Comment by skandinaff

While that could be true, it's important to remember that these people probably grew up in a culture that had religion influence for thousands of years. In order to become atheist, one needs to renounce god, therefore have the idea of god, therefore, have some background knowledge of or about religion. That is to say, that these processes a not as simple, as one might think: take soviet union as an example - official atheist state - yet so much on interpersonal level remained based on humane values formed by thousand years of east orthodox chiristianity. And even though measly 70 years are not enough to make a significant dent in human behaviour - it did produced a lot of cynicism and misanthropy before going out the window.