Generally Speaking, There is an Inverse Relationship Between A Nation's Religiosity and It's Wealth

Echoing some of the themes from The Lessons of Terror, by Caleb Carr:

• Politics, technology, military capacity, and diseases have all played decisive roles in shaping history, yet it is impossible to understand the rise and fall of empires, the clash of civilizations, and the evolving balance of power without appreciating the unique fervor that religion inspires, and the speed with which new religions can spread"

• "...religious leaders prone to fanaticism are likely to find that the price of using force to spread God’s word, or to try to monopolize it, will be a greatly diminished hold on the future. Moreover, the future may come sooner than we think. We have seen how rapidly religion has spread in the past, claiming adherents from competing faiths before the competition knew what hit them. Both secularism and secularly inspired ways of being religious are spreading just as rapidly—maybe even more so. Historians may one day look back on the next few decades, not as yet another era when religious conflicts enveloped countries and blew apart established societies, but as the era when secularization took over the world."

Alan Wolfe's piece in The Atlantic is well worth the full read.
- posted by john @ 12:32 PM