Inverse Correlation between Religion and Development

We can spend all day talking about the finer points of theology, however since there is no reason to believe it to be correct, it seems irrelevant. Honestly what it comes down to is whether religion causes harm to society or not. This debate has been had many time, I might suggest the great debate between Tony Blair and Christopher Hitchens on the topic of "Is religion a force for good in the world?"

Despite the claims, religion does not support secular education, freedom of speech, or the freedom of belief until it is forced to. Take one example, the single greatest cure for poverty known to man. It has worked every time we have tried it, 100% success is not easy to find. It is called the empowerment of women, and without it, a society is destined to make very slow progress, if any. Name me one organized religion which supports the empowerment of women.

Putting that into perspective can be difficult, but I will attempt it. Using a meta analysis of polls over three years from the Gallup organization, we can see the religiosity of the worlds population in this map:

As well as in this one,

You can clearly see the increased religiosity from certain parts of the world, namely, Central and South America, Africa, The Middle East, and South East Asia. In the next map I have the world's Human Development Index, a composite statistic of "Life Expectancy, Education, and Income."

As you are browsing these images, please ask yourselves, which countries contribute to science the most, and to education, and to Human Rights? The most developed countries in the world are the most secular, and the least developed are the countries immersed in superstition and mythology. Countries like Japan and Norway, where religion is in the minority. Of course this is correlation, and I have to ask, what is the connection between religion and retarding the development of society? Perhaps it is the attacks on secular education, or perhaps the lack of critical thinking skills leads to a lack of ingenuity. It could be many things.

Let's take a look at the United States itself.

And based on this poll, where would you guess the highest poverty and the lowest development is?

Of course we can find areas that do not correlate so well, and perhaps the uneducated, poor find solace in religion. Either way we need to be asking these questions more often, because the religiosity of a population may be an indicator of poor education, and also tends to be an indicator of hatred and violence: