It is pretty close, but this is not exactly what I meant to say:
"Improvement of morality, values, ethics, and desireable character traits in individuals are deteriorating.
The strongest existing force for preservation or expansion of these values is in the transmission of the ideals of major religious teachings."
The transmission of these ideals is often best done with symbolism, allegory and parable.
It is not easy to get people's attention, persuade them, and have them remember the moral of the story.
Even fairy tales can transmit meaningful lessons.
In the modern rational scientific world, we have plenty of wrong theories and fairy tales that have less benefit.
We don't say Newton's Principia mathematica is rubbish because it did not account for the Theory of Relativity.
And we don't discard Darwin because natural selection has not explained the sudden extinction of entire genera and species,
and the first edition of Origin of the Species did not include what we know today about genetics.
Take a look at the prime examples atheistic, Godless, anti-religious states that believed in the "natural justice" of man:
