A good long piece on the thinking of one scholar (S. Atran). This article delves into adaptive evolutionary biology, considering cognitive adaptations. It poses the question whether the human susceptibility to faith ("the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen") is adaptive in itself, or merely a side-effect of other cognitive adaptations. The article, wisely, avoids picking sides in religion vs. atheism, but recounts some of the arguments. But it could have been stronger in critiquing the triumphalistic fallacy underlying evolutionary biology. The fallacy is this: We humans are good, therefore traits we share in common are good, therefore we can assume that evolution (random mutation and mass suffering) has somehow "intended" these traits for us.