As the father of three boys, ages 7, 4, and 3, I agree with the premise of Michael Belding’s article, “Teaching morals is important,” but I would like to challenge his suggestion that religion is the source of morality. Morality is not about what theological opinions you hold, but about how you behave and how you treat others.

Belding recalls his regular attendance at church and Sunday school, a Thursday-night Bible education program, a Vacation Bible School during the summer, and consuming Christian-themed media. Accompanying the article is a photo of an open Bible in a church sanctuary. Although Belding does not directly assert that morality comes from religion, my concern is that these comments and the photo incorrectly conflate morality with religion.

In addition to being a dad who strives to raise ethical kids, I am also an atheist, and I have no doubt that one can be moral and ethical without believing in God. Let’s look at what research has found regarding the morality of nonbelievers.

In 1934, Abraham Franzblau found a negative correlation between acceptance of religious beliefs and three different measures of honesty. As religiosity increased, honesty decreased.

In 1950, Murray Ross conducted a survey among 2,000 associates of the YMCA and discovered that agnostics and atheists were more likely to express their willingness to aid the poor than those who rated themselves as deeply religious.

In 1975, a study found that college-aged students in religious schools were no less likely to cheat on a test than their atheist and agnostic counterparts in nonreligious schools.

In the most recent studies of religious belief among prestigious scientists, only 7 percent of members of the American National Academy of Sciences believed in God, while only 3.3 percent of the UK’s Royal Society said they believe in God.

In his book, “The Psychology of Religion: An empirical approach,” David Wolf reviews dozens of studies of this nature that reveal a consistent and positive correlation between “religious affiliation, church attendance, doctrinal orthodoxy, rated importance of religion, and so on, with ethnocentrism, authoritarianism, dogmatism, social distance, rigidity, intolerance of ambiguity, and specific forms of prejudice, especially against Jews and Blacks.”

There have been several interesting studies in which ethical dilemmas are presented to people of various faiths, including to people of no religious faith at all. In the “trolley problem” experiments for example, atheists consistently make the same moral decisions that believers do. Maybe they’re just absorbing the religious values from those around them, you may say. However, adapted versions of these ethical dilemmas were presented to a tribe of people who had almost no contact with the outside world, and they too made the same moral decisions. Additionally, consider how to explain people’s morality when they live in a society where almost no one believes in a supernatural God, most notably Buddhists.

One interesting study found differences between areas of the country with various concentrations of believers and nonbelievers. Believers tend to be more concentrated in “red” (Republican) states as opposed to “blue” (Democrat) states. Sam Harris noted that, “Of the 25 cities with the lowest rates of violent crime, 62 percent are in blue states, and 38 percent are in red states. Of the 25 most dangerous cities, 76 percent are in red states, and 24 percent are in blue states. In fact, three of the five most dangerous cities in the U.S. are in the pious state of Texas. The 12 states with the highest rates of burglary are red. 24 of the 29 states with the highest rates of theft are red. Of the 22 states with the highest rates of murder, 17 are red.”

Similarly, Phil Zuckerman, sociologist and author of “Society Without God: What the least religious societies can tell us about contentment,” found that the Scandinavian countries, particularly Denmark and Sweden, have the lowest percentage of believers and the highest percentage of atheists, and yet they are incredibly moral countries. They have the lowest rates of violent crime in the world, the best elder care, the best child care, strong education and high literacy rates. But aren’t they sad people who find life meaningless? Not at all — they have one of the lowest rates of depression and the highest measures of happiness in the world. They find meaning in their work, families, causes that they are involved in, etc.

Another interesting bit of data comes from the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, which found in a 1997 study that one in 10 people in the U.S. were atheists or agnostics (in 2008, the figure had jumped to 16 percent), whereas only one in 200 prisoners are atheist or agnostic.

This doesn’t mean that atheism necessarily increases morality, although humanism, the ethical system that often goes with atheism, probably does. Another good possibility is that atheism is correlated with some third factor, such as higher education, intelligence or reflectiveness, which might counteract criminal impulses. Neither do these data disprove the existence of God, but they are evidence that 1. people can be good without believing in God, and 2. that the morality of nonbelievers is not likely the product of being in a society steeped in religion.

So research does not support the idea that those who don’t have faith in Jesus are unrighteous, or that that people become immoral when they lose their faith in God. Indeed, the existence of altruism, compassion, generosity, kinship and compassion can be explained very well by evolution by natural selection. Such behaviors are reported over and over in studies of animals, such as birds, bats, elephants, whales, rhesus monkeys and others, and it is all well supported by the theory of evolution.

Skeptical? Some books to look for are “Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life;” “Natural Selections: Selfish Altruists, Honest Liars, and Other Realities of Evolution;” “Our Inner Ape: A Leading Primatologist Explains Why We Are Who We Are;” “The Moral Lives of Animals;” “The Science of Good and Evil: Why People Cheat, Gossip, Care, Share, and Follow the Golden Rule;” and “The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement.”