You've dots the i's perfectly well =) Indeed morale could be easily not motivated by religion, in fact, I found that people (both believers and atheists) that base their morale not on dogmas (religious or not) are tend to be more introspective and as result they are more well-balanced and smart persons. A good amount of cynicism will never harm ;)

Funny: they say atheists don't have morals because their godless, yet the Catholic Church, which is fa from godless, actively protects sex offenders from the right arm of the law.

I don't know about that. Sure, it seams that, as good morals are outlined in the religious text, which are ancient, and since the better part of the population goes to church, good morals come from the religious texts in modern society. I however argue that society and common sense dictate a community's good morals, which happen to coincide with the old religious texts, since common sense was mostly the same back then when societies had morals and then wrote them down in a book. This is visible in the changes to the guidelines for decency that appear in the religious texts where there was a conflict with common sense. These changes happen more easily the more people are exposed to information and other cultures. Sure, religions are extremely powerful and influential, and many battle these changes constantly, still they happen. 

I'd like to quote this:

With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.

Steven Weinberg

Morality has nothing to do with religion - much as religions like to claim it does.  It is a function of awareness and social behavior and is totally separate from religion as there is no correlation between being religious and being moral.

In fact, as Weinberg notes, accurately I believe, without religion you have people behaving according to their base morality (plus of course individual factors) while with it you get the odd scenario that perfectly good, apparently moral people (because they're following their faith) perpetrate evil or immoral acts.

Killing, stealing, covetting your neighbours hard working donkey and others are seen as wrong based on how the members of a society have to behave if that socierty is to stay intact and function. Would you willingly be a member of a society where others are allowed to kill you and steal from you? Would you protect that society when it's threatened by someone?

It has nothing to do with religion, except that religion, as a guideline to behaviour of those who belong to it, recognizes those norms and reasserts them.

As people have mentioned not quite right. Morale is a very pragmatic phenomenon that society needs to survive, most of moral prohibitions and guidelines are based around natural rules that could be easily explained (sometimes even biological rules, such as ban on incest in most cultures), of course, eventually some of them became imperatives that not necessarily need to or even could be explained.

Very good post.

As for the bloded part, such a society could never work. There would be nothing to keep the society from crumbling.

I would at least Google "church attendance rates US and Europe" before making the statement "the better part of the population goes to church." Here is what I found:

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/rel_chu_att-religion-church-attendance

US is at 44%; Canada is at 38%; United Kingdom 27%.

The data is from the World Values Survey and like all other polls, it has a margin of error that may or may not tell us the whole story. Yet, it is data and going off of numbers is more persuasive than going off of your gut instincts when an audience is around.

I do not contest your common sense and religious texts as it applies to society and morality. I myself was raised in the Christian faith and attended youth group all the way up through high school.

What I contest are blanket statements such as "the better part of society" because where I will interpret as you saying over 50% of the population goes to church on a weekly or monthly basis, others will interpret as you are saying "the better part of society" as something else even up to the point of snubbing those non church goes as fundamentally bad, rotten individuals.

What I will say that is just as controversial, but is rooted in my personal experience with atheists, is that they do have a religion. Environmentalism. These atheists I have met tend to be urban, highly educated and have deep rooted beliefs about environmentalism bordering on religious fanaticism. They are not only believers in global warming as all man made, but they eschew cars for bicycles and mass transit because it protects "Mother Earth."

Nevermind the fact that these atheistic enviros ride a bicycle as if the rules of the road and state law does not apply to them. So long as they are not driving a car, then they feel entitled to ride their bicycle blowing through red lights, stop signs, crosswalks, and using illegal fixed gears.

So yes, there is some morality among these atheistic enviros based entirely on their lack thereof of their carbon footprint in comparison to those in their community, but they are God when they are on their bicycles because they believe so long as they are not burning a fuel to power their mode of transport, they have the right to ride the way they want to.

Too bad society and US state laws state otherwise explicity. The same rules that apply to cars apply to bicycles because they are both motor vehicles. One is powered by gasoline, the other by human. Both share the road and the law applies to them equally.

They are not.

Atheists are still bound by the letter of the law if nothing else. This is not to say that this is the only "moral compass" atheists have; far from it, but claims of immorality being inherently tied to atheism is really just an excuse to point a finger at someone who doesn't share one's own beliefs.

Personally, I'm of the notion that being a terrible (hypocritical) Christian, Muslim, Jew, Buddhist, whatever, who doesn't actually live by their professed beliefs in practice, is much worse than the individual who ultimately has to rely upon their own moral compass based upon their individual experiences and independent beliefs.