Well it led me to think of the finality of death and how it effects the minds of the more stricter atheists
Well, the only reasonable step one can make from a belief that death is final is that we should therefore treat life as sacred and not throw it away on warfare and violence. Nor should we accept the misery and suffering of other living things while we are able to prevent it.
Granted, there are both believers and non-believers who have no concern for the misery and suffering of other living things - you'll find people of (almost) every philosophical stripe who have no problem with things like battery farms, war or the death penalty. This only illustrates that the attribute of callousness is independent of one's ideas about death.
But i picked and thats that, if we could drop the phrase the source etc and reach the goal of people like me getting to know you guys and your world views better that will suit me fine.
I find that dodgy - kind of like someone taking a phrase about the inferiority of Jews out of Mein Kampf and then saying "forget the source - let's just talk about the sentence I quoted". But fine, if you want to look only at how a single life / final death / no Thor, Diana, Allah, etc philosophy affects people's ethics, that's what we'll do.
And look at it this way my mistake will likely gain Ham more foes than friends so all is not bad.
Ham?
To move on, for an Atheist where is the morality born from in the context of one life and as long as the police do not catch you, your home free.
What sources do you look to?
Well, I'm going to have to ignore the bold and respond to the rest, since the bold bit doesn't make any sense at all. (It isn't
atheists whose behavior is motivated by fear of authority and retribution, generally speaking).
Broadly speaking, atheists have "ethics", not "morals". The wiki on ethics is pretty good, so I'll just
link to it.
However, it's not necessary to "look to" any particular branch of philosophy to be (or become) an ethical person. For most people (whether religious or not) the foundation for our ethics as adults is laid out in childhood through the behavior of our parents. For people of a contemplative bent, even those who were brought up in an unethical environment, the benefit of alleviating suffering and misery is quite obvious once you stop to consider it, even for a moment. It's not exactly rocket science. Do you pet the dog or do you kick it? Do you slap your kids or give them a hug? You won't find any answers to these daily questions in your Bible. In fact, the Bible will tell you how to go about selling your own daughter. Why don't Christians sell their daughters? Because it's unethical. Plain and simple. Christians don't give a toss whether the Bible says selling your daughter is a great idea - they know it's just wrong.
Atheists are the same. If a book, or a priest, or a politician, or a friend tells you to do something that is an outrage to your conscience, you just don't do it.
Atheists derive their morals and ethics from their innate compassion, empathy and humanity, their reason and logic, deduction of cause and effect, and action and reaction, mutual and rational self-interest, the honor, honesty, dignity and integrity that comes naturally with self worth and self respect, etc.
