42% of Americans believe creationist view of human origins. They believe god created humans in their present form 10,000 years ago. Such a shocking and depressing news!
The poor countries are the most religious countries. Most people living in the poor countries say, religion is an important part in their daily lives. Some of the poor countries are not religious though, because their governments restricted religious expression for decades. They grew up as non-religious.
The United States is one of the rich countries that is an exception.
About two-thirds of Americans — 65% — say religion is important in their daily lives. Among high-income countries, only Italians, Greeks, Singaporeans, and residents of the oil-rich Persian Gulf states are more likely to say religion is important.
Most high-income countries are further down the religiosity spectrum. In 10 countries, no more than 34% of residents say religion is an important part of their daily lives. Six of those are developed countries in Europe and Asia with per-capita incomes greater than $25,000.
We can see that religiosity is strongly related to poverty. Not long ago, Bangladesh was created as a secular country, now people of Bangladesh are more religious than people of Saudi Arabia.
But still it is hard for me to find correlation between poverty and religiosity. I think, religion is most able to thrive in seriously dysfunctional societies. Most poor countries are having dysfunctional societies. Religion is popular in dysfunctional societies where people are anxious about their daily lives, so they’re looking for god’s help to end their misery.
Highly religious countries are not highly successful socially.
A researcher said, ‘it’s not fear of death that drives poor people to be religious, and it’s not a god gene or a god module in the brain or some sort of connection with the gods, it’s basically a psychological coping mechanism.’ Probably he is right.
The USA is a highly technological science-based country, but almost half of its citizens deny basic science. Unlike poor countries, it does not have dysfunctional societies, but its citizens are religious. Maybe not only societal dysfunction, but some other reasons make people believe in creationism, not in evolution. The gap between the rich and the poor in the USA is bigger than that of Europe. There is a 3rd world inside the wealthy USA. That poor 3rd world is dangerously religious. The people living in that 3rd world don’t have proper education and good standard of living. Most likely that is the reason for huge number of Americans to become religious, in order to improve their condition with the help of god.