It it is genetic

Going out on a limb, if it is genetic it goes back to the beginning of man, before religion and churches, to man's first attempts to understand the world around him.

Anyway, the nytimes article was very interesting and while it has been archived, it seems to be accessible here:

[link|http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/04/magazine/04evolution.t.html?ei=5090&en=43cfb46824423cea&ex=1330664400&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all|http://www.nytimes.c...ss&pagewanted=all]

"Which is the better biological explanation for a belief in God \ufffd evolutionary adaptation or neurological accident? Is there something about the cognitive functioning of humans that makes us receptive to belief in a supernatural deity? And if scientists are able to explain God, what then? Is explaining religion the same thing as explaining it away? Are the nonbelievers right, and is religion at its core an empty undertaking, a misdirection, a vestigial artifact of a primitive mind? Or are the believers right, and does the fact that we have the mental capacities for discerning God suggest that it was God who put them there?

In short, are we hard-wired to believe in God? And if we are, how and why did that happen?"

[link|http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/18/AR2007031801130_pf.html|Washington Post]:

Monday, March 19, 2007; A06

When Emory University primatologist Frans de Waal read a news story that said Microsoft's chief executive, Steve Ballmer, had hurled a chair across the room on hearing an employee was going to work for rival Google, the scientist immediately made a connection with his own research: "When I see such behavior, I think of a chimpanzee."

Another time, a researcher that de Waal knew told him that whenever she chatted with another scientist in the hallway, her boss would get upset. He would later drop by her office and tell her she ought to stay clear of that person.

"He was constantly interfering whenever she had a contact with an important person," de Waal said. "Chimpanzees also divide and rule. You have an alpha male, and he will try to keep his supporters away from his rivals. His supporters are in trouble if they groom one of his rivals."

[...]

Over the past two centuries, people have had to disabuse themselves about various ideologies asserting that humans are fundamentally different from other animals. Biologists have shown that our arms and legs and organs have long evolutionary histories. Beliefs about the uniqueness of human behavior might well be the last bastion of our superiority complex, but research by de Waal and many others suggests that even this redoubt may be crumbling.

"I have done studies of reconciliation and coalition strategies in chimpanzees," de Waal said. "Business managers tell me that reminds them so much of what people do."

[...]

I assume boxley's comment is about the same researcher, but I didn't hear it so I don't know for sure.

Cheers,
Scott.

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