Pew Research Center released a poll that asked Americans whether they believe it is necessary to believe in God “to be moral and have good values.” Overall, 65 percent say it is not necessary. Curiously, 51 percent of people who say religion is important to them believe it is not necessary, compared to 92 percent of people who say religion is not important to them.
Among Christians, Protestants were split 49–49 on whether it’s necessary to believe in God to be a moral person. For Catholics, 63 percent said it is not necessary. (The sample sizes of people from other religions were too small to report results.) For people who were religiously unaffiliated, 88 percent said belief in God was not necessary to be moral.
The religiously unaffiliated people, and the people who say religion isn’t important to them, are espousing the Christian position at higher rates than Christians.
It is the Christian position that you don’t have to believe in God to be a moral person. That’s why Christians are taught, properly, that not all good people go to heaven. One reason that’s an important thing to teach is that good people who don’t believe in God exist, and they need to be told the good news of Jesus Christ. You probably know some of them. I certainly do.
What was probably going on here was a bit of negative polarization. The question sounds like it’s trying to put down religion by giving the option of choosing that belief in God is not necessary. The instinctual response to that, for a religious person, might be to choose the opposite option. But in doing so, many Christians were, probably unwittingly, choosing an option they didn’t (or at least shouldn’t) believe.
That’s not to say the question was a setup, or that it was asked with bad intent. It’s just a reminder to be cautious when answering questions like this.