Writing in The New Scientist, Dr Nicolas Baumard and his colleagues claim a wealthier general population undermines the need for "moralising religions" to control people's behaviours, such as their appetite for resources and procreation.
The study follows the development of Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism and Buddhism over the last 2,500 years and concludes major religions emerged in response to lifestyle differences between the rich and the poor.
It claimed wealth saw people develop "slower" lifestyles and led to more laid back lives with greater social co-operation, putting them at a disadvantage to poorer families who typically had larger families and more aggressively gathered resources ("faster" lifestyles).
Dr Nicolas Baumard: "To most people, believers and non-believers alike, it seems obvious that religion is on the side of the spiritual rather than the material world and that it fosters self-discipline and selflessness rather than license and greed."
"As more and more people become affluent and adopt a slow strategy, the need to morally condemn fast strategies decreases, and with it the benefit of holding religious beliefs that justify doing so.
"If this is true, and our environment continues to improve, then like the Greco-Roman religions before them, Christianity and other moralising religions could eventually vanish."