"How God got started", how god belief + basic reason + writing -> modern humans?

[Whateverist]

On a personal note, I really do not understand this obsession with showing that faith and reason are not compatible. Nevertheless, Whateverist, if there is some particular point within the article you find interesting, I would be happy to drill down on it.

I didn't read this closely enough.  

I don't think the article argues that they are not compatible.  The author argues that everyone utilizes reason just as dolphins utilize echo location.  But reason can be put in the service of any purpose and always operates on the premises we select.  Reason can be put in the service of faith as easily as anything else, as you, Aquinas and others have shown. 

The motivation for using reason to that end has always been there, but there had been no need so long as everyone was polytheistic and harbored no expectation that everyone else would perceive the same gods they did or perform the same rituals in the same way.  But in the face of a growing acceptance of secular reason, I suppose those philosophers with a high regard for the gods would have been motivated to deduce (notice I don't say fabricate) a place for gods outside the natural world.  For them, the gods are givens/premises and so we get the supernatural and the rest.  What this author and I are after is a natural account of how the emergence of secular reasoning may have pushed polytheism to monotheism.