[skandinaff]

While that could be true, it's important to remember that these people probably grew up in a culture that had religion influence for thousands of years. In order to become atheist, one needs to renounce god, therefore have the idea of god, therefore, have some background knowledge of or about religion. That is to say, that these processes a not as simple, as one might think: take soviet union as an example - official atheist state - yet so much on interpersonal level remained based on humane values formed by thousand years of east orthodox chiristianity. And even though measly 70 years are not enough to make a significant dent in human behaviour - it did produced a lot of cynicism and misanthropy before going out the window.

[necovek]

It might be the other way around: religions came to be _because_ humans have values that became the backbone of religions.

The evolution of "gods" is obvious in retrospect as well (a tale of some good deeds passed on through generations gets added to with every retelling and suddenly Joe who gave a child an apple and protected it from a rabid dog was walking around feeding everone and killing dragons that stole everyone's sheep).

I recommend reading literature, philosophical and historical works from more than 2000 years ago.

[pdimitar]

I don't buy it. People were decent and nice to each other long before any "holy" books were written. As my sibling commenter said, it's far more likely that some people one day finally caught up to that fact and figured they'll start writing stuff down.

Your message almost sounds like it has an agenda.