Nihilism != atheism.
So that all starts from a bad assumption and then goes off into a whacky land. And really “scientifically respectable justification of morality” has been known for a long time. The social contract explains it all quite well. People are social animals, our society works best when certain rules are followed, those rules by and large coincide with the morals pushed by most successful religions. It ain’t tough.
“Since we are creatures of natural selection, we cannot totally trust our senses. Evolution only passes on traits that help a species survive, and not concerned with preserving traits that tell a species what is actually true about life.”
- Richard Dawkins – quoted from “The God Delusion”
“Our brains were shaped for fitness, not for truth. Sometimes the truth is adaptive, but sometimes it is not.”
- Steven Pinker