My observation: as long as there are vivid dreams and near death experiences there will be religion.

As long as there are real and unexplained super powers, such as automatic writing, there will be religion.

As long as there are mystical experiences and visions there will be religion.

It may be that there are rational explanations for all these things but when experienced first hand and personally these powerful and mysterious things will spontaneously generate religion.

Spirituality is the emergent behavior of a complex neural network that is the human mind. It could have been the unintended consequence of the evolution of humans in response to external threats, instead of claws and teeth we developed the ability to plan. This may have resulted in self-awareness and spirituality. Regardless of how it happened, it did happen, therefore while we may be able to speculate about the mechanism of the development of spirituality, the more important question is "why?" What does it mean to be a spiritual being in contrast to the rest of all living beings? To dismiss this debate as meaningless like Richard Dawkins is to deny the very thing that makes us human.

Botom Line:
Religion, mankind's Bane, was and still is an outgrowth fear of the environment and of human ignorance.

"Jung wrote that God is an archetype, meaning that the human brain is hardwired to perceive or believe in a "God"."

I find that strange for two reasons. First, monotheism is a relatively recent development, and there still are many polytheistic religions, so that suggests that any hardwiring wouldn't necessarily be monotheistic. Second, I have never perceived god-beings or believed in their existence. Even when I read the Bible for recreation in high school, I approached the idea of a god-being as an intellectual concept. Then and now, I didn't hold a belief either way (gods existing or gods not existing).

After looking over CCNL1's review of angels, it would seem there is more actual evidence for the existence of angels than for the evolution of religion story. Perhaps there is a God that is revealed by divine messegers after all.

Mr Wade, you say;

"When a human behavior is ancient and universal, it's reasonable to suspect it may be part of the mind's innate furniture, placed there by evolution because it favored survival.
Religion is found in every society in the world, so is the human mind wired up to believe in gods, and if so does this diminish the value or standing of religion?"
------------
I say;

Religion was born out of ignorance. Our ancient ancestors would have known nothing except how to hunt, gather and procreate. All else was confusion and fear.
They believed the sun was a god, and the clouds were his messages in the sky. They believed that everything around them MEANT something. They sought signs and omens everywhere. They were superstitious to a fault. They saw gods in everything, not because they were wired-up to believe in a god, but because they didn't know any better. Even Dawkins would have believed in gods back then. But we know better. We have science now and have no need to fill our heads with superstitious mumbo-jumbo.

There is nothing inherently illogical about looking for evolutionary roots for religious behavior, nor there is nothing anything inherently threatening to religion itself about such a quest -- after all, science considered as a behavior (or at least an ability) also has some evolutionary history, and nobody thinks that it is invalidated by that fact.

But as a science-educated person I am struck by the feebleness of the hard evidence for evolved-religion views, as for so much evolutionary psychology. There is precious little specific data on causality here: mostly just the observation that religion is ubiquitous (yet strangely evaporable, too, as the European modern era shows, and that seems rarely to be commented on), and that according to a certain plausible class of narratives, this might have a natural-selective explanation. Sure it could, but does it? Without much more data, isn't it a classic Just So Story?

No matter how plausible the notion, in science, plausibility is not enough. The deeply hypothetical nature of natural-selective claims about religious behavior should be underlined, highlighted, and sky-written.

"So effective was religion in fostering the survival of early groups, that all societies that lacked it eventually perished."

And what evidence is there for that broad-based statement?

Jung wrote that God is an archetype, meaning that the human brain is hardwired to perceive or believe in a "God".

That we're hardwired that way does not, of course, prove the truth or validity of the perception.

There is nothing inherently illogical about looking for evolutionary roots for religious behavior, nor there is nothing anything inherently threatening to religion itself about such a quest -- after all, science considered as a behavior (or at least an ability) also has some evolutionary history, and nobody thinks that it is invalidated by that fact.

But as a science-educated person I am struck by the feebleness of the hard evidence for evolved-religion views, as for so much evolutionary psychology. There is precious little specific data on causality here: mostly just the observation that religion is ubiquitous (yet strangely evaporable, too, as the European modern era shows, and that seems rarely to be commented on), and that according to a certain plausible class of narratives, this might have a natural-selective explanation. Sure it could, but does it? Without much more data, isn't it a classic Just So Story?

No matter how plausible the notion, in science, plausibility is not enough. The deeply hypothetical nature of natural-selective claims about religious behavior should be underlined, highlighted, and sky-written.

"For if religion was favored by the forces of natural selection, that means it provided some critical benefit to early human societies and their successors."

So did thievery, pillaging, and rape. Look at the Norsemen, the Huns, the goths, the romans ... these barbaric and primitive things benefited their societies for centuries upon centuries.

We've been able to purge ourselves, for the most part, of these kinds of evil behaviors and beliefs. We only have a little ways to go before we can be free of this one last primitive barbarity.

Mr. Wade (not Dr. or Professor Wade) appears to be making a pitch for his book but without the proper education is this fellow's book worth purchasing???

Actually, the item all religions require for survival is the "pretty, wingie, talking thingie" aka angel connection to their god(s).

