*sigh*  You do not need religion to teach you that deliberately harming others is wrong. if anything, religion would only serve to push outdated values on the weakminded (gays are evil, men are greater than women, kill all those who worship any others...).  if I actually had t he time, I could easily give you hundreds more bad things the bible could teach compared to the good things it teaches.  

Sadly, I have a life so this will have to go unresolved.  

*sigh* you do not need atheism to teach you that gays arent evil, men are equal to women, dont kill those who think differently than you... if anything atheism would only serve to push outdated values on the weakminded... if i actually had the time, i could easily give you thousands more bad things about atheism and the negative effects it brings to soceity, and exactly nothing positive about what it brings.

Religion vs atheism is always a great battle. Keep it up.

Not since the 1800's.

Whatever you say, man. 

Seriously? So its only religious people that harm others, are homophobic, are sexist, etc? I know you're like the most anti-religious guy on the site but even you can't say that with a straight face. 

What do Hitler, Stalin and Mao have in common? All strongly anti-religion. Not saying atheists are killers or anything, all I'm proving is that violence and religion don't go hand in hand. 

And do you seriously think homophobia was invented by religion? Yeah the bible is anti-gay but only in the Old Testament (before Jesus and everything). I know so many people that hate gays but none of them are due to religious beliefs, its just because gays are different. People will always hate those that are different. If homophobia ever goes away then it will just be replaced by some other form of hatred. I don't see hate in general ever disappearing from humanity. 

And just like I said with homophobia, sexism I'm sure wan't invented by religion either. Yeah I guess some religions like Islam say that men are more important than women, but do you really think sexism is suddenly going to disappear overnight if religions disappear overnight? I doubt it. 

All I've said is that religions can teach kids good values, I didn't say kids can't learn good values without religion. Big difference between those two statements. 

I know

@ OP I think that what the survey that you mention doesn't take into account is that when you reach 65, you're more likely to believe in God because you are coming closer to the end of your life, and don't want to think that you're just going to be food for the soil after you die. Younger people think about this stuff less, and therefore are less likely to believe in God.

Hitler's status on religion is more ambiguous than the militant Communists. Hitler was an occultist and may at least have put some stock in the Christian mythos, even if he didn't subscribe to Christian ideology or impress it upon his people

But a fairly modern counterexample might be Leopold II of Belgium, pious conservative Catholic who killed half the population of the Congo Free State. Religion or a lack thereof does not make a ruler more or less benevolent. What about the regime in Iran?

Ladies and gentlemen, hypocrisy 101.  I didn't say Atheism was pure or anything, I didn't try to proclaim that being an atheist would make you a perfect, flawless human being (after all, a lot of modern corporate greed has nothing to do with religion.)  all I said was that it's a logical fallacy to assume in any way that religion is in any way the source of morals, or that it 'teaches kids ethics'.  See, the bible may teach some good things, but for every good lesson they can get, there are three bad lessons to negate it, so since you're gonna be picking and choosing what morals to pass down, why not eliminate the part of the equation that assumes an invisivle man in the sky brought down rules from the heavens?  seems a bit extreme just to teach some kid not to steal.