We are “the only country in the world, apart from Kuwait, that is both wealthy and religious,” Wolfe writes.

I can think of a few other examples that aren’t on the graph, but would probably be in the upper-right quadrant: Qatar, UAE, Brunei, Singapore… to name a few.

The pattern, as seen in the Pew study and a number of other sources, is hard to miss: when God and Mammon collide, Mammon usually wins.

Or God wins. Depends on which end of the chart you are looking at.
Stupid statement.
What you CAN glean from the chart is merely that they conflict. There is a clear patter of inverse relationship between the 2, but God seems to be winning on one end and Mammon on the other.

Perhaps. But I think there’s a better way of interpreting the apparent fluke of the U.S.’s place on this chart:

I think one shouldn’t go overboard in describing American wealth.

America as a country may be extremely wealthy. But that wealth is largely, and increasingly, in the hands of a few. There’s a great deal of poverty in the U.S. — a shameful amount for such a wealthy country. And while the American middle class is relatively comfortable on a day to day basis (certainly compared to, say, Senegal), middle-class Americans also live with a high degree of anxiety and struggle. They — we — tend to work over-long and exhausting hours; send our kids to increasingly crappy public schools; are just one or two paychecks away from financial disaster; have lousy health insurance and could be wiped out by a single bad injury or illness, have lousy retirement, ditto. Etc. etc. etc.

If the health, happiness, prosperity and security of a society leads to less religion — as I think is very likely — then I don’t think a highly religious U.S. is a fluke or an outlier. I think it fits the pattern perfectly.

If there’s one thing that the Ron Paul debacle proved, it’s that

…there’s a lot of forum trolls who think that being libertarian is cool?

The graph is cool but I think it shows a correlation between wealth and religiosity, which is a by-product of something else. I interpret it as a cause-effect, mostly positive feedback relationship between progress and secularism. Countries who have gone through the historical, European-led Industrial Revolution are all on the bottom half of the chart. Countries that have played a game of catch-up with the West in terms of technology, say, South Korea and Japan, are on the bottom half of the chart. Israel is an immigrant country founded and mainly peopled by Europeans. Modernization, in the technological, economic, and scientific manner seen in Europe since ~1800, appears to lead to a decrease in religious control of life.

So if, say, Ethiopia needs to become less religious, it needs to do it’s best impression of a First World, industrialized nation. This will be a good thing, if we can learn how to bring the rest of the world up to modern standards in some sustainable fashion.

The U.S. is an outlier but I like how the article defines American religiousness: it’s prevalent, but shallow. Sometimes it seems like the only people who actually understand the religion they claim to avow are fighting internet battles with friendly atheists. That seems like an American tradition: we’re very willing to say we’re in favor of something that sounds good (religion, science, democracy, history) but when you quiz the average person about any of those subjects, you realize that we don’t know much.

The explosion of secular material freely available in readily digestable form (e.g., YouTube). The religions have been able to sheid young people from counter arguments in the past, but that is now changing.

That’s a very good point, and I hope it has a significant effect on our society. If there’s one thing that the Ron Paul debacle proved, it’s that YouTube definitely does not reflect mainstream America, but it does, as you say, reach many (most?) young Americans, and if they become increasingly secular, that’s the direction our country will inevitably take as they come of age. Hopefully.

Of course, as I’ve said on the forums, I was deconverted by a good, old-fashioned paper book. If my mom had had any idea, she probably would have burned it.

What the various graphs don’t show is that the nonaffiliated group is going to grow a lot quicker than many people anticipate. Why? Two key trends:
1) The explosion of secular material freely available in readily digestable form (e.g., YouTube). The religions have been able to sheid young people from counter arguments in the past, but that is now changing. Moreover, the media in which the material is available is more heavily consumed by young people. The result will be an accelarated decline in the number of young people sticking with the religion of their parents.
2) “% religious” data is almost always presented in aggregate across the population. This masks the fact that there is already a great disparity between the religiousity of the young and old. And old people have a tendancy of dying. There is currently a massive blip in the age distribution of many western nations: the baby boomers. Expect a corresponding negative ‘blip’ in “% religious” figures when those folks reach their mortal limit.

Religion requires a critical mass to sustain itself (because it is bullshit, so the main way people keep their belief is to rely on social proof – “so many other people believe it too, it must be true”). When that critical mass is shredded by the above two trends, a tipping point will likely occur.

…Of course, the religious will see this as one more sign that the end is nigh, which will make them even more dangerous.