Why 'should' atheists be moral?

[Ben Davis]

I assume what you're trying to say is that people who are immoral are going to be disliked, therefore have no friends and live in isolation.

Not quite although that's part of it. The main point I was making is that I recognise that I'm part of an interdependent society and as such, my actions have repercussions on others as theirs do on me. I 'should' be moral in order to maximise the effects of reciprocal altruism. In addition, my sense of empathy, informing me of the way harm feels to others, leads me to want to minimise harmful impacts of my actions, in a purely human, emotional, personal sense rather than a broader, social sense. I 'should' be moral because I don't like it when I suffer immorality and I understand that others will feel the same.

For the moment, I'm ignoring the impacts of socio/psychopathy so that my main point is clear.

You know there are things in your life though that you can 'get away with' but you choose not to do them anyway. Why is that?

Sometimes I have, sometimes I haven't

Seriously though, there are very few actions which are completely isolated from others so we're back to my point about empathy again. I don't require a threat of punishment to drive my morality. It's also about personal conditioning. The more immoral actions I take, the easier it is to perform immoral actions. My sense of self-preservation combined with my self-image drives me to 'police' my own actions. I 'should' be moral because I won't like myself if I'm not.