Without God is the World Hopeless?

In a journal that I am reading, the question that the author reveals is that whether everything becomes permissible because there is no hope for humanity or no good in the world. Does the world become unruly and see no truth. He explains that without faith people act differently, almost in a lawless fashion. A type of chaos is exposed throughout this by representing an atheist type of belief. Is it safe to say that without religion, there can be no goodness? As Augustine argues, he says that without any goodness, there is lies evil. While this may be true, I wonder whether its correlation to religious faith carries any truth behind the statements.