This popped up on twitter again, and forgive me if I'm doing this wrong:
It seems to me that if there is a "god gene," that is to say a gene that, when expressed, produces behavior akin to religious zealotry, that gene would need to be explained as reproductively advantageous. Now, we can get around this by saying 'individuals expressing this gene have a tendency to rape.' That's, frankly, an ugly interpretation of what we're talking about here. Long before social contracts involving religion-based rape, there would have had to have been a physical advantage to being religious. I think pattern recognition meets that criteria. There is, I think, selective pressure to 'believe' a pattern means something.
Now, that is not to say that all patterns are significant. But if there were a gene, a tendency, for an individual to consider a rustle of grass being meaningful, being worthwhile of attention, that might mean survival versus predation. And if it's just the wind, well, no harm no foul. But the ones who ignored the rustle of grass, well, we know what happened to them.
There absolutely is genetic selection pressure, especially during the 200 million years before the emergence of modern humans, to be paranoid, devout, unreasonable conspiracy theorists, because prior performance predicts future success. Jumping at shadows is our bread and butter, friends. It's what got us here.
Now, in the context of this gem here, none of these "top brass" in the audience asked "what are the side effects."
No concern at all. That may have been a selective edit, but if I were in that audience the first question in my mind would have been "Professor, you're talking about a communicable virus which disables the human mind from recognizing patterns. What controls have you instituted that allow you to target ONLY religious extremism, and not regular social interaction? Threat detection. The minutia of facial expression. Sir, have you created the autism virus?"
And then the scientist would be like "gentlemen, I would rather live in a world of Autists, than continue on as such."
"Harrumph harrumph" they would say, but it would be too late, for the virus had already left Logan INTL an hour before.
