Bambi Eloriaga-Amago
For most non-religious or secular families, the concept of morality can be boiled down to the Golden Rule: They strive to treat people as they themselves would like to be treated.
The article quotes an atheist mom: “The way we teach them what is right and what is wrong is by trying to instill a sense of empathy… how other people feel. You know, just trying to give them that sense of what it’s like to be on the other end of their actions…. If your morality is all tied in with God, what if you at some point start to question the existence of God? Does that mean your moral sense suddenly crumbles? The way we are teaching our children… no matter what they choose to believe later in life, even if they become religious or whatever, they are still going to have that system.”
A 2010 study conducted by Duke University, meanwhile, showed that children raised in a secular household are less self-conscious about fitting in, less insecure about what other kids think of them. The study also showed that as the secular kids grew into adulthood, they showed less racism and were, on average, more tolerant compared to religious adults.
On a global scale, the article also stated that countries with the lowest levels of religious faith—such as Japan, Sweden, New Zealand, Denmark, and Belgium—exhibited the lowest levels of violent crime rates in the world. In the US, Federal Bureau of Prisons statistics show that in the 1990s, less than 1% of the prison population were atheists, a fact that perhaps shows that the non-religious engage in far fewer crimes than their religious counterparts.
