The last sentence does not follow from the ones before. "Finding out how
the world works" has obvious advantages, so the capacity to do so is
something that is perfectly compatible with the ToE. One way to master
our environment is by making tools. Making tools requires us to think
about things in terms of purpose, function and design. Once the world is
understood, and indeed subjugated,through these criteria, another factor
comes in hand: reasoning about invisible causes. Animals posses this
ability in varying degrees - does the kitten know that its mother is
still helping it (by getting food e.g.) even if she is not at that point
visibly present? This is a massive advantage, and allows much more
complex forms of collaboration- and in particular also anticipation of
what an adversary (saber tooth tiger) might be doing if I'm not seeing it.
Understanding the world though categories such as tool, part, purpose,
and the ability to have causal explanations where the cause is unseen
are extremely helpful, but can result in cognitive overshoot - how do
you explain lightning? Someone invisible throw it because he was as
angry as I am when I throw things.
A much more comprehensive discussion is in Lewis Wolpert (2006). Six
impossible things before breakfast, The evolutionary origins of belief.
New York: Norton Along similar lines, but with emphasis on agent
detection, there is Atran, S; Norenzayan, A (2004). "Religion's
evolutionary landscape: counterintuition, commitment, compassion,
communion". The Behavioral and Brain Sciences. Behavioral and Brain
Sciences. 27 (6): 713–30,
The "feeling of guilt" points towards another driver in the evolution of
religion. While the above focused on cognition and our tendency to
project our agency onto the environment, "social glue" theories"
emphasize the value for coordination. We observe e.g. in some other
primates how they seem to have internalized some social norms - e.. not
giving the best food to the alpha male but hiding it. This behaviour
comes with external signs of "bad conscience" - furtive glances,
"playing innocent" and also "compensation". This,
interestingly,sometimes also happens when the alpha male is not around
to observe. Internalized surveillance, feeling constantly on the spot to
that rule violations are caught and punished has benefits for the group,
and coordinated behaviour. One specific theory is that it allowed for
joined child minding - I can trust to hand over my baby to another woman
of the tribe and go picking berries if I believe we are always watched,
she believes we are always watched, and I know that she believes we are
always watched - and sanctioned. People who have written on the "social
glue" theory of the evolution of religion include Rossano, Matt (2007).
"Supernaturalizing Social Life: Religion and the Evolution of Human
Cooperation" and Johnson, D., & Bering, J. (2006). Hand of God, mind of
man: Punishment and cognition in the evolution of cooperation.
Evolutionary Psychology, 4(1), 147470490600400119.
Note that non of this "disproves" religion - might just have been the
way god ensured she was intelligible to us. But the inverse also holds,
none of this presents insurmountably difficulty for a purely secular
account.
but they do need these concepts if they are created by someone or
something to need them and seek the god that gave them to us. With the
acknowledgement that DNA is coded information, information needs an
intelligent source,
that is simply question begging. Why? Smoke means (codes for) fire, are
wildfires all caused by an intelligent source?
and life needs some type of intelligence guiding its development (as
Dawkins admits to when he argues that nature “selects”)
that is just a misunderstanding of Dawkins caused by the trickery of our
language. Another avenue btw to explain the evolution of religion, as a
side effect of human grammar. Once we can form sentences such as "It is
raining", we are cognitive led to think that there is an "It" that does
the raining.