Dawkins suggests that religion might have originated as a misfiring of the brain's falling-in-love mechanism
Regardless of one’s religious beliefs I find it very insulting to the religious community that someone should suggest they believe in God because of a mental defect.
I guess it is very convenient to squelch someone’s opposing views by calling them mentally deficient.
I don't think Dawkins was suggesting that religious people
in particular are mentally deficient or defective compared to others: I read it more as saying that this defect is common to
all human beings. Religion, after all, appears to have evolved independently multiple times: every remote and hitherto-uncontacted human society ever discovered has practised it. Which I guess means that if being defective is defined as being abnormal, it's atheism which is defective when compared to the broad span of human existence during which religion and its precursors held sway. Rationality itself is to some extent a battle against human nature.
Peter
There are many different explanations as to why humans have always had religion. Believers will point to this and say that part of being human is the desire to be in touch with our Creator, and the differing religious views are a product of a broken world that glimpses the truth, but only sees it dimly. On the other hand, were I not a believer, the view that I would tend to gravitate toward is Nietzsche's notion that humans require religion in order to have meaning and value, thus it was a tool that ensured our survival as long as we could accept it. The great tragedy in this view is that (as I see it) once man gets "rational" enough to question religion you are going to end up with nihilism, a pretty bleak end. This perspective makes more sense to me than than to view religion as a defect. It is either real or a tool- in either case it has provided value to us to get us to where we are as a race. The question is whether atheism is a step forward into rational thinking or a step away from the Creator who intends us to have a relationship with Him.
What I find most distressing is that most people end up somewhere in the middle, and that is the worst place to be. One of my favorite lines from my favorite band in a song about not believing in religion is "If you choose not to decide you still have made a choice"; while I disagree with the song in general over it's rejection of organized religion, I think that point is critical. Most people seem to not accept OR reject religion- they simply live in the middle where they go through the motions of faith, but they don't really believe in anything substantial. These are the people who do not realize that "God is dead", at least in they way they relate to him, but they keep attending church, saying prayers and signing songs, and doing all the other religious stuff they deny with the rest of their lives. I don't mean to be judgmental- it just seems a waste to sit in the middle where faith exists as a ritualistic adherence to something that really doesn't make a difference in your life.
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