Can we be moral without a belief in gods?

The most powerful motivation we have is survival.
And I'll make the claim that every action of every form of life is for that end.

We eat, breathe, drink, avoid danger, store food, make protection, gather in groups, experience empathy, love, hate, laugh, self-deprecate, seek assurance, obey, command, fear, elect leaders, believe in superstition and the supernatural and we are greedy. All can be explained either directly or indirectly by understanding survival as the ultimate goal.

Both Confucius and Aristotle are credited with espousing the 'Golden Rule'. A rather trivial exercise as most toddlers have this principle on board at the earliest age. Do good things - not bad - to others and maybe they will do good things - not bad - to you and in this way, the survival odds of both of you may be increased. Parents also try to reinforce this principle.

'Good' and 'bad' need to be defined. 'Good' describes a thought or action that might increase the ultimate survival of another - or possibly yourself. 'Bad' describes a thought or action that might adversely affect those chances. 'Evil' is a better word as it carries a bit more emotion.

Of course, this rule is not mandatory. We can easily explain bad people and bad things if you look at those who are bigger, stronger, were not successfully disciplined as a small child and see that their best chance to survive is to take - sometimes forcefully. The decision is between the consequences of being caught and the gains if not. A local police commissioner was chastised for saying 'Five percent of the population are career criminals. And the other 95 percent are opportunistic.' Funny, but probably close to the truth. I would like to think there were an unquestioningly good five percent or so.

There are biblical versions such as 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.'. That's OK, but from a logical perspective, if you, for example, wish to be enslaved by your god, you may be acting badly towards others. Stick with the Aristotelian version.

So, we can explain good and bad without gods and devils.

But does religious belief help? It's unfair to draw the simple conclusion that faith and crime go together. Statistics overwhelmingly support this, but there are other factors. Poverty and crime are closely associated as are poverty and education. It's natural that religiosity and crime are associated. Rwanda is 93 % catholic. Did that help any of their many genocide attempts? 'Hutu' means servant and 'Tutsi' means owner of many cattle. That may be closer to the cause.

Important conclusions from statistics are firstly that religious belief, no matter how devout and widespread, is not a cure-all. Another is that secular nations with very low church attendance don't fair too badly in the crime stakes.

Most societies have a legal system whereby politicians are elected by a society that has a tolerance to a low level of crime so as to balance freedoms. When crime increases, politicians strengthen laws to meet the mass approval. police catch offenders, courts try and incarcerate where necessary and at least hopefully the whole cycle has the best interests of victim and offender at heart.

So, there is no evidence I know of to suggest lack of faith leads to crime, The tools to invest morality in the individual are natural and we have a self regulating mechanism to attend to transgressions.
And we don't ever kill offenders. Not for any crimes. That's the moral thing to do. religious versions of law usually have some primitive punishments for crimes.

And just a quick note that Adolph Hitler was a catholic who hated Jews through his belief in god. Find his 1922 Munich address. And Stalin educated in a Greek orthodox school, then moved to a Russian orthodox school by his father, studied to be a priest, left or was kicked out but in any case, learned the techniques of manipulating people. It's suggested in his coming to power just after the Czars (ho were living gods), he was able to capitalise on the well-tuned gullibility of the masses.
But in any case, atheism doesn't mean perfect.

To quote Steven Weinberg "Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."

Certainly some people commit the most horrific crimes in the name of their god, but I will concede I think there is one missing option in Weinberg's quote. from a logical perspective, there must be a group who commit dastardly crimes because they have no god. That might be a match for Stalin.

On balance, I think more crime is committed because of bad training, poverty or both but there are some types of crime including terrorism and war that probably wouldn't have happened without religious belief. 

Me? I worship Good.