Garbage. I'll make three points: Once again, the Times "selects" from a group of people who already agree with this theory, and fails to ask actual evolutionary scientists who are critical of it what they think. Gotta love the "balance." Also, this piece mostly fails to apply the "logic" of the theory to non-monotheistic religions, implying that monotheistic belief is what is being "proven" here. Finally, group selection is bunk. Quoth Dawkins in this piece (and I suppose I should be grateful it got included) “sheer, wanton, head-in-bag perversity.” That's rather established in evolutionary biology, and it's irresponsible for the Times to treat it as accepted, peer-endorsed, current theory.

As the article notes, theories like these could be applied to human belief in Marxism, capitalism, musicality...the theory that evolution can explain religious belief still has a long way to go, and this one is already headed in the wrong direction. It would've been nice to see the Times include analysis from a couple of non-believing scientists, but I guess those folks were just too hard to find. And this really pissed me off:

What can be made of atheists, then? If the evolutionary view of religion is true, they have to work hard at being atheists, to resist slipping into intrinsic habits of mind that make it easier to believe than not to believe. Atran says he faces an emotional and intellectual struggle to live without God in a nonatheist world, and he suspects that is where his little superstitions come from, his passing thought about crossing his fingers during turbulence or knocking on wood just in case. It is like an atavistic theism erupting when his guard is down. The comforts and consolations of belief are alluring even to him, he says, and probably will become more so as he gets closer to the end of his life. He fights it because he is a scientist and holds the values of rationalism higher than the values of spiritualism.

This internal push and pull between the spiritual and the rational reflects what used to be called the “God of the gaps” view of religion. The presumption was that as science was able to answer more questions about the natural world, God would be invoked to answer fewer, and religion would eventually recede. Research about the evolution of religion suggests otherwise. No matter how much science can explain, it seems, the real gap that God fills is an emptiness that our big-brained mental architecture interprets as a yearning for the supernatural. The drive to satisfy that yearning, according to both adaptationists and byproduct theorists, might be an inevitable and eternal part of what Atran calls the tragedy of human cognition.

No, atheists don't have to "work hard" to fail to entertain religious beliefs, believers have to ignore a great deal of reality to sustain belief. It takes far more mental effort to believe that the Flying Spagetti Monster is real, than it does not to. The "struggle" we face is the constant hounding, derision, and discrimination we receive from believers, who make it very, very difficult for us to receive equal treatment in a society of believers. Most of us don't bitch about it, but once again I'm reminded of the projection-prone Republicans, who maintain that Christians are somehow an oppressed minority constantly battling all powerful atheists, when the reverse is true.

Belief is "comforting," but then again, so is pot. One of the reasons I don't believe is because it frees my mind to apply logic and rationality full bore, something religion inherently limits. Like pot. And I like the way the author concludes the article by strongly implying that this theory, not truly held by a majority of evolutionary scientists, is somehow now fact. "No matter how much science can explain..." = Dog Whistle. Blatant pandering to the fundies, who are so smug that science is honest enough to embrace the term "theory," the use of which then allows them to dismiss those theories despite literal mountains of evidence that support them.

I am not "empty," nor do I entertain constant "yearnings" that only religion can satisfy. I know that may be hard for some to imagine or understand, but it is true. I am also moral, faithful, honest and charitable. Which is what I'm being by keeping this post short, and not boring you all with dense evolutionary theory and selections from scientific journals, which would show just how marginal this sort of work truly is.

But then again, I don't really have to, do I? Because the Times and the rest of the SCLM have proven, ahem, beyond doubt, that when it comes to science and religion, the latter will always be "more right." Gotta keep those fundies happy, no matter how much it causes us to fall back into the intellectual dark ages.