[ExI] atheists/religion

[John Clark]

On Sun, Aug 2, 2020 at 6:11 PM Keith Henson via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

*> Being religious is such a  widespread psychological trait that (in terms
> of evolution) it must have been selected at sometime in our past.*


Not necessarily. I've heard various arguments that suggest religion confers
some sort of evolutionary advantage but I've never found them to be very
convincing; the same thing could be said for arguments to explain the near
universal appeal of music, the most abstract of all the arts. It could be
that neither confers an advantage to individuals or to groups of any sort,
they could be evolutionary spandrels, byproducts of other traits that do
confirm an advantage.

John K Clark
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