"Sex is the new God."

So says Danielle Pouliot (who, full disclosure, is my girlfriend) on her new blog, Little Miss Anthropy.

She explains:

Sex is worshipped; life revolves around It; we obsess over ways to please It (or, at least, someone who may give It to us); and we abandon the benefactor when things don't go our way.

As to that last point, there might also be a parallel going the other way: people may perversely cling to the "benefactor" when it/he/she abuses them.

Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart argue in their book Sacred and Secular that religiosity is inversely correlated with "existential security." That is, the more secure you are in your basic existence, the more likely it is that your existence is a secular one. (They concede that the United States is a glaring exception to this general rule, but they say it's just that -- an exception.)

They describe people with low existential security as

more vulnerable populations, especially in poorer countries, [that] chronically face life-threatening risks linked with malnutrition and lack of access to clean water; they are relatively defenseless against HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases, and against natural disasters; they lack effective public healthcare and education; and their life expectancies are low and their child mortality rates are high. Despite the spread of electoral democracy during the last decade, these problems tend to be compounded by lack of good governance, disregard for human rights, gender inequality and ethnic conflict, political instability, and ultimately state failure. (217-218)

Their empirical data from around the world show that these countries tend to be the most religious.