Patrick McNamara, associate professor of neurology at Boston University and author of
"The Neuroscience of Religious Experience"
said "I get attacked by everyone.
Atheists hate me because I'm saying 
religion has some basis in the brain and
fundamentalist Christians hate me
because I'm saying religion is nothing
but brain impulses." That was in the
the English Telegraph
newspaper, Friday June 20th 2014.
There's a division of atheism within the
scientific community and its supporters
appear to be at war with one another. One
group, the most vocal, considers religion
and spirituality to be little more than
delusions and seems to believe that
truly strong-minded person will have no
need for spirituality. This view seems to
be based on the idea that religion can
be reduced to an echo of our dependence
on our parents when we were very young.
There's a correspondence between the
internal working models of parents and
God and I quote "the more attached we are
to our parents, the closer we are to an
illusory God later on in life."
This leads to the conclusion that we
call out to God in the same way we once
called out to our parents when we
expected our parents to come to our aid
when we were young.  We created a habit
that was then expressed differently
later on.  We set ourselves up to start
expecting that our prayers will be or
should be answered.  We come to expect
that someone has to help us when we're
suffering.  This view that God is a
reflection of her parents seems to imply
that
if we could address our problems with
positive coping styles we wouldn't cry
out or perhaps you wouldn't need to cry
out to an invisible God for help.
We wouldn't look outside ourselves in
moments of suffering.  In other words,
according to this view, belief in God is
a kind of symptom of a nearly universal
subclinical mental disorder.  Subclinical
means - for mental disorders - disorders
that are quiet enough
that they don't send us to the clinic.
This kind of atheism tells us that
something is wrong with people who
believe in God.  This view which we'll call
"The Delusion Model" of spirituality seems
to be based on the idea that untruths
are inherently damaging.  Not surprisingly,
it seems to be most popular among
scientists who see themselves as
bearers and defenders of truth.  If the
real truth belongs only to science, then
scientists are the most heroic people on
planet earth.  Like many religions, this
kind of atheism upholds its own faith; in
this case, faith in the scientific
community, as the sole source of the
highest knowledge.  The other type of
atheism we'll look at here is the kind
represented by Dr. Michael a Persinger,
to some extent, and myself.  Dr. Persinger's
God Helmet provided evidence that
religious and mystical experiences arise
from specific brain functions.  These
functions are intrinsic to the brain's
operation and are the result of our
evolutionary history.  This kind of
atheism quietly rejects the delusion
model, and recognizes that we have not
evolved to see the truth, but rather to
survive. The psychological traits we show;
the ones within the normal population,
appear because they confer biological or
social advantages, like staying alive and
getting along with other people - 
including that cute girl (or boy) sitting next to
you in class. They help us to survive and
achieve social success.  Our evolutionary
history has selected beliefs that
encourage adaptive behaviors and
discourage maladaptive behaviors; the
destructive ones.  These become less
likely. Religion is perhaps the single
most powerful cohesive force in human
cultures and culture is our survival
strategy.  We rely on one another for
everything, including staying alive. In
the face of threats, this means that
spiritual beliefs; religious beliefs, are
intrinsic to human beings.  Our minds may
even be configured to avoid challenges
to them.  In our early evolutionary
history, our thoughts and words had to be
integrated with our religious beliefs.
It didn't matter if these beliefs were true;
threats to our survival don't spare
those who speak the truth.  They ARE
likely to spare those whose beliefs
motivate them to behave adaptively and
to act constructively. Human beliefs
endured when they gave us a reason to do
things that kept us alive.  If you believe
that there is a wrathful spirit in the
soul of a tiger that lives in a nearby
forest, you're more likely to stay away
from it than if you think that one Tiger is
like another and decide to hunt it for its skin.
