Atheism, A Grim Position?

[Esquilax]

I get that. So then if "Maximizing my lifetime total of pleasure" entailed killing redheads because it was pleasurable, does that go against atheist ethics? If so, how?

For ethics to be functional, for it not to be the relativistic strawman that a lot of theists seem to want to characterize it as without god, it needs to be blind. You need to be considering your maximum pleasure without knowing what you'll be within the society you'll be in at the time you live your life.

Put simply, ethics are not about you, they are about us. All of us. When you say that killing redheads is pleasurable to you, first of all I have to say I find that unlikely, as a normally functioning human brain has empathy that would prevent that; statistically few people think like that. But more importantly, since ethics does not concern itself solely with you and what you want, if your idea of maximized pleasure subtracts pleasure from someone else, then it is rationally untenable as a position. You might still hold it, and nobody can force you to change your mind on that, but you cannot make it jive with the way ethics works without adding in a whole lot of special pleading, making exemptions for yourself that do not appear in a normal execution of ethical considerations.

So the short answer is, yes, that goes against ethics.