I've spent the last few days doing a bit of research concerning the possibility of a society being moral without religion. What I've found pretty solidly supports the idea that it is indeed possible. This, of course, refutes the frequently and shrilly spouted assertion of religious fanatics that a moral and orderly society is impossible unless everyone thinks "God" will send them down to be toasted like a marshmallow in "Hell" if they don't behave. Solid facts show that only a small minority of people in countries like Denmark and Sweden actively participate in religious rituals and few people there admit to even thinking much about religion. Yet these countries are among the most moral and content societies on Earth. And this is not just a trait peculiar to the descendants of Vikings. In much of western Europe religion has lost its hold on the minds of the general populace with no discernable loss of morality. In Asia, Japan and China are by no means religious in the sense that Christians and Muslims recognize, yet, in Japan for instance, there is much less violent crime than there is in the ostensibly Christian United States. Australia and Canada both show steady decline in religious practice and steady growth (to around 20%) in the number of people who profess no religion. If the religious types were right about the need for religion to make moral societies there should be a commensurate rise in crime and depravity in these increasingly secular countries. Such is clearly not the case, and there could be no more telling evidence than these widespread and diverse experiments in human society all decisively supporting the idea that morality need not spring from religion. Indeed, I would maintain that rational morality is far better for a society than one based on an ideology assuming a fictional being and Medieval concepts.