Where do atheists get their morality from?

[Vincenzo Vinny G.]

I'm arguing from a purely philosophical position, one where objective moral values don't exist. This is the default position of atheism from which our moral norms are derived. The problem is, our atheistic position cannot RATIONALLY reject the possibility of genocide, rape, murder and the likes being morally good. There is always the possibility. And more importantly, it's a metaphysical possibility, not just a logical one.

This is worrying for the rational atheists among us, and this is an area I am enormously interested in researching. My problem is, I need a better grasp of the fundamentals of ethics and moral studies.

I don't buy this. But even if true, is a theist really in any better a position. I mean, if morality is based on God's will and God can will that genocide is moral, then well I guess a theist would just have to accept that. It's just the euthyphro dilemma. Either there are true moral propositions which exist independantly from God or God can make rape moral. This kind of theistic morality is as shifting and unsure as any secular morality.

I wouldn't say a theist is in a necessarily better position simply by virtue of being a theist.

But having some external, objective source of morality, and having it being all-good gives one a transcendent source for morality. Now granted, the existence of such a being is questionable, and your objection per the euthyphro dilemma is a relevant one.

But hypothetically, all other things being equal, if the only difference was that the morality was dependent on an all-good God rather than human culture, it seems the theists are better off.

I say this in light of Aushcwitz, Rwanda, Dachau, Nanking, Khmer Rouge. As wonderful as it would be to deny that humanity is eminently capable of horrors given subjectivist views of the world, we can't deny this.

Looking at the local news near my own home town enough to remind us that moral subjectivism/relativism based on how we construct our own experience of reality is not as universally beneficial as we deem it to be.

I wish I could just go into his brain and find out how exactly he constructed his moral worldview.