Religion could be one of the false beliefs that piggybacks on evolution.
Take yourself in a position of our ancestors who mostly lived in nature among wild animals and if you hear a rustle in the bushes, you’re more likely to survive (or get food) if you believe it came from another animal or a monster than from a gust of wind. These beliefs about conscious agents in nature can easily be transferred to things like lightning and earthquakes. Because our ancestors lacked naturalistic explanations for such things, conjectures about supernatural humanlike beings or spirits might follow.
So our evolved cognitive apparatus gives us a propensity to accept religious propositions such as God, the afterlife, and the soul, and those specific beliefs are learned.
Therefore it’s no surprise that children in India come to believe in multiple deities, while those in Alabama in the divinity of Jesus.
So it is a feature that, while sometimes useful, was not itself the object of natural selection, but piggybacked on features that evolved for other reasons.
Remember, there is no gene for God.
Take yourself in a position of our ancestors who mostly lived in nature among wild animals and if you hear a rustle in the bushes, you’re more likely to survive (or get food) if you believe it came from another animal or a monster than from a gust of wind. These beliefs about conscious agents in nature can easily be transferred to things like lightning and earthquakes. Because our ancestors lacked naturalistic explanations for such things, conjectures about supernatural humanlike beings or spirits might follow.
So our evolved cognitive apparatus gives us a propensity to accept religious propositions such as God, the afterlife, and the soul, and those specific beliefs are learned.
Therefore it’s no surprise that children in India come to believe in multiple deities, while those in Alabama in the divinity of Jesus.
So it is a feature that, while sometimes useful, was not itself the object of natural selection, but piggybacked on features that evolved for other reasons.
Remember, there is no gene for God.
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