If there's no God and no great spirit;
if your ancestors cannot look down on
you from above; then it's hard to see how
there would be any sacred acts. Some
acts are important, of course, but not
sacred.  If you believe that saving a baby
from a hungry lion helps your people
thrive, and your nation survive, you act
to save the baby. The tribe needs you to
do that. If you also believe that the
gods will be pleased with you, and the
shaman will give you a blessing, and the
people will stand around.  (and) The women
will sing your name, you may try harder
than you would if it were only a social
reward. God will reward you for saving
that baby. The people do the same.
If it's nothing more than a social reward
and if
the life of the baby is not somehow
sacred, then you only get one kind of
reward. If it's sacred then you get two
kinds -  the ones from the gods and the
ones from the people around you.  If the
gods tell you to share with others as a
religious obligation - like the Islamic
injunction to tythe 10% of your income.
More sharing will go on, and fewer people
will die of starvation or exposure.
The population will grow just a little bit
faster than otherwise and so, charity
towards your fellow man or woman or
child, becomes a force for the survival
of our species.  We rely on one another as
we raise our children, find food, protect
each other, and obtain the pleasures of
life.  We need one another to feel good, so
we work hard to impress people, because
we want their friendship and respect.
Belief in God, or the gods, allows the
behaviour we need to live in complex
cultures to be expressed - openly - in the
context of religious codes, morals, ethics
and beliefs.  We need to defend one
another, so we accept Gods who tell us
to act with compassion and sympathy more
easily than Gods who tell us "to thine
own self be true". There are schools of
philosophy and mysticism who uphold this
as one of the principles of the "art of
living" but few popular religions.  The
gods councel peace within a community,
the tribe, the nation, or the people
whenever possible.
Buddhism encourages us to look within
but the children in Buddhist Sunday School
are more often told to practice
compassion and lovingkindness; to honor
their parents, and to observe the
precepts against lying, stealing,
drunkenness, and committing adultery or
rape. Most of the beliefs of this
seemingly introspective religion are
centered around rules for living with
other people.
The Hindu scripture, "The laws of Manu"
contains all sorts of laws for how
people should relate to one another, like
the duties of sons, how husbands and
wives should treat each other, and as
you'd expect - how people of different
castes should relate or not relate with
one another. Religion is not a way to
know God but rather - a priori - knowing
God as the way to other people.
The existence of God, or the lack of it,
has nothing to do with it.  If you go
along with the common beliefs, you'll get
along with most of the people around you,
and that has heavy social rewards.  At the
dawn of our species, getting along with
others
was also a matter of survival.
There's a survival of the fittest at
work in the evolution of our religious
beliefs, and that's why the beliefs we
find in all or most religions have been
so successful.
The species we see around us are the
survivors; the ones best adapted to their
physical environments, and the most
common human beliefs are the ones best
adapted to living with other people;
adapted to the cultural environment.  No
religion that regards birth and death as
ordinary events can never survive next
to one that treats them as sacred.  The
profound changes in the lives of those
whose loved one dies, or to whom a
child is born,
invite a larger-than-life interpretation.
Our religious beliefs about these events
see them as sacred, making it easier to
encourage people to be emotionally
sensitive around those affected by them.
Everyone gives some space to those in
grief and tries to avoid triggering
conflicts during times when people are
most emotional; during grief or
celebrations. Religion is a projection of
our evolutionary strategy displayed on
the screen of belief and edited so that
only its practical features appear.
Religious behavior, overall, reflects the
principles that human cultures are based on.
while (encoding them in) religious beliefs 
make them easy to remember,
pass on to others, and available to act on,
even in the non-religious moments.
You know the saying "form follows function"?
Usually it's applied in architecture. The
shape of the building reflects what the
building is used for. Religious forms
follow cultural functions. When a truth
has no function in a culture, it will
tend not to be remembered by its people.
It will become a worthless meme.  A "meme" is
a unit of imitated behavior, or a unit of
imitation.  This is a simple definition
of the word
and for those who want to look into it
more deeply, I cannot recommend anything
better than the works of Richard Dawkins.
