Thanks for your comment. It was thoughtful of you. However, I am having trouble understanding your criticism. I certainly don’t deny that one can be spiritual without religion, neither does Haidt.

I would also add that group-selection seems to be making a bit of a come back. The evo. biology communitiy not liking Wilson’s ideas is the not the same as them being right. At the very least, Wilson’s ideas do not ignore decades of research. He isn’t that naive.

By no means! We are in fact employing said desire every time we pursue common goals as well as our innermost aspirations. When we aim to deeper, wider, less constricted view of the universe and our life in it.

The very idea of being ‘part of’ and the very concept of ‘something greater’ are expressing our abilities to shape a direction to our cognitive power engines.

1) Organised religion. The definition is obvious enough – specific sects of religious belief which make claims about events within and the functioning of our universe.

2) Religiosity. The more general predisposition to religious belief, which is characterised by faith in supernatural occurrences, and which many atheists argue is an evolutionary by-product.

3) A non-religious sense of awe and transcendence. This is the most important thing in this discussion, as many people allow religion a monopoly on our immense feelings of wonder and the bonding it permits. In fact, religiosity and/or organised religion are not necessary for their appreciation or manifestation. So while Haidt can argue that religion provides an avenue for their expression, it is not the ONLY one – non-religious ones are possible, as evidenced by the majority of atheists who adore art, culture, and the cosmos. Religiosity, therefore, is rightly viewed as a complex façade which takes advantage of more basic, non-religious, innate impulses.

Given this, I find it much less disingenuous to refer to this complex cultural feeling as the numinous, or as transcendence, rather than “religiosity” – the latter term is as useless as “spirituality” and, by association, lends credibility to organised religion, the claims of which would still not be true even if religiosity were biologically selected for.

I would also point out that the Wilsons’ ideas are enormously disliked by the biological community, and the arguments for religiosity from a group-selection perspective ignore decades of advances in evolutionary understanding.

There are plenty of reasons to believe that it is an adaptation, but nothing is conclusive yet.