Religion: Adaptation or By-Product?

As I have always maintained:- the general argument for religion as an adaptive property for the victim is a kind of “just-so” story.

In other words, a plausible sounding explanation if one doesn’t scratch too deep, but wholly bogus on more than a cursory examination of the facts.

This is a curious way to end the piece, (on how religions deter free-loaders by making membership appear to be costly):

Of course, it doesn’t make religion right or good; what it suggests is that the strength of free-thinking communities could take advantage of some of the cognitive contrivances of religion, without the extraneous baggage of god-belief. We could just add a few costly signals to atheism, for instance.

So I’m going to have to ask you all to get genital piercings if you want to be a New Atheist.

(Don’t worry, just kidding!)