Some religious ideas, such as those
unique to metaphysics, may be preserved,
but in most cases, true beliefs that
don't guide behavior won't last and
false beliefs that do help us know how
to behave constructively will be
remembered and passed on.  Since the
invention of writing, and then later on
printing, many worthless religious memes
have been preserved.  Teachings about
Atlantis, Lemuria, or ideas like "the
quantum-mechanical baby Jesus" can be
preserved and spread in a tiny minority
of the population, but ideas like these
probably wouldn't have survived for long
in our early evolutionary history. In
her own times, using quartz crystals as a
means to attain enlightenment had its
heyday from the 1980s to the
1990s, and is rarely heard of
today.
Nevertheless Google showed
over 659,000 results for
the phrase "crystal healing". In June of
2014, it showed over two million results
for "compassionate loving-kindness"; a
classical Buddhist phrase. The internet
preserved the doctrines about crystal
healing, which few spiritual healers rely
on anymore, and so the number of them
remains high, in spite of the fact that
the idea has lost its popularity.
Worthless memes survive, even memes
that may not be worthless but seem to
have limited value; crystal healing being
a case in point.
Our evolutionary heritage has made it
advantageous to believe in nonsense.
Our eyes only see the section of the
electromagnetic spectrum that helps us see
threats and opportunities
(that's visible light).  There are other
frequencies, including gamma
rays, infrared, ultraviolet, and so forth.
We are blind to those sections of the
electromagnetic spectrum.  Those
sections of the electromagnetic spectrum
don't present us with tigers that want
to eat us or foods we can eat.  Our eyes
hear only in the range were sounds mean
something to us - from 20 to 20,000 Hertz.
So our eyes and ears do not represent
the world; they give us access only to
the information we need.  Our adaptive
beliefs don't represent the world
either -  they give us access to the
information we need about the cultures
we live in, and the people we live with.
That process may be more efficient if we
build our beliefs slowly, forgetting the
ones that don't work, and remembering the
ones that do.  Their truth or lack of it
is not the trait being selected, and if a
nonsensical idea works as the core of a
set of religious beliefs; social beliefs,
then it will be used, and its truth or
falsehood will have nothing to do with
it. So there is no God, but
you're better off believing that there
is, because it allows you a context in
which to know how to relate, not to God,
but to the people around you.
The beliefs that survive among humans
are selected through the survival of the
fittest beliefs, by means of cultural
selection. The worthless memes that don't
survive might be overly complicated,
based on metaphors that are too obscure,
or are simply incomprehensible to most people,
or express a morality that's too different
from ordinary experience, to name only a
few of the problems with some of them.
Since the written and the printed word
appeared in our history,
few unproductive ideas have died out
completely, but the vast majority of the
population won't pay any attention to
them.  The Hindu scriptures that delve
into the metaphysics of creation and
subtle energies like Prakriti and
Prana, to name only two. There's
another one, better known, - Kundalini, a
force or subtle energy that we carry in
our bodies.  Most Hindus are much more
interested in prayer, devotional
practices, and spiritual practices like
meditation, chanting, and reading the
scriptures.  The Hindu epics Mahabharata
and Ramayana command huge audiences when
they made into television series, but
nowhere near so many people are
interested in the metaphysics of that
religion. Hinduism's metaphysical memes are
far from dead, but neither do they thrive,
which the popular beliefs do.  Metaphysics
can make people feel they understand
deeper truths, but the kind of religion
most people practice; that most people
want, helps them understand and live
their daily lives.  The ten commandments
are useful guides to ordinary living
while the mysteries of the Kabbala
are harder to apply, and that's probably why
they're so much less popular than the Sermon
on the Mount that tells us
that "blessed are the meek for
they shall inherit the earth" is quoted
much more often than the somewhat
mysterious logos doctrine in
the first verses of the Gospel according
to John that tell us "in the beginning
was the Word and the Word was with God
and the Word was God". That's difficult to
understand, and far fewer people try to
understand them than attempt to apply Jesus'
more loving messages in their lives.
one impossible content concept can
create contexts for many adaptive ones.
