09.06.09
God gene nonsense
The idea has emerged from studies of the way children’s brains develop and of the workings of the brain during religious experiences. They suggest that during evolution groups of humans with religious tendencies began to benefit from their beliefs, perhaps because they tended to work together better and so stood a greater chance of survival.
This is more of the ‘god gene’ stupidity that seems to obsess some Darwinians.
Man’s general spiritual nature, whatever we mean by that, hardly arose via natural selection, as portrayed above, therefore the thesis remains up in the air.
The point is that man’s evolutionary psychology is far more complex than reductionists will allow, and this might well result in theistic beliefs. Or non-theistic, religious beliefs!