Phil_Goetz comments on Crisis of Faith - Less Wrong

57 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 10 October 2008 10:08PM

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Comment author: Phil_Goetz 12 October 2008 08:55:00PM 1 point [-]

Religion is the classic example of a delusion that might be good for you. There is some evidence that being religious increases human happiness, or social cohesion. It's universality in human culture suggests that it has adaptive value.

See last week's Science, Oct. 3 2008, p. 58-62: "The origin and evolution of religious prosociality". One chart shows that, in any particular year, secular communes are four times as likely to dissolve as religious communes.