Dr. Mark Hauser and his colleagues at Harvard University have discovered that atheists are just as moral as committed religious adherents. Hauser and the other co-authors of this study say they were, "interested in the roots of religion and morality."
The UK Telegraph reported on the study on February 9, 2010. "People who did not have a religious background still appeared to have intuitive judgments of right and wrong in common with believers, according to the findings, published in the journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences."
Hauser is Principle Investigator at Harvard's Cognitive Evolution Laboratory. According to his website, over the past few years, his work explores the mechanisms underlying the capacity for social exchange and reciprocal altruism. These studies make use of recent models in game theory, together with theoretical and empirical developments in the field of behavioral control, to better understand the cognitive limits on cooperative interactions; these include constraints from delayed gratification, inhibitory control, numerical quantification, and assessments of reputation.
More on Hauser's work can be found at the links below.
http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~mnkylab/LPPI.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/7189188/Atheists-just-as-ethical-as-churchgoers.html
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