Salon: This is your brain on religion :(atheism correlates to education and high I.Q.)

[Arugula Latte]

5. Many religious people point to the global widespread belief in god/s as

evidence that atheists are unlikely to be correct in their assessments because, gee, MOST humans belief in a supernatural being or being who is all-powerful (or at least quite powerful indeed).

However, recently I've started to ponder whether belief in some sort of deity/deities might have evolved as an evolutionary advantage, or at least the outgrowth of a brain that is developed enough to expect a superior place in the universe for such an intelligent creature as the homo sapiens (and perhaps neanderthals and other previous advanced primates). It seems that a lot of humans are desperate to believe that they are special and exulted in this universe -- in fact, we humans who have lived on this little planet in the last couple thousands years out of many billions of years are the very FOCUS of the deity/creator of the universe (at least for many Christians, Jews, and Muslims), therefore we are and not just another run-of-the-mill carbon-based life form. We are the chosen species, we are special, and we will live forever in an enviable afterlife.

That's what humans like to believe, at any rate, and perhaps this belief in their own special place in the universe as God's Own Favorite keeps them going in the daily scramble for food, water and shelter and then beyond that in the fight for status and wealth.