The will of God can explain the
inexplicable and create a basis for
libraries of moral code.  Its ability to
motivate adaptive behavior isn't
diminished by the fact that the
existence of God cannot be proven and
that God may not exist at all.  As a
scientist, I do not believe in God;
certainly not the way most Christians
and Jews and Muslims and and so forth
believe in God, but I will still leave a
little room for those who do and say it
again -  the ability of this belief 
to motivate adaptive behavior isn't
diminished by the fact that the
existence of God can't be proven. The
adaptive value of the behavior can be
proven. "Alice laughed -  there's no use
trying, she said. one can't believe
impossible things". "I daresay you haven't
had much practice" said the Queen. "When I
was younger I always did it for half an
hour a day. Sometimes I've believed as
many as six impossible things before
breakfast" (from Alice in Wonderland by
Lewis Carroll)
One of the main exponents of the
delusion model is Richard Dawkins, whose
book "The God Delusion" is one of the most
influential works of active atheism in
existence.  He maintains that atheism is
as worthy of respect and representation as
any religion.  Unfortunately, atheism - the
belief that there is no God - is a
religion based on rejecting religious
ideas rather than embracing them.  For
most people, it's not at all clear that
atheism is a religion.  Above all, it lacks
the indefinable ethos that
appears in the beliefs and paraphernalia
of all religion.  The architecture, the Art
(and) the music.  Most, if not all, religions
encourage certain states or moods or
states of consciousness; compassion,
devotion, awareness, awestruck wonder,
faith, mercy, kindness, equanimity, love,
silence, the dream state, calm, joy, empathy,
and receptivity to name only a few.
For atheism to become a religion, it would
have to sanctify the discoveries of
science, and that won't work because
scientific truth keeps changing.  I also
cannot help but stop and wonder that
one of the principal adages of
scientific method is that you can't
prove a negative,
and scientific atheists whose beliefs
are based on things that can be proven
begin with the recognition that there is
no God - a negative statement and by the
rules of Science you cannot prove a
negative.  Atheism offers little basis for
the classical religious and spiritual
values, although that may change as
science requires a deeper understanding
of them.  Its religious ethos appears to
be limited to two points.  The first is
the sense that (and I quote) "A proper
understanding of the magnificence of the
real world, while never becoming a
religion can fill the inspirational role
that religion has historically-  and
inadequately - usurped.  That's a quotation
from Richard Dawkins "The God Delusion".
The second religious ethos of skeptical
atheism is a rigorous adherence to "TRUTH"
as revealed by science. Unfortunately,
atheism has its fundamentalists and like
the religious kind, they actively oppose
and even hate ideas they disagree with.
Of course not all scientific skeptical
atheist hate religion - most of them are
merely critical.  Not long ago, someone
brought to my attention
a group called "guerrilla skeptics".  These
are people who write against
"pseudoscience" on Wikipedia, including
people and things like Deepak Chopra,
alternative medicine,
Rupert Sheldrake, neuro-linguistic
programming, and the "cosmic pineal gland"
to name only a few.  Such people are not
writing for their beliefs but they write
against those of others.
