The moral argument isn't telling you that. You people (HN readers) seem intent on misunderstanding my initial statements.
It's not that atheists are not moral. Not even less moral than religious people.
The point I am trying, and failing, to express is that morality must come from a higher, non-human source. If it does not, then it is just a product of fallible human minds and is entirely meaningless. That's it.
At the scale of the universe, everything we do is meaningless. We simply are what we are and that's that. Realizing this causes me no small amount of existential angst. So I try to live in the moment as best I can and leave the world ever so slightly better than I found it.
So maybe we actually agree (on what lack of religion means, not on what we personally believe about morality or existence)?
That's a rough approximation of my beliefs. The universe is massive and long-lived. I am neither.
I want to leave the world a better place than when I entered it. That trickles down to my daily life - are things better or worse when I go to bed than when I awoke? Being as insignificant as a rock doesn't preclude that desire.
And frankly, it's kind of offensive when Christians tell me I'm less-than-moral because I don't need their scripture to decide what's good or bad.