Religion adaptive?
In the recent study, Deliver Us From Evil: Religion as Insurance those who are religious were found to have greater life satisfaction, " and that religion does insure against some adverse life events. All denominations suffer less psychological harm from unemployment than do the non-religious; equally both Catholics and Protestants are less hurt by marital separation ." As someone who is non-religious I can believe this. And yet this does not conflict with one of the four messages in Richard Dawkins ' The God Delusion : " Atheists can [emphasis added] be happy, balanced, moral, and intellectually fulfilled " - Wikipedia. This study is just suggesting that religious people are likely to be happier than atheists, for whatever reasons. I am wondering if religion might be something that might even be selected-for in self-aware organisms. For entities whose cognition is oriented around exploring and explaining things, religion may be adaptive in dealing with th...