God is a placebo for the weak, the strong have the force.

As Hindus, talking about religion in India is dangerous. We are instantly labeled as anti secularism, mocked as ' saffron chaddis ' and abuse as ' Hindu Nationalists ', like some Genghis Khan army marauding over all so called ' minorities '. Today, Sir Mark Tully has written how aggressive secularism maybe giving rise to fundamentalism. Tully is an Englishman, who studied at Cambridge, so no Indian would dare to argue with what he says. He trained as a priest and has written on Jesus. He mourns the fact that churches in Britain are empty and there may not be any Christian births in Britain by 2067. This is not intended to be a racist statement, meaning whites will disappear from Britain. What he probably means is that Christians will have become atheists. " It's not as though this secularisation is a sort of placebo that keeps people happy by supplying their material needs. It creates hostility to religion," he writes. In India, it is even worse. We have competitive secularism, characterised by virulent attacks on Hindus, apparently to protect ' minorities '. Religion is not supposed to supply material needs, it is meant to be spiritual. A true believer is meant to renounce all material desires as monks do in Christianity and Sanyasis do in Hinduism. But Tully is right. Humans feel a need for religion when they are poor and powerless. In Britain and in Europe a strong social security net and available healthcare rids everyone of the anxiety of starvation and disease, so there is less need for a god. In the US social security is not so generous and the poor could not afford healthcare because of the costs, until Obamacare came along. It is probably not surprising that Republicans, who are strong believers in religion, want to repeal Obamacare while the conservative press in Britain has mounted a vicious campaign against lazy scroungers who depend on state handouts from birth to death. But Tully should not worry. The global economy is not going to recover. Western nations had grown rich by exploitation of natural resources from Asia, Africa and South America, because of their military superiority. That cannot happen any longer. The earth's resources being finite any robust economic growth will lead to an explosion in prices of commodities, leading to inflation and bringing growth to a halt. But commodities will still be essential. You cannot do without iron, copper, aluminium or plastic. To increase profits costs must be reduced. One way is to generate cheap energy from the sun and wind and the other way is to get rid of humans, by using robots. As the numbers of the poor increase they will turn to religion for comfort and brotherhood. The rich and the powerful will feel god-like. As an Indian politician remarked," Who has seen the next life? Enjoy this one."