I like how you tied these two concepts together.

thanks for this eloquent article. its sad that so many people still believe in God these days..

As an atheist, I like your analysis. As an evolutionist, I wonder whether religiosity may confer some specific benefits that allow such a wasteful error-prone activity to persist so ubiquitously and trenchantly.

It seems to fit with the [religion = fear of death] meme. Faced with cognitive dissonance between wanting to live but going to die, an animistic bias inclines us to resolve the problem by inventing imaginary agents behind it, who can be appeased, giving us an illusion of power and control over the situation. OTOH, accepting the situation as it is requires the more costly strategy of changing our egocentric primitive world-view.

I like this blog, though as has been painstakingly elaborated by Scott Atran, Pascal Boyer, Justin Barret, et al. There is definitely more to believing in God(s). I would recommend going over Counterintuitive concepts, intuitive ontology, etc. Of course, these are pretty esoteric areas and not congenial to a blog.

Yes religion is adaptive. Where would society be without it? When will there be a column that represents a theory of proving god does exist and that's why we have the survival mechanisms we do? It seems kind of bias to me that this article is skewed towards more of an atheistic point of view.

LOL @ Anonymous April 7. Dude, "The Scientific Fundamentalist" is biased towards science? That's so wrong!

I like this error management thing, it works very nicely. I do wonder how the Beavis and Butthead thing works when get hit on without having given so much as a glance to be misinterpreted. I've been told I'm very beautiful by men I hadn't even noticed until they started speaking (and, no, I'm not very beautiful, just a young woman on her own).

I'm also pretty sure that there's more to religion than paranoia. What does evolutionary theory have to say about religious experiences? Ghosts, visions, visitations, God speaking to people, and that kind of thing. They seem pretty widespread, and in many cases no drugs of any kind are involved.

Interesting article. Our experiences correspond to the truth generally, or to put it another way our experiences really occur. This is important for learning and the sciences of course. Our knowledge and experience corresponding to the truth is the result of evolution, which is necessary for things like the sciences, learning, etc.

Anyway, the theory above suggests that evolution can and does favor belief or an understanding of our experiences that does not correspond to the truth, but rather to what is false. the larger implication is that religious belief is not the only delusion favored by evolution. Is evolution suppressing the truth?

I believe man has evolved through his paranoia to have an answer for everything, even if it is only hypothetical, for to not, leaves himself vulnerable.

None of your article even touches on why I believe in God, and I speak for the entire Christian world. I believe because his son, Jesus, was in the flesh on this earth, and there has never been any other person recorded in history who has healed the sick, raised the dead, and returned spiritually himself, all with numerous witnesses. If we believe everything else historically recorded, why not the son of God?

Evolution vs creation....always an interesting theoretical debate. A day in the life of God? Not hardly equal to a day in earth terms, I imagine. I've never heard anyone get excited about the theory of being created to evolve.

Where can I find more information on this subject?

Good article. It is an interesting theory. I think more studies need to be done before we could even apply it as a solid explanation. One issue that needs to be studied is how Men and Woman infer things differently and how this inference difference applies to the "filling the blanks" of unexplained phenomena. It is too early to say this is a leading candidate theory, I am sure theologians can formulate counter points or even reconcile their theology with this theory. Hopefully as more pieces of the puzzle are found more results will come in and something more definitive can be established.

Okay for all the supposed scientists that don't believe in G-d, here is something to chew on. In religion, man is made in G-d's image. However scientists tend to take life as part of some grand equation that can be solved once all the variables have been put in place and tested over and over again. The image that man has been created in, is the same image that allows man to question his/her existence. That image was bestowed on us by our creator. So the simle act of non-religion, absence of belief or otherwise disregard for creator is an act of worship itself. Its in he Quran when the devil (a creation of G-d) shunned man, and was tasked with trying to lead man to stray. The fact that most people believe in G-d is due to the fact that WE WERE CREATED THAT WAY. Dogs, cats, bears, insects, dolphins, sharks, do not worship. Man is G-d intellect in animal form. We have inate (read inborn) capacity for G-d. For those of you who choose to shun this, be my guest. However, science can only take you so far 9very far indeed) but people who claim a scientific basis for atheisim, need to go bark up another tree. I understand that religion has flaws and contradictions (and science doesn't, hello can anyone say unifying theory). but Science is an attempt to understand the link between what we know, what we don't know, just like religion. They are actually based on the same principles, (observation, data collection, theories, tests). In science's case, when G-d the creator is left out of the equation, then the understanding of why and how begins to give way to arrogance. Plus everyone knows that atheists are just a bunch of people who can't come to grips with what everyone else already knows and can see. What do you want some formula that always produces G-d. Ok try gravity, or acceleration or any of the other formulas that G-d ahs put into place to make our lives easier. The order of the universe is what G-d is all about, not churches or mosques or the IRA versus the protestants or the sunnis vs the shites or the reformers versus the hardliners. its about order, get a clue.

