intelligent social animals do seem to have something like primitive culture.

While it may be true of some animal species, particularly those we would regard as 'primitive' animals, it's probably not strictly true to say that most animals have patterns of reactions rather than what we would probably anthropomorphically call social mores, at least among the social species. What I really had in mind, and I probably didn't express it as clearly as I could have, is not that non-human social animals have social mores per se, but that the concept of punishing wrongdoers, those individuals who act against the society to cause harm or for personal gain (mating rights, food, etc), is not unique to us. Ever heard of a phenomenon known as a crow's court?

During my many years of roaming the countryside I witnessed what is called the Crows Court. This took the form of a fairly wide circle of over one hundred carrion crows and in the middle a solitary crow. There was a lot of cawing going on and after 15 minutes or so two crows stepped out from the circle. They moved towards the lone bird and began pecking at it. The bird being attacked offered no defence and after a couple of minutes two other crows changed places with the executioners and continued the savage attack. The crows forming the circle were very excited and noisy and this continued until the victim was dead. When the crows had dispersed I checked the victim and although there was little blood, its body was badly damaged and the eyes had been pecked out.

Also, rather more scholarly, there is this article in the journal Nature, issue 373 dated 19 January 1995. Unfortunately you need to be either a subscriber for $199 US or make a payment of £22 to read/download the entire document, but the abstract reads as follows:

Punishment in animal societies

T. H. Clutton-Brock & G. A. Parker

Although positive reciprocity (reciprocal altruism) has been a focus of interest in evolutionary biology, negative reciprocity (retaliatory infliction of fitness reduction) has been largely ignored. In social animals, retaliatory aggression is common, individuals often punish other group members that infringe their interests, and punishment can cause subordinates to desist from behaviour likely to reduce the fitness of dominant animals. Punishing strategies are used to establish and maintain dominance relationships, to discourage parasites and cheats, to discipline offspring or prospective sexual partners and to maintain cooperative behaviour.