Do you feel attacked for your religious beliefs? Do you consider popular views that people can be good without God as a direct hit on the moral system you treasure?

Two scientists offer insight into why you might feel that way. Our science blogger Dan Vergano highlights an opinion piece in the Journal of Cognitive Sciences in which Ilkka Pyysiainen of Finland's University of Helsinki and Marc Hauser of Harvard look at the links between religion and morality and find

... no differences between religious and atheist answers to moral dilemmas.

So why are many people so affronted when atheists crow that religion is optional for a "good" society? The British Telegraph interview with Hauser adds a little more on that. He says,

It seems that in many cultures religious concepts and beliefs have become the standard way of conceptualizing moral intuitions. Although, as we discuss in our paper, this link is not a necessary one, many people have become so accustomed to using it, that criticism targeted at religion is experienced as a fundamental threat to our moral existence.

Do you equate attacks on religion -- such as popular atheists Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens do almost as sport -- as an attack on morality itself? What about people who simply think faith is optional, not essential?