All good comes from God, and without God man cannot do anything good. This is true even for the secular person or those of other religions, for while they may not know God in the formal sense, their lack of knowledge does not exonerate anyone from His rules.
In American society, there has always been a strong duality between the people in that there are those who believe in something of Christianity (really a form of nationalism mixed with Christianity), and people who do not believe in religion but rather a secularism where they think that being a “good person” is just enough and there is no need for God. As I have explained in previous articles, this is largely a product of the Protestant movement from Europe, where religion is ultimately reduced to an arm of the state that one does not need to be a good citizen or good person.
With the decline of religion, and since nature abhors a vacuum, secularism replacing it, it is not a surprise that most people in America now do not believe they need God in order to be good.
A majority of Americans do not believe they need God to be moral or have good values, but most with politically conservative leanings still do, according to a global survey by the Pew Research Center.
The nonpartisan polling firm recently published a survey that measures the connection between people’s beliefs about God and morality. The survey, conducted between late June and early October 2019, is based on responses from 38,426 people in 34 countries.
Meanwhile, 44% of American respondents said they believe God is necessary to “be moral and have good values.”
Respondents on the ideological right were found to be significantly more likely to say it is necessary to believe in God to be a moral person and have good values compared to those on the political left in 15 of the 34 countries surveyed.
The largest gap between the ideological right and left exists in the United States.
While only 24% of American respondents who identified themselves as leaning more to the left politically said it is necessary to believe in God to be moral and have good values, 37% of centrists agreed.
But when it comes to respondents who lean to the right politically, more than twice the percentage of those on the left (63%) agreed that it is necessary to believe in God to be moral and have good values. (source)