Putting opposition to conflicting
beliefs at the forefront is one of the
hallmarks of fundamentalism.  Perhaps the
scientific worldview is so impoverished
that it cannot be sustained without
attacking those of others.  More likely,
aggressive skepticism appeals to those
with aggressive personalities.  The sense
of awe at understanding or trying to
grasp the sheer size and elegance of the
universe and the mysterious fact that
anything exists it all seems to be the
only religious sentiment atheism can
offer.   With this in mind, we'll think of
atheism as a school of philosophy and
not a religion.  In order to fully justify
this decision, we'd have to create a set of
criteria for what does and what doesn't
define a religion. The problem is that
religious believers and delusionalists
who see religious belief as nothing more than or
"just" delusions will both offer different
criteria and both will claim
jurisdiction over the definition for the
word.  Traditional religion and mysticism
encompasses a much broader range of
spiritual states.  For people who have
experienced them, being overwhelmed with
compassion, bliss, or moments of very
deep calm, "the peace which passeth all
understanding" (a phrase from T.S. Elliott)
the inspiration the scientific worldview
offers will always seemed insipid. Carl
Sagan expressed the ethos well in his TV
series and book "Cosmos". Like any
other mood or ethos it can't really be
expressed in words.  He told how, as a
child, he was amazed by the fact that the
stars were suns, very far away.  It imposed
a sense of the sheer size of the
universe on his young mind and filled
him with a sense of profound curiosity.
He also repeated a phrase that seemed
designed to amaze his
audience - "billions and billions" numbers so
large that the mind cannot grasp them.
He invoked mind-bogglingly large spaces
and numbers.  Of course, having your mind
boggled (which means to be astonished
overwhelmed when trying to imagine
something) is one possible point of entry
for spiritual faith but it can also
appear in response to scientific
discoveries.  Those who experience it may
become convinced that learning sciences
the best way to the most fulfilling
subjective experiences life has to offer.
However, being astonished at the thought
of the complexities of nature, the size
of the universe, or the power of the mind
in its attempts to come to grips with it,
is a sensation that came late in our
evolutionary history.  The confrontations
that our early ancestors had with the
mysterious were probably far more
likely to motivate adaptive behavior. The
birth of a child may not be very
mysterious, especially to obstetricians,
but our emotional responses to it leave
us acting as though it's one of the most
sacred experiences possible. The child
lives! The mind boggles at it. It's not a
miracle, but we respond as though it were,
and so the phrase "miracle of life" is
found in almost every language.  Every
mother becomes the Blessed Mother and
every newborn becomes like the infant
Jesus.  Now, to a person who's had an
experience -  a spiritual experience with a
personal meaning  - like the kind
that can happen during near-death
experiences, or a spiritual epiphany, or
deep in the depths of meditation, or in
the rapture of prayer, or the kind where
someone feels they have found their
purpose in life, the sheer size of the
universe means nothing.  When a mother is
handed her newborn baby for the first
time and cries her joy, feeling that
nothing could ever be so important is
the infant in her arms
the fact that there are billions and
billions of stars organized into
galaxies galactic clusters and even
super
clusters of galaxies, becomes
trivial.  Nor can you tell her to be
amazed at the
seemingly miraculous biological
complexity involved in conceiving a
child and then giving birth.  To her, the
miracle is the love she feels not the
biological processes that stand behind it.
To mention them in that moment could
even be insulting. Complexity does not
make something sacred, especially for
those who express their
sense of the sacred through prayer.
Complexity and the beauty we find in it
is an ethos -  it's a mood. It may be
spiritual but it certainly does not
define spirituality.  The magnificence of
the real world runs deeper for those who
engage it through their spirituality.  The
way we feel about "factual truth", whether
it appears in science, law courts, or
anywhere else, can't compete with the
states of consciousness that appear in
religion or mysticism and that's one of the
reasons why religious beliefs have
flourished throughout our evolutionary
history.  A mind in a state of silence
brought on by meditation or the
experience of being in God's
presence is not going to be moved by
large numbers - even Googleplexes.
10x10x100 or ten to the
10th power to the hundredth power. An
atheist of the delusion school might
argue that these experiences are based
on delusions and that it's
self-evident the truth is better.  Of
course, the whole idea of self-evident
truth runs contrary to the mindset of
science as all assertions call for
evidence.  Such an atheist might also
argue that believing only the truth can
save you from - this is a favorite
skeptical atheist catchphrase -  "cognitive
dissonance".  Yes, religions including
atheism, offer salvation.  The trouble with
this view is that there isn't any such
thing as scientific truth.  The major
scientific truths embodied in our
dominant theories, like quantum mechanics,
evolution, and relativity, are subject to
change.
