Does Atheism mean Nihilism?

Unusually thoughtful article in the Washington Post today titled "What Atheists Can't Answer." Although brief, the article basically considers the implications of Atheism on Morality. This topic has been covered by some Atheists but not in a satisfactory way. Their responses have generally said that we can have objective morality even without God. What's more interesting to me (and this article considers it somewhat) is what human behavior would be like if we acknowledged not only that God doesn't exist, but that Objective Morality is without any sort of a basis. Nietzsche worried that God's death would lead to Nihilism, and I'm not sure that anyone would favor a world in which everyone behaved as though Nihilism was true. However, I'm not sure we've done enough thinking on how exactly people would behave.

I think one consideration is that if Morality is innate then maybe people would act no differently. I think the author of this article is in danger of making a false distinction between acting as we want, and acting morally. It may be that acting morally is "what we want" even if it were to be accepted that objective morality does not exist. What I mean by this is that if someone were deciding between two options one which is deemed morally superior to the other, it seems unlikely that they would then think "well, objective morality doesn't exist, so I'll just choose randomly." What I see as more likely is that they would choose the option which accords strongest with their convictions, emotions and what not (I know that sounds vague) despite knowing intellectually that morals are nothing more than preferences or tastes. What I'm trying to say is that their preferences would be for things which are "moral" in general, they are one and the same. Anyway this is a topic for a treatise, not an incoherent 10 minute blog post, but the article is worthwhile.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/12/AR2007071201620.html