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SarahC comments on Belief in Belief - Less Wrong
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It may help to consider the question what would you do without morality? (also see the follow up: The Moral Void).
Seriously, if there were no morality, I would still have tastes, and they would still involve being fairly nice to people, but I'd generally put myself first and not worry about it. I'd sometimes be a freeloader or slacker, but not to such extremes that I could see how my actions hurt other people. I'd generally be a productive, sympathetic person, but not terribly heroic or altruistic. I would ... not be much different from the way I am now. But without the guilt. Without the sense that that can't possibly be enough.
For some of us, 'ethics' (here read as equivalent to 'morality') is an answer to the question "What should I do (or want)?", which is equivalent to "What do I have most reason to do (or want)?". If you care about the answers to questions like "Should I order a hamburger or a hot dog?" and "Should I drink this bottle of drain cleaner?" and "Should I put myself first?" then you care about ethics.
If I offer you a bottle of drain cleaner to drink and you refuse it, and I ask you, "What reason did you have for refusing it?" and you give me any answer, then you're not an ethical nihilist; you think there is something to ethical questions.
Of course, some would not cast such a broad net in their definition of 'ethics', but I don't tend to find such theories of ethics very useful.
I believe that for the most part, people make their religions in their own image.