Greetings,
format_quote Originally Posted by
aamirsaab
Indeed it can. It all depends on the case as opposed to correlation itself (as certain graphs attempt to do)
In relation to this thread, low wealth can cause high religiosity - but low religiosity is not a cause of high wealth.
True. I am certainly very aware of that last point myself!
Oddly enough, Max Weber's famous work of sociology,
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism argues, in a precisely opposite vein to these statistics, that it was actually religiously-inculcated attitudes to work that gave rise to modern capitalism, and therefore greater wealth. While that may be historically true, I don't think that such a trend has continued since the major spread of capitalism in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
It would be interesting to see if there is also a link between religiosity and education level. I am convinced there is, but I would predict that the statistics would not show this as clearly as the wealth-related ones in this thread seem to do.
Peace