Or don’t they? From Phys.org:
A unusual social study has revealed that atheists are more easily suspected of vile deeds than Christians, Muslims, Hindus or Buddhists—strikingly, even by fellow atheists, researchers said Monday.
This suggests that in an increasingly secular world, many—including some atheists—still hold the view that people will do bad things unless they fear punishment from all-seeing gods.
The results of the study “show that across the world, religious belief is intuitively viewed as a necessary safeguard against the temptations of grossly immoral conduct,” an international team wrote in the journal Nature Human Behaviour.
And it revealed that “atheists are broadly perceived as potentially morally depraved and dangerous.”
The study measured the attitudes of more than 3,000 people in 13 countries on five continents.
They ranged from “very secular” countries such as China and the Netherlands, to countries with high numbers of believers such as the United Arab Emirates, United States, and India.
…
The team found that people were about twice as likely to assume that the serial killer was an atheist.
“It is striking that even atheists appear to hold the same intuitive anti-atheist bias,” study co-author Will Gervais, a psychology professor at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, told AFP. More.
One wonders if the broad linkage of Darwinism and atheism play a role.
See also: Prof claims to know how to slam dunk creationists
and
Teaching evolution to creationist students: Why would anyone who was embarking on teaching evolution as a serious project in good faith try to involve a virulently anti-religious figure like Dawkins in the argument?