To wit:

Joe Smith had his Moroni.

Jehovah Witnesses have their Jesus /Michael the archangel, the first angelic being created by God;

Mohammed had his Gabriel (this "tinkerbell" got around).

Jesus and his family had Michael, Gabriel, and Satan, the latter being a modern day demon of the demented.

The Abraham-Moses myths had their Angel of Death and other "no-namers" to do their dirty work or other assorted duties.

Contemporary biblical and religious scholars have relegated these "pretty wingie thingies" to the myth pile. We should do the same to include deleting all references to them in our religious operating manuals. Doing this will eliminate the prophet/profit/prophecy status of these founders and put them where they belong as simple humans just like the rest of us.

Some added references to "tinker bells".

"Latter-day Saints also believe that Michael the Archangel was Adam (the first man) when he was mortal, and Gabriel lived on the earth as Noah."

Apparently hallucinations did not stop with Joe Smith.

continued below:

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07049c.htm
"This belief in guardian angels can be traced throughout all antiquity; pagans, like Menander and Plutarch (cf. Euseb., "Praep. Evang.", xii), and Neo-Platonists, like Plotinus, held it. It was also the belief of the Babylonians and Assyrians, as their monuments testify, for a figure of a guardian angel now in the British Museum once decorated an Assyrian palace, and might well serve for a modern representation; while Nabopolassar, father of Nebuchadnezzar the Great, says: "He (Marduk) sent a tutelary deity (cherub) of grace to go at my side; in everything that I did, he made my work to succeed."

Catholic monks and Dark Age theologians also did their share of hallucinating:

"TUBUAS-A member of the group of angels who were removed from the ranks of officially recognized celestial hierarchy in 745 by a council in Rome under Pope Zachary. He was joined by Uriel, Adimus, Sabaoth, Simiel, and Raguel."

And tinker bells go way, way back:

"In Zoroastrianism there are different angel like creatures. For example each person has a guardian angel caled Fravashi. They patronize human being and other creatures and also manifest god’s energy. Also, the Amesha Spentas have often been regarded as angels, but they don't convey messages, but are rather emanations of Ahura Mazda ("Wise Lord", God); they appear in an abstract fashion in the religious thought of Zarathustra and then later (during the Achaemenid period of Zoroastrianism) became personalized, associated with an aspect of the divine creation (fire, plants, water...)."

"The beginnings of the biblical belief in angels must be sought in very early folklore. The gods of the Hittites and Canaanites had their supernatural messengers, and parallels to the Old Testament stories of angels are found in Near Eastern literature. "

"The 'Magic Papyri' contain many spells to secure just such help and protection of angels. From magic traditions arose the concept of the guardian angel. "

For added information see the review at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angel

Hmmm, "Carstonio"? Again where have we seen that ID before. Ahh, now I remember, it is on the list of possible imposters that typically abound on anonymous blogs.

"Humans have lived for most of their existence as hunters and gatherers, in small bands no larger than 150 people. These bands, to judge from surviving hunter gatherers, had no chiefs and were fiercely egalitarian."

This is the most jaw-dropping sentence in the whole essay. Which surviving hunter-gatherers? I can't think of a single example, although there may be one somewhere.

American Indians had chiefs, as do African tribes, Amazonian AmerIndians...where do you think the word "chief" came from?

This shouldn't surprise anyone, as all social animals have alphas, including our closest relatives, the chimps and bonobos. Silverback gorillas, anyone? Queen bees? Alpha wolves?

Every time people form a group of any kind, they choose a leader - no matter how "democratic" the group's structure might be.

Do you think we field armies because every single soldier is feeling angry and aggressive toward the "enemy?" Nonsense. They're following orders, fighting for their leaders.

Man, I think this is a HUGE leap. Brains aren't wired for religion, they're wired to look for patterns, and to seek cause-and-effect relationships, because these things have survival value.

When people couldn't understand what caused the Sun to "rise", or the phases of the Moon, or droughts, storms, floods, lightning... they made up stories, almost always involving purpose and intention - some sort of animating spirit.

This would be common to all humans - thus the universality of religion.

We are now at the stage where none of this is necessary, but we can't seem to break free of what is implanted in young minds when they are at an age where such things are easily imprinted by authority figures - again, something with survival value ("Don't pet the pretty striped kitty - he will eat you." Don't touch the rocks at the edge of the fire - they're hot.")

I would expect any skeptic to acknowledge the role that religion has played in communal and societal cohesion in human history. It's ridiculous to deem all religion as bad. The problem is not with religion itself, but with two related facets of it - the idea of "belief in other-worldly powers" without evidence, and the idea of absolute truth. Those aren't exclusive to religion, and not all religions have those elements. What would religions look like if they abandoned those ideas and focused instead on humans creating their own meanings for their lives?

"But people will still fight to protect their religion because they regard it as essential to what gives their lives value."

That's the problem - we shouldn't expect value for our lives to be given to us, like we're debutantes waiting for suitors. Instead, we should give that value to ourselves. We can say for ourselves that our lives have value. We can decide for ourselves what we want the meanings and purposes of our lives to be. Are there religions that embrace that concept?