Answer me this - Why not? What is the drive behind ethics and morality? God? Or do these things exist in humans as a matter of course? If you accept the God Only hypothesis then one needs to ask why it is that Buddhists, Hindus and Pagans have morality/ethics - after all they do not follow the same God. Everyone suffers from guilt - every one learns the difference between 'right and wrong' - Further everyone has been 'hurt' in one way or another and they can place themselves in the shoes of others and know that X action causes Y hurt and since they would not want to hurt, they would conclude that hurting others is 'wrong'.

This questions is full of arrogance, ignorance and prejudices. Morals are a product of evolution, and therefore in every human. There is this thing called empathy. Why do religious people think they are better? If someone is just good because he is scared of hell, is this real morality? A good example: "October 17 1969, when the Motreal police went on strike. By 11:20 am the first bank was robbed. By noon most donwntonwn stores had closed because of looting. Within a few more hours, taxi drivers burned down the garage of a limousine service that competed with them for airport customers, a rooftop sniper killed a provincial police officer, rioters broke into several hotels and restaurants, and a doctor slew a burglar in his suburban home. By the end of the day, six banks have been robbed, a hundred shops had been looted, twelve fires had been set, forty carloads of storefront glass had been broken, and three million in property damage had been inflicted." Was this the work of all the atheists in Montreal? No, there were more Christians involved, even percentually. In this case, nobody really cared about god, the police is gone, so let's party. Not everyone acts like this, but it shows that it is not god that holds the order. And of course there are people who stayed righteous, but that was not because of god. Percentually less atheists are in prison than religious people. This is more because of the education though, because in higher education, the rate of atheists is higher. This doens't mean atheists have better morals, but it proves that it is not the religious people that do. And do you think people are moral because they take morals from the bible? Read the bible, you will find horrific examples of cruel immorality commited by "god" and people like Moses or Abraham. And again, atheists don't believe life is senseless. Because they don't believe in an afterlife, the things that happen in this life matter even more. Here a quote from Albert Einstein, he was a Jew by ethnicity, but atheists in belief: "Strange is our situation here on earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to divine a purpose. From the standpoint of our daily life however, there is one thing we do know: That man is here for the sake of other men - above all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness depends." Please hold back with prejudices.

Many atheists describe themselves as Humanists, deriving their morality from duty to the very visible people all around them rather than some invisible deity. It is my view that the drive to morality is the same in atheists and the religious and deeply built into all of humanity (except sociopaths), but atheists ascribe it to being a human being, whereas theists ascribe it to an outside force.

just because im athiest doesnt mean i dont have morals. even though i dont believe there a god gonna give me the thunder bolt doesnt mean i dont have a concience. if i do something wrong i totally feel guilty, i believe in right and wrong.