God seems to have left His believers as in the modern world the richest and the happiest people and countries seem to be those who do not believe in God. The richest countries of the world are those whose people do not believe in God and call themselves non-believers or atheist. As per the list of countries released by World Bank in 2008, the ten riches countries of the world are  Luxembourg ,  Norway ,  Switzerland,  Ireland,  Denmark ,   Iceland ,  Netherlands ,  Sweden ,  Finland  and Austria. All these richest countries have majority of their population as atheist.

Another list of countries of the top 50 most atheist countries of the world has been published on adherents.com [1]. The top 10 atheist countries are Sweden, Vietnam, Denmark, Norway, Japan, Czech Republic, Finland, France and South Korea. It is evident that exception Vietnam, all other atheist countries are developed countries with highest par capita income in the world.

Thus, it appears that almost all countries with large atheist population are more likely to be prosperous while the countries with highest population of believers like India, Bangladesh and most Islamic Countries are amongst the poorest nations of the world.

God and Money

It has been long believed that God and Money are contradictory to each other and no person can have best of both words. Jesus Christ said very clearly,

"No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money. (Mathew 6:24)

The contradiction between being religious and being rich has been amply demonstrated by evidences cited above. Yet most people aspire to become rich as well as being religious. Yet most religious people develop blind faith on the scriptures and the rituals in the hope that God shall do everything for them. They ignore the dictum that God help those who help themselves. They expect miracles from God to save them rather than working hard to solve their own problem. This often brings them poetry and misery.

There seems to be no reason why a person can not become rich while believing in God. In fact many rich people continue to be religious and often attribute their riches to God. These people make huge donation to the religious organizations and visit to the temple, Mosque and Churches regularly. In the ancient times also, the kings have build temples and many of them known to be deeply religious.

Yet it remains a fact that most people who are religious are poor

What may be the reason for the religious people to remain poor?

Spirituality and Religion

In order to know why religion plays an adverse role in prosperity, it is necessary to understand the difference between the religion and spiritualism. All the great religions were founded by deeply spiritual people. The founder of Christianity was Jesus Christ who was so spiritual that He was called the Son of God. Buddha too discarded his Kingdom to become a Monk and learned the deepest laws of spiritualism by self-enlightenment. Even the Rishis and saints who founded Hinduism were all spiritual people who discarded materialism to understand the non-material reality of the universe. In almost all cases, these great spiritual gurus never formed a religion, but their followers decided to form and sect and lead a life based on the teachings of their Masters. Gradually these followers used to be called believers and they together formed a religion.   

However, most of the followers could not understand the true teachings of their founders but understood only the words which were often complied in the form of a Scripture. Thus instead of becoming like their Masters by following the ideals of their masters, they followed their words from the Scripture. Thus they followed the rituals without understanding the purpose and did not try to transform themselves to become like their masters. It would be evident from the fact that the followers of nonviolent Christ (Christians) fought amongst themselves in the two World Wars and killed hundreds of millions of fellow Christian.

On the other side, the people who understand the true meaning of their religion are often perceived to be irreligious and atheist as they do not follow the words of the religion. These people, however, understand the Reality better as they refuse to follow the words of the Scriptures. Thus the people who did not believe in God may still be spiritual as they could understand the non-material aspect of God.

According to the most recent relevant Eurostat Eurobarometer poll, in 2005 [2], 52% of European Union citizens responded that "they believe there is a God", whereas 27% answered that "they believe there is some sort of spirit or life force" and 18% that "they do not believe there is a spirit, God, nor life force".

However, this survey has shown large variation in the population who are spiritual i.e. they believed in spirit of life force. The countries which had the lowest and largest population of “spiritual” people were

Estonia:            54%

Sweden:           53%

Czech Republic: 50%

Latvia:              49%

Denmark:         49%

Iceland:            48%

Norway:           47%

Poland: 15%

Portugal:           12%

Romania:          8%

Cyprus:            7%

Malta:               3%

Turkey: 2%

It is evident that the countries on the top are those where the majority of the people are spiritual. These countries are also the richest countries of the Europe while those on the bottom are poorest in Europe.

Thus it is evident that the reason for the prosperity of the countries where people do not believe in God is not because they are “Atheist” but because they are “Spiritual”.

Understanding Religion Correctly

Religions are full of symbolisms that are used to develop the intuitive mind of the man. Scriptures have to be understood intuitively and not logically. For example, Jesus used following words to explain to his disciples the power of faith

"Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, Why could we not cast it out? He said to them, Because of your little faith. For truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, Move from here to there, and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you." (Matthew 17:19-20)

Yet most people take the words of the Scriptures as Gospel Truth expecting a mountain to move when they say so rather than getting the proper meaning of the words. They expect miracle from the religion like they would expect the mountain to move, if they say so. When this does not happen, instead of trying to know the true meaning of the words, they blame themselves as being not faithful. Thus they never learned the spirit of the religion and continued to wait for the miracle of God to solve their problem. The poverty in religious people is not due to their faith but due to their blind faith which does not allow them to see the truth of the scriptures in its proper spirit.

Beware of Blind Faith

The purpose of religion is to make the people aware of the reality which is nonmaterial. It is for this reason that faith or believe in initially necessary to follow a religion. However, the true purpose of religion is to make a person realize the Absolute Reality which consists of Material and Spiritual Reality. The observance of the mere words of a scripture is nothing more than Idol worship that is prohibited in every religion. Lord Buddha had therefore warned man to have blind faith. He said,

“Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own commonsense".

Reference:

[1]        (Zuckerman, 2005) Top 50 Countries With Highest Proportion of Atheists / Agnostics  URL: http://www.adherents.com/largecom/com_atheist.html

[2]        Wikipedia , “Demographics of atheism” URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_atheism