A comparison between three maps of the world indicating three different information ,
1- the irreligious population percentage
2- percentage of people living below national poverty line
3- literacy rates

you can simply find that the most religious countries usually have the highest Illiteracy and poverty rates , and vise versa .
almost the same applies when talking about other sides like economical development , classification as 1st,3rd world countries ....etc
minimal exceptions can always be found .

References :
http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism#mediaviewer/File:Irreligion_map.png
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Dwrcan#mediaviewer/File:World_literacy_map_UNHD_2007_2008.png
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a6/Percent_poverty_world_map.png

yes, when men lean on their own understanding, they reward themselves more favorably and control and oppress others who do not,,,

the most powerful could be correlated to the most greedy and self centered and , often , the better educated and compensated,,

just a flip side to argument on correlations which these maps serve to attempt to show

You do know this is only recent, a 1000 years ago the non-religious countries had nothing, all of your knowledge were from the middle east, only after the west industrialized did the west become more wealthy, they colonized a lot, wiped out America, colonized Africa, same with middle east and ever since the regions have gone downhill.

Even now, the west only has more money, if you were to go live with Muslims in Iran for example, you would know how friendly and kind they are, imagine how savage the western population would be if they were living below the poverty line, but in Afghanistan, you can leave a pile of your money in the street and no body would steal, that is just a part of the other qualities besides wealth which exists today.

Also, please remember that everything is not about money, if western governments stop inciting sectarianism, those religious countries would actually have a chance to develop.

It's your own Muslim Factions who have been killing each other for1200years,over nothing!
Stop blaming the West for your sectarian Warfare!
The West didn't create Shia,Sunni and all the lesser Muslim Sects!

always the same excuse ... the same conspiracy theory , they can't just admit that the problem lies in their ideology itself ... they still wish to occupy the whole globe with a sward , even if the price was to eliminate all non-muslims on earth , so you either be a muslim or a one way ticket to hell is provided by the mujahideen

...!!!