New theories replace and alter older
ones regularly.  Tthough the process isn't so
obvious to the general public.
Darwin's original theory has been
challenged and amended by things like
punctuation evolution, Baldwinian
evolution, and the Selfish Gene model,
again the work of Richard Dawkins.  All of
these complimentary the older "survival of
the fittest" view, but the picture of
how biological evolution operates has
changed considerably since Darwin's time.
Naturally, anyone who believes in
classical Darwinian evolution will
experience cognitive dissonance when
confronted by one of these newer and
controversial amendments to the original
theory of evolution.
Some of them might even lash out at them.
Truth is not enough.  Spirituality and
religious faith are based on feelings
and sensations.  These paraphrased words
are repeated from Richard
Dawkins  "a proper understanding of the
magnificence of the real world
conceal the inspirational role religion
has usurped". Anyone who has ever had a
spiritual experience will know that
these are the words of a person who's
never had one.
The sense of wonder that comes from
magnificence in the real - meaning
physical - world usually includes a sense of
meaningfulness - the feeling that its
magnificence "means" something -  that its
somehow important.  Of course, this feeling
is something we project onto the
physical world. Neither a snail nor a
star cluster perceives themselves as
magnificent.
They are what they are.  The magnificence
of the real world, in the sense that one
has been saved by freedom from
superstitious delusions, was the focus of
another school of atheist thought.
Soviet communism.  There, we also heard
hymns in praise of rivers, forests, and
yes, factories and mines, in
celebration of the magnificence
of the world that surrounded them.
Dawkins and Carl Sagan might have been
amazed by different things in the real
world than the Soviets celebrated, but when
spiritual beliefs and religious
sentiments are thought of as delusional
the only religious sentiments that
remain are those of love of nature and
pride in believing that one has been
saved from superstition.  The soviets
focused on their forests, rivers and
plains, while today's atheists are more
likely to show you pictures of
single-cell animals and images from the
Hubble telescope, but both of them will
tell you in different ways, that if your
spiritual aspirations go past
contemplating the wonders of the natural
world, then something is wrong with your
mind.  Your beliefs are backward and
history will leave you behind.
Interestingly, both modern
skeptical atheists and Communist
Party anti-religionists actively agitate
or agitated against religions, though
today's atheists primarily do it online.
I would like to give my thanks to my
colleague for pointing out the
similarities between Soviet Communist
atheism and the kind we now find in
today's radical skeptics.  If I ever meet
Dawkins, I would ask him, after expressing
my honest admiration for his work on The
Selfish Gene and the notion of memes, who
religion usurped
its inspirational role FROM?
He implies that religion acquired its
inspirational role unfairly and that
makes no sense to me.  There was no one to
steal it from in the early days of our
species, when presumably it came into
existence, at least as humans experience
it.
The idea that there are spiritual
feelings beyond "truth" or being amazed by
the physical world, offers a challenge to
the delusion model.  If spirituality is
based on delusion, then spiritual
feelings become symptoms of a
psychiatric disorder.  Any feeling that
seems to be an expression of
spirituality
acted out through spiritual behavior
automatically becomes a symptom; a sign
of a pathology. If religion and
spirituality are delusional, then
religious people are in the grips of a
psychiatric pathology.  If God is a
delusion, then the people who believe in
him
are at least a little crazy.  The
extraordinary claim that everyone but
atheists are delusional abandons one
scientific idea - that clinically normal
people are, in fact, healthy. When normalcy
includes an average degree of religious
faith, atheism especially the assertive
kind, becomes abnormal and may not be so
healthy.  Mental health can and usually
does include a certain amount of faith
in things that are untrue.  A touch of
myth and faith can enrich people's lives.