Kanazawa on his own theory: "It is a truly general theory". Yes, and that’s the problem!

Kanazawa takes one ‘scientific theory’ (i.e. evolutional paranoia/error management theory), uses it to conduct an experiment on some specific area of life (i.e. how men over-infer a woman's interest in them) and then applies the outcome of that particular experiment to everything! Even belief in God! A God he blatantly doesn’t even understand the basics about because it is easier to live in ignorant bliss.

Kanazawa thinks people rationalise as follows: just in case God is real, and therefore hell is real, it is safer to choose to believe in God than not. However, God is no fool. He looks at the heart. Choosing to believe out of pure logic, based on some kind of internal risk management programme is not faith; it is simply an intellectual conclusion. Kanazawa fails to grasp that when Pascal outlined his theory, he was not arguing that it was the reason behind his genuine belief, but merely an argument for his belief. Indeed, someone with developed paranoia reading the Bible would find no comfort in it, since the God that the New Testament describes can differentiate between paranoia and real faith.

In a similar way to outdated Freudian arguments, Kanazawa claims religiosity is the daughter of neurosis. However, if we only believe in God because of paranoia then why is this paranoia so inconsistent as to have become relatively obsolete in current Western society? Why is it that today the majority of people in England believe in no God compared to a majority of believers forty years ago? How has this paranoia depleted so rapidly in such a short time? Surely this implies a social rather than evolutionary influence over the human being/soul? People in our current, secular society are unlikely to believe that a God was likely since evolutionary theory and social opinion would no longer allow us to assume this. In that case people who believe in God (in 2009) are no longer satisfying paranoia but turning against popular opinion and disregarding public opinion. This suggests an individual with social confidence, strength and a capacity to be untouched by the opinion of others: not common symptoms of paranoia.

Paranoia does not explain why a book written by more than forty authors of diverse backgrounds over the period of 1500 years came into being. Or does Kanazawa believe its authors dreamed up such a consistent story out of paranoia? How does Kanazawa explain the creation of the world, the universe even? There are so many questions that his simplistic argument does not even touch upon. Why? He knows no answers.

Kanazawa believes that humans compare the cost of spending eternity in hell to the minimal amount of time and effort wasted on religious services and regards the latter the lesser of the two evils. This illustrates his total misunderstanding of God. No amount of time spent showing face in church is going to make God think you believe in him any more than a football coach would believe in an avid cricket fan turning up to a football match for the second half. To use Kanazawa's language, the cost of committing the false-negative error or the false-positive error is actually the same in God's eyes. Therefore, it is not actually rational to believe or disbelieve in God. Pure rationality does not give any answers or result in any kind of true belief.

The reason why humans search for God is simply because they intrinsically know that He is a part of who they are. They can only find God by truly finding themselves, as they were made in His reflection. Just as you find yourself by searching within yourself, as opposed to within something external such as travelling the world, hoping to find your place within it, you find God through something internal too. Sure you can see His reflection in leaves and trees and the general beauty He has created, but to truly know Him you must know yourself. You cannot and do not find God because of a paranoia that leads you to “rationally” take the gamble that it is in your best interests to believe in him, just in case he is real. That is not belief at all; its skewed rational thought.

Kanazawa won't believe in God because of anything I explain to him, just as I won't disbelieve in God because of anything Kanazawa tells me. The only way to believe or disbelieve in God is to find out through asking. God assures, "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened." (Matthew 7:7-8)

So if God claims that this is the only way to find him, why decide that he isn’t there to be found based on any other method? It's like going to an electrician and asking him if your plumbing system can be fixed or not? The electrician will say it can’t be fixed because he knows nothing about plumbing. But if you went to the correct source, i.e. a plumber, he would give you the true answer as to whether your plumbing system can be fixed or not. If there is no God, you can only be sure of this by asking, and when asking, truly wanting to receive the answer.