What remains undeniable is that religious belief is so widespread that it must be considered an elemental part of the human experience. We are Homo religiosus, not in our desire for creeds or institutions, nor in our commitments to specific gods and theologies, but in our existential striving toward transcendence: toward that which lies beyond the manifest world. If the propensity for religious belief is inherent in our species, then, scholars reasoned, it must be a product of human evolution. There must be some adaptive advantage to it. Otherwise there would be no reason for religion to
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