The person who lives without it may not be
very happy among their fellow humans,
though they might delight in their own
company.
Naturally, skeptics and atheists who
believe in the delusion model try to
discredit anything that implies that
religious experiences are within the
repertoire of normal repertiore of states
of consciousness.  This includes evidence
from the God Helmet.
Skeptics try to explain religious
experience brought on by drugs as
temporary psychosis.  They try to explain
near-death experiences as brain
malfunctions that happen when the brain
stops working.
Often, more spontaneous religious
experiences are explained as epilepsy.
When skeptics are confronted by the idea
that religious experiences and faith are
part of our survival strategy, they
usually respond with silence.
Most of them are more comfortable
opposing religious beliefs based on
religious sources. if spirituality is a
part of our evolutionary heritage, then
spiritual experiences are normal and
should be expected in some part of the
population.  Skeptics and atheists are
accustomed to responding to religion
with arguments from evolutionary theor.y
They're not so used to responding to
evolutionary arguments that see an
adaptive role for religion.  Because of
its pivotal role in the debate between
religious and science in what can I
call "the Battle of creationism",
skeptical atheists have come to see
evolution has their territory.  However
very few of today's more vocal atheists
have any background in anthropology and
often fail to appreciate the role
religion played in early evolutionary
history.  I would go so far as to say that
in the dawn of humanity, there was no
difference between culture and religion.
when a skeptical atheist talks about
evolution, they're talking about
biological evolution - in opposition to
the belief that the biological world
that surrounds us was created by God.
They rarely take the next step in
understanding evolution or human
evolution and begin to look at the
evolution of our species and the roles
that belief and disbelief would have
played.
It's been argued that the propensity to
hold religious beliefs is based on
suggestibility, because suggestibility is
crucial for holding religious beliefs,
and religion and spirituality are
crucial parts of our cultures. It may be
more useful to consider it as a skill
rather than a trait.  Like so many social
skills, it can be applied without the
person knowing they're doing it.
Being able to believe in fictional ideas that
both facilitate and motivate adaptive
behavior - good, positive, constructive
behavior - would have helped to raise a
person's social rank in our earlier
evolutionary history.  The better they
observed their religious morality and
ethics, the more respect they would
receive from the people around them.  More
recently, sharing the adaptive but untrue
beliefs of one's group helps to be
elected to government office.  At least,
it's not easy easy for atheists to be
elected in most of the world and many
religious men have been elected
to public office, especially in the USA,
by touting "family values" which usually
means religious morality.  If you lack
suggestibility, you might well be more
intelligent than most, but you would also
be less imaginative.  Above all, this seems
to refer to visual imagination -  seeing
pictures in your mind, and even in the
clouds.  Seeing pictures in the clouds, by
the way, is called Paradolia.  A lack
of imagination can
alienate those who are very imaginative.
Those who find the facts more
interesting can seem a bit boring and
flat to the people to those who respond
to things more emotionally, or through
their imaginatio,n or allow themselves to
be reminded of other unrelated things;
looking for indirect associations
that turn things into jokes or finding
romantic or spiritual connotations.
Suggestibility draws you into jokes so
that you can laugh at the punchline as
much as it contributes to being
superstitious.  It's a skill that helps us
interact with other people and keep a
shorthand version of the rules of our
culture in our minds within arms reach
at all times.  Being suggestible helps you
integrate yourself into the culture and
the people around you.  Being suggestible
helps you accept what other people think
as well as thinking for yourself and so
you fit into your culture.  That helped us
- and everyone around us - to survive in
early evolutionary history.
One difference between the two schools of
atheism; the delusional model and the
evolutionary one, lies in the way they
explain why people are not all equally
spiritual.  Why we don't all have
religious urges and why some have
religious and mystical experiences and
others - that is, most people - don't.
understanding the adaptive role of
religious belief is not enough.  We also
have to look at the role of mystical
experiences in our evolution.
