The God Gene -- a hick's boson

The steady application of dogmatic scientific protocol is a trade off between being superstitious and being ignorant.

In relative terms, the suspension of the study of causality implied by all organized superstitions can be traced to evolutionary behavior developed by the first life forms to crawl out of the murk. This behavior is not a product of Homer Sap sensibilities, rather, it is a survival strategy imposed on all species (including plants and bacteria) and it's called erring on the side of caution.

The tendency to falsely link cause to effect – a superstition – is occasionally beneficial, says Kevin Foster, an evolutionary biologist at Harvard University.

For instance, a prehistoric human might associate rustling grass with the approach of predator and hide. Most of the time, the wind will have caused the sound, but "if a group of lions is coming there’s a huge benefit to not being around," Foster says. -- New