It is possible for an atheist to have a consistent morality of any kind

Thank you RM for a very entertaining round, and thank you voters/readers for taking the time to read this debate. Onto the debate... Atheism: In a broad sense, the rejection of belief in the existence of deities. [1]Morality: Of,pertainingto,orconcernedwiththeprinciplesorrulesof rightconductorthedistinctionbetweenrightandwrong [2]Consistent: marked by harmony, regularity, or steady continuity [3]As a brief road map, I'd like to establish my case in this debate, and then review my opponent's case in his previous post.I. Atheists can have consistent moral codes and exhibit consistent moral behavior.I'd like to make a very important statement. Very rarely, do people stop and think if the actions they take in everyday life will result in eternal damnation by hellfire or bliss in heaven. Generally, people rely on their conscience for moral decisions. More often than not, the everyday moral behavior exhibited by individuals relies on a very simple concept of treating people how you'd want to be treated, or doing to others only what you would want someone to do to you. There is no mental block that hinders atheists from learning this concept, thus, there can be established a moral framework that is easily consistent. Someone can just as easily follow that framework as they can the religious framework that has to do with punishment and reward, and to the same consistency level as well. Atheist Bill Gates, for example, exhibits this behavior. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has earned Bill Gates the title of the second most generous philanthropist in the world with a total donation count of nearly $33 billion, as of Sept. 30, 2012. [4] Bill Gates donates money out of a sense of responsibility and not out of fear of eternal punishment. Meaning, if someone else were in his shoes and he was in their shoes he would expect the same. II. Belief systems don't mirror behavior. What is clear in the world is that believing in something doesn't meant you abide by its laws, & has no bearings on your character in and of itself. Being a Christian, Muslim, Hindu, or Buddhist doesn't make you a good person anymore than being an atheist makes someone a bad person. The Republican party, for example, is known as the God party in the United States and consistently stands at odds with the Democratic party on policies that deal in morality. Examples of these policies are their stance against universal health care due to monetary reasons, their stance against the idea of welfare, how judgemental they are of women who have sex out of wedlock, and their lack of inclusivity among different ethnic groups in their party in comparison to the Democrats. Bombings of abortion clinics by Christians, and bombings by Muslims are other examples of immoral behavior by theists. With it established that beliefs don't mirror behavior, it becomes obvious that it doesn't take a belief in a specific governing deity for people to exhibit moral behavior. III. Punishment is not the standard for morality.Punishment is not the standard for morality. Good people do good things because they couldn't imagine not doing them, because they feel it is better for society or because they'd appreciate it if someone would do good things for them if they needed it. If someone is only doing a good deed because they don't want to be punished, then they aren't truly exhibiting moral behavior because coercion perverts their mind and they aren't free to make the choice of their own cognizance. Moreover, when one tries to establish punishment as the standard of morality in a society (theocracy), it results in a perversion of the law to suit whatever the individual needs to happen and the deity becomes the source of their intentions. For example, people don't hate gays or wish them dead, God does and they're just following his law. Another is that their deity demands that all witches be killed, leading to killings of thousands of innocent people over time.When you act under pressure of punishment, you are choosing because of the principle of right and wrong (as defined by the definition of Morality), you're choosing out of fear and coercion. With this established, it becomes clear that irrational fear is no true basis of moral character or any true moral code. While addressing my opponents claims, I'll first quote him in bold, and then address the statements in the following paragraph. "If you really don't delude yourself of a god (I say delude because to an atheist reader to believe in any god(s) is inherently self-delusion) the what is there to fear if you rape your one year old daughter?"This quote is very powerful for 2 main reasons. My opponent first shows that the fear he has is irrational, and through that sense of irrational fear he shows that it is no basis of moral conduct with his question that immediately follows the parenthesis. People don't just not rape little girls because it is illegal or because they'll be set on fire in an afterlife, they do so simply because it isn't right. Parents have an innate feeling of love and welfare for their child's safety. Adults, as a whole, generally have that feeling of responsibility for children (Hence the societal-wide disgust at those actions). Of course there are a few out of every hundred thousand that do commit heinous and unthinkable acts, but it has more to do with psychological problems and perversions than any lack of fear for an evil afterlife. "If I'm honest with you the only real reason I wouldn't, given the opportunity, rape someone who I took a fancy to if I figured there's pretty much no way I'd get found out and that they wouldn't even see my face is because I fear a later punishment of some kind brutally from fate... I have to confess some thing honestly, I used to be a really immoral guy. I've actually stolen people's things at school and cheated on a mock exam [it wasn't an official one] (I had a paper of notes that I found a way to look at). I have looked at horrible rape pornography and jacked off to it too. I've done many many bad things in my 'thoughts' and thankfully had the sanity not to do many of them in real life. This was because I used to be atheist."My opponent was once an atheist, and I am now, yet we have very different moral codes. I do no do things with the expectation of rewards or punishments in an afterlife, yet he does. Whatever is true about our moral behavior, it's obviously not lying solely in our belief system; this idea that he only did those things because he was an atheist, cannot be universally true. "However there are clinically diagnosed psychopaths who, despite being perfectly sane (unlike sociopaths) they literally cannot feel any guilt for any degree of abuse they do unto others. How can such a person (I actually think in a way I am a psychopath) find any morality at all?"My opponent has mixed the two terms, for clarity I'll provide the correct assessments. Sociopaths are marked by an inability to relate to emotions (love, etc/lack of empathy), feel emotional responsibility (lack of remorse and guilt/conscience is lacking), and entrepreneurial versatility (adapting so that he/she avoids persecution). [5]A psychopath is when the above paragraph magnifies & transforms into a more dangerous and egregious mindset. A psychopath is a person with an antisocial personality disorder, manifested in aggressive, perverted, criminal, or amoral behavior without empathy or remorse.One is simply being antisocial, the other is being dangerously emotional inept to the point where you let your mindset manifest itself with no regard for law or morality whatsoever. I'd suggest that my opponent should call himself sociopath before psychopath, but only he knows that truth. [1]http://en.wikipedia.org...[2]http://dictionary.reference.com...[3]http://www.merriam-webster.com...[4]http://en.wikipedia.org...[5]http://www.mcafee.cc...