The Faith Instinct

From a review by Judith Shulevitz in the New York Times Book Review of Nicholas Wade's JTF-supported book, The Faith Instinct: How Religion Evolved and Why It Endures:

According to Wade, a New York Times science writer, religions are machines for manufacturing social solidarity. They bind us into groups. Long ago, codes requiring altruistic behavior, and the gods who enforced them, helped human society expand from families to bands of people who were not necessarily related.

We didn't become religious creatures because we became social; we became social creatures because we became religious. Or, to put it in Darwinian terms, being willing to live and die for their coreligionists gave our ancestors an advantage in the struggle for resources.