The US is an outlier among nations whose peoples believe that belief in God is essential to morality.
http://www.alternet.org/belief/no-you-dont-need-god-be-good-person
The trend across the world is mirrored within the US:
Not coincidentally, led again by Mississippi, Alabama and Arkansas, nine of the top 10 poorest states are also found in the South, while northern and pacific states such as Wisconsin, Washington, California, New York, New Hampshire, and Vermont are among the least religious and the most economically prosperous.
As I’ve commented before, the idea that you need God or the Bible to be moral does not withstand a simple reality-check — there are vast areas of the world full of people who do not subscribe the Christianity and the Bible, and are they immoral? Are their societies rank with the kind of chaos that the faithful think is the result of not being religious? …No they are not.
