Religion spares us from existential angst, research shows. Humans want it.

[lindysalsagal]

http://www.apa.org/monitor/2010/12/believe.aspx

Good read on the human brain's use of religion for adaptation and survival.

In other words: Religion is all in your head.

Researchers who study the psychology and neuroscience of religion are helping to explain why such beliefs are so enduring. They’re finding that religion may, in fact, be a byproduct of the way our brains work, growing from cognitive tendencies to seek order from chaos, to anthropomorphize our environment and to believe the world around us was created for our use.

Religion has survived, they surmise, because it helped us form increasingly larger social groups, held together by common beliefs.

“If we’re on the right track with this byproduct idea — and the findings are really getting strong — it’s hard to then build the case that religion is a pathology,” says psychologist Justin Barrett, PhD, director of the cognition, religion and theology project in the Centre for Anthropology and Mind at Oxford University.