Why 'should' atheists be moral?

[Esquilax]

This is a similar argument to the above post I just replied to. I agree with you completely it makes life better for everyone but why should someone who is intelligent enough to take advantage of everyone else being moral to each while being immoral himself not do it.

Because morality is not about individual people. It's not about what you or I should do, but about everyone together. You may be able to take advantage, but in doing so you're propagating a meme that is directly detrimental to society. Like I said, the reason you want to act morally is because you want everyone else to, that's the social agreement at play here; I won't hurt you, if you don't hurt me. You can't just expect everyone else to sign that agreement while you go "but I'm the exception."

The idea of 'should' only makes sense in reference to values and goals, with can only come from two sources: outside the moral agent (objectively) or from within to the moral agent (subjective). Without values and goals that transcend the individual, like the Good or the True, the moral agent must look to their own desires and needs as the source. Now to transcend the individual one need only go up one level to the community. That move doesn't say from where a community gets its values. Appealing to evolution doesn't solve the problem, since it only applies to survival. You need to be able to show that survival is the ultimate source of value to get near anything objective.

Chad, do you ever not assume a whole bunch of conclusions whenever you make your claims? Can you even demonstrate the existence of these "ultimate values"? Or is this just something we have to presuppose to be true, so that you can make your point about how inferior godless moral systems are?