Reconciling morality with atheism

[MetalMilitia]

This may be somewhat off-topic from the main point of the thread but as far as your initial question is concerned I think that a consensus of what is moral will generally be accepted, even over religious ideals. For example, though we may read in the bible that various people should be stoned to death for all kinds of minor transgressions, as the consensus that this is unacceptable has been accepted in the West we have decided to ignore the Bible in this matter. I'm sure in time the homosexuality issue will follow suit.

To me this suggests that the Bible isn't what gives us our morality. Instead it is simply selectively read to conform to the consensus we've cultivated in our society without any kind of divine intervention.

To the main question in this thread, I have no answer, but the wisdom of crowds has been commented upon by many authors. Why is it so hard to accept that a large group of people are smart enough to come up with a few simple rules and regulations which we can all agree on and which offer a benefit to society?