Is belief in God a natural instinct ?

[festive1]

Of course it's applicable to evolution. A shared culture (including religion) helps people to form a cohesive society, which allows larger, biologically sustainable groups to form. Want a modern-day reference? Look at the Amish. They are a relatively small group that only marries and therefore mates within itself. Because of this, they have become susceptible to genetic mutations. In this group, it's having more than 10 fingers. Compared to the general public, the Amish have this trait in greater percentages.

Huh? This has nothing to do with my point. To clarify, I'm pointing out that fitting data into patterns is a big part of the study of evolution.

I'm pointing out that the Amish are evolving extra fingers because their reproductive population is too small. Genetic diversity is a good way of ensuring that recessive traits (like having extra fingers) remain recessive. This seems to me to be putting data (Amish people having a higher incidence of extra fingers) to evolution (in this example from having too small a population to maintain the genetic health of said population).

[John V]

[Ryantology]

Religion is 'fitting completely fabricated bullshit to patterns', as 'data' implies something observed to actually exist.

So, even if the methodology of evolution is fundamentally flawed, this does not change the fact that in the very best of scenarios, religion is only entirely useless in uncovering the truth of reality. As we all know perfectly well, religion often works (hard) to drag humanity's understanding of the world back to the bronze age in which it was fabricated.

You have a ton of nerve questioning the methods of science when your preferred explanation is "MAGICAL SKY DADDY SNAPPED HIS FINGERS AND EXISTENCE HAPPENED".

[The Grand Nudger]

http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/clad/clad1.html

After you've read through the pages on the implications and methodologies, you will be armed in the ways of cladistics. Therefore, if you dare, you can take a journey into the real world of cladistics. Should you choose to venture on this journey, pray you are well-armed with good luck and wits!
...
There are three basic assumptions in cladistics:

Any group of organisms are related by descent from a common ancestor.
There is a bifurcating pattern of cladogenesis.
Change in characteristics occurs in lineages over time.
The first assumption is a general assumption made for all evolutionary biology. It essentially means that life arose on earth only once, and therefore all organisms are related in some way or other. Because of this, we can take any collection of organisms and determine a meaningful pattern of relationships, provided we have the right kind of information. Again, the assumption states that all the diversity of life on earth has been produced through the reproduction of existing organisms...

Did you want to have a conversation about cladistics instead of evolution John? Or - is some part of that supposed to support your previous statements? If so, would you care to highlight which part and why you think it does so?

[Angrboda]

[mr.atheist]

That is interesting,thanks for sharing.