Where do atheists get their morality from?

[stephenmills1000]

I'd disagree both with regards to mathematics and morality. I don't think that either the feeling of moral wrongness or the determination of mathematical answer could be achieved without the concepts being taught at some point in life. A person who has never attended a math class wouldn't know that 8x7= 56. Similarly, you wouldn't think that murder is wrong unless you have been explicitly or implicitly exposed to the idea of valuing human life while growing up. It is when we accept and internalize those concepts - whatever the reason for that acceptance may be - that we can experience those moral feelings seemingly intuitively. For example, if a person is taught from the beginning that the only morally correct sexual relations are between a man and a woman and he accepts it because either it comes from an authority he trusts or because it seems rational in his worldview where purpose of sex is to produce children or because of his own single-target sexual preference or simply because it doesn't contradict anything in his worldview - then, upon encountering the idea of homosexual relations, he genuinely would feel the "moral wrongness" of it.

The job of an ethicist would then be much more nuanced. He would be required to provide a template against which our automatic intuitions can be measured and corrected. He'd be required to not only explain why we feel what we feel, but also if we should feel that way. He'd be required to tell where moral judgment is inapplicable. For example, based on a personal preference of finding raw meat to be icky, I can easily use post-hoc justifications to translate it into a moral principle and declare sushi fans to be immoral. However, an ethicist would point put that since it is a matter of personal preference, moral judgment is inapplicable here. Further, based on Christian morals pounded into me since childhood, I may genuinely consider homosexual relations as immoral - even though my own personal preference may lie that way. Again, I'd require an ethicist to tell me that the basis, i.e. the learned concept, is wrong and therefore, my intuition in this case is unjustified.

Great point here. I would however wonder where the ethicist themself, bases their moral values on, and what justification they would have for doing so.