Does Religion Provide an Evolutionary Advantage?

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I see religion as an artifact of a lesser-evolved society. What with evolution being a rather uneven process, it is not surprising that religious adherency is strongest in third-world cultures (Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, et cetera), and weakest in first-world cultures (America and Europe).

What a bunch of BS.

Simple fact: Poverty stricken populations (which are the bulk of human population) are the easiest to indoctrinate into a religion. By comparison, Agnostics/Atheists are found mostly in educated sectors of the population...which are the minority.

Evolution is physical in nature not psychological or educational so it is not in any way of form an evolutionary advantage.

More specifically, religion provides a group within which to exercise altruism between identifiable kin - family - and the set of all humans. For this reason, we could expect those in religions to outcompete those not religious.

So - poor people are easy to indoctrinate. We assume rich people are not easily indoctrinated - no rich Muslims, no rich Christians, no rich people who trust their government.

So - educated people are agnostic or atheists. Well, many of them are - in those times and places where education pushes materialism.

Funny thing, though - times and places where education taught theism, educated people were likely to be theistic.

Maybe those are POOR educated people?

Now, is it poor educated people or rich educated people or alert poor people who think clearly and critically?

I agree that first world countries tend to be less religious, however the US, is the number #1 religious country in the Industrialized world. Also the country with the greatest number of Christians, and number of different religions. The US also ranks with at the bottom of the list of the top 50 irreligious countries with Atheists. Recent estimates provided in Wiki state 1.6 percent, but I've seen estimates as high as 6 percent with other sources.

Our fertility rates are much lower than most other religious countries. 2.06 and ranked 123 in the world. Without the recent influx of Hispanic immigrants we would be well below replacement rate.

We don't match up with the topic research article hypothesis on higher birth rates and religion. The big difference, is the country doesn't take care of it's people as they do in most other indusrialized nations. It will be interesting to see if greater accessibility to healthcare impacts any of this.