Atheist, Sam Harris has written a book explaining how science, not religion, should be the basis for morality.

From here:

His long-awaited new book, “The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values,” deals head-on with issues that many atheistic thinkers have been skirting for years. If religion is so bad, where should humans look for a moral authority? The answer, for Harris, is science. Harris defines morality as anything related to the “well-being of conscious creatures.” Since many scientific findings have implications for how to maximize well-being, Harris believes scientists should be authorities on moral issues. As Harris sees it, scientists not only have every right to make moral arguments, but should be the authorities of the moral realm.

Harris has put forward a crassly tautological argument for basing morality on science.

It’s all very well for him to define morality as “anything related to the “well-being of conscious creatures”, but where does that come from if not from a sense of “ought” which science cannot explain?

Harris, in starting from the assumption that when our conscience – natural law – tells us that we ought to care about the well-being of our fellow man, has already presupposed a ready-formed morality that was not derived scientifically – a moral law expounded by that which he so despises: religion. In Christianity’s case: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”.

Christianity, if true, is entitled to tell us that we should care about the well-being of concious creatures (Matt 7:12); science, true or not, isn’t.