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Originally Posted by Pookie

It's funny how people attack Dawkins in exactly the way they claim he attacks them (but actually doesn't).

Dawkins has produced quite a large body of work in the field of evolutionary biology. And more imortantly he founded the Richard dawkins Foundation For Reason and Science which has provided funding and resources for research mainly into the psychology of belief and religion.

I've been reading Andy Thomson's research into the cognitive neuroscience theories of religious belief. In particular the idea that belief and superstition are an evolutionary bi-product.

Follows on from some ideas previously explored (see Pascal Boyer's Religion Explained: The Human Instincts That Fashion Gods, Spirits and Ancestors, or Scott Atran's In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion).

We're getting closer all the time to understanding why people are so willing (and possibly "hard-wired") to believe.

YES.