I mean, no doubt that the scientific community would have a higher frequency of atheism than the general population, I was definately not trying to claim otherwise.
The point I guess I wanted to make (and didn't make at all) is that there is more than one type of "religious belief." There are the whackjobs who believe that Jesus literally did do all the things that the New Testament says, or that there really are seventy-two virgins waiting in heaven for suicide bombers, or even just the people who think that God is a giant white dude with a beard and a toga. There are also people who think that there is a greater power, something more to life than what we can observe and quantify. Could this be one of the things that makes religion beneficial to a society's ability to spread/survive? Shit, it could be. Dunno.
P.S. I'm kind of riffing here, but doesn't the fact that science has come as far as it has mostly under religious rule kind of add to my additional point? Remember, my original argument was not "religion makes society go." It was "religion does so much to fuck with the workings of society that the fact that we keep it around must mean it's also adding something pretty awesome."
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