The belief instinct the psychology of souls, destiny, and the meaning of life
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An evolutionary psychologist examines humans' belief in God and argues that it evolved in the species as an "adaptive illusion" that originally had an evolutionary purpose, now outdated, that ensured the survival of the human race.
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The primary idea Bering presents is that theological beliefs serve a crucial evolutionary and present us with an “adaptive illusion”, a useful trait that we humans have evolved over time. In other words, humanity is evolutionarily hard-wired for a belief in God. Why is this useful? The belief in a supernatural being that monitors and judges us always encouraged early humans who were:
impulsive, hedonistic, and uninhibited
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contrary to what many atheists tend to believe . . . at least some form of religious belief and behaviour would . . . probably appear spontaneously on a desert island untouched by cultural transmission.
atheism is more a verbal muzzling of God–a conscious, executively made decision to reject one's own intuitions about a faceless übermind involved in our personal affairs–than it is a true cognitive exorcism....This doesn't make us weak, ridiculous, or even foolish. It just makes us human.
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