I've never understood the libertarian belief that man is inherently good. My libertarian-esque beliefs have always come from a belief that man is naturally bad and therefore I don't want to be ruled by them, nor do I put my trust in them to handle the running of large parts of my life.
I'm not sure there really is a 'libertarian' belief that man is inherently good - some libertarians may believe that but I don't think it's inherent to libertarianism. Libertarianism I think mainly says that humans are to a degree naturally corruptable. (on the flip side, you might say that humans are to a degree naturally empathetic) In governing their own personal affairs people are generally suited enough to at least get by, but in governing others you get problems due to corruption and conflict of interests. That's all libertarianism says, at least in my view. My personal opinion is that man is neither inherently 'good' or 'evil', that we're more of a blank slate overall, though individuals might have leanings towards certain behaviors due to biological factors.
Anywho, on the subject at hand. I don't think that religiousity or lack thereof is the problem. Keep in mind that religiousity isn't necessarily a good thing - just look at witch hunts, cults, jihads, and all the other horrid things involving religion. Let's not act as if things were all honkey dorey back in the day. Of course I'm not saying it's inherently a bad thing either. Religion has been on the decline in many ways throughout the world, Europe not excluded in the least, but I don't think that in itself is the problem. There are quite a large number of secular folk who live law abiding, honest lives - hell, I've had some religious people tell me that some of the secular people they know are more pleasant than some of the religious folks they know.
When I look at the issue, the real problem isn't the decline of religiousity - it's what it's being replaced with. Relgion gives people a moral code to live by. While I have my issues with Christianity, there are certainly parts of it that allow a civil society to function. Same can be said for many other religions. People have depended on religion to give them a code to live by for thousands of years, and those who decide to do without have to come up with a code of their own. Next comes the real problem: how do you do that? Some decide their code based on logic, reason, and 'moral intuition', while others just decide to do what feels good at the time because they don't see anything beyond this 'short' life. Most secular people are somewhere inbetween the two, but if secular parents don't raise their children towards the former it's likely they'll end up near the latter. Unfortunately that's happening in a number of secular households.
Of course, let's not lay the blame solely on religious issues - I'm sure a number of these little troublemakers are from religious families and consider themselves religious themselves. There are other things at work, and I think most of them can be solved through proper parenting(secular or religious).
