Importance of Religion and other effects

“The tendency to turn human judgments into divine commands makes religion one of the most dangerous forces in the world.”

- Anonymous

I begen to write this article with an assumption that religion is still an overwhelmingly accepted practice across the world. So, I decided to analyze some of the indirect effects religion has had on some countries.

Below is the list of countries twenty countries, sorted in increasing order of importance of religion. I created this list by using the entire list from here. I selected the top 10 and bottom 10 which from this list. Then, I added other parameters such as ‘per capita income’, and ‘literacy rate’ of these corresponding countries.

Country	% Population Religion NOT important	Literacy rate	Per Capita income (USD)
Estonia	78%	99.8%	$21,942
Sweden	83%	99.5%	$41,300
Denmark	80.5%	99.5%	$40,990
Czech Republic	74.5%	99%	$ 26,046
Norway	78%	100%	$61,882
Hong Kong	75.5%	93.5%	$49,990
Japan	75%	99%	$34,295
United Kingdom	73%	99%	$34,495
Finland	70%	100%	$38,094
France	69.5%	99%	$34,933
Tanzania	3.5%	69.4%	$1521
UAE	8.5%	77.9%	$48,222
Qatar	4.5%	96.3%	$88,919
Bahrain	3.5%	94.6%	$23,691
Bangladesh	0%	56.8%	$1788
Indonesia	0%	90.3%	$4668
Sri Lanka	1%	61.1%	$5620
Egypt	2%	72%	$6324
Congo	5.5%	66.8%	$375
Somalia	1.5%	37.8%	$547

There are several conclusions one can draw based on the above data. However, to avoid inviting arguments or clarifications, I will withhold my conclusions. So, I will leave it to the reader’s wisdom to draw the suitable conclusion.