Where do atheists get their morality from?

[Angrboda]

In Romans 2:14, the Apostle Paul said that the Gentiles, who had not received the law [of Moses] or, in other words, a revelation from God, had nevertheless sometimes done "by nature the things of the law" and were therefore "a law unto themselves."

If this doesn't mean that Paul believed that the Gentiles who had no divine revelation had discovered morality on their own, then pray tell what does it mean?

—

Last summer, when the story about the Lakeberg twins first appeared in the newspapers, the article was clipped and mailed to several fundamentalist preachers known to believe in absolute morality. An accompanying letter asked them to explain what the Bible had to say about the dilemma that the parents of those twins were facing. The twins were joined at the chest and shared a common heart. Surgery would mean that one of the twins would have to die, and subsequently this was the decision that the parents made. The absolute moralists who received that letter were asked to state what their god of absolute morality has revealed to us in this matter.

Not a one of these preachers has yet answered that letter.

— (Jan-Feb 1994)