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One answer is what is often called "enlightened self-interest". The Golden Rule is basically a statement about enlighted self-interest.

You are assuming that enlightened self-interest is a virtue unto itself as if the laws of physics gave us this "virtue".

The fact is there are people out there who want to die and take you with them ( for instance, the 911 terrorists). That is in their self-interest.

What moral law given by the laws of physics tell us that such people ( e.g., Mohammad Atta ) are evil ? They believe they are doing good by practicing THEIR VERSION of "enlightened self-interest" ( the self-interest of killing as many infidels as possible ).

Of course in the end, it would not matter, you die on Sept 11 2001, or you die 50 years later, so what ? You die and nothing in the universe is ultimately going to matter for either you or them.

So, why are they evil ? What intrinsic law of material physics tell us that ?

"What moral law given by the laws of physics tell us that such people ( e.g., Mohammad Atta ) are evil ? They believe they are doing good by practicing THEIR VERSION of "enlightened self-interest" ( the self-interest of killing as many infidels as possible )."

This argument that you make against enlightened self-interest is the same argument that is made against those who believe in a specific God.

Allah, according to some radical Muslims, commands them to kill infidels. And BTW, they can quote chapter and verse as to why they are correct.

If Muslims claim that X is good, Buddhists claim that X is bad, and Christians claim that X is neither, then maybe all religion is just personal preferences and biased "enlightened self-interest".

As a Christian we can never fairly say that there are just two kinds of people: people who believe in the Christian God and everybody else. There are some Christians who claim that Muslims are atheists because they don't believe in a Christian God. This is just plain silliness I hope you'll agree.

So again I repeat, it is a good God that has created a world that largely reflects his wisdom and kindness. It is a wonderful thing that a huge percentage of humanity agrees on a large number of basic moral principles. There is much that can be made of this consensus.

As soon as you start arguing that atheists can believe whatever they will, atheists can argue back that you just happened to choose the religion that validated all your prejudices so how are you any different. They can further annoy you by claiming that the reason you happened to choose a religion identical (or similar) to that of your parents is that your family is genetically predisposed to be Methodists, Lutherans, Catholics, Buddhists, etc.

If that one guanine-cytosine pair on chromosome 14 had just been replaced with an adenine-thymine pair then you might just now be walking into a pizza joint in Haifa with a non-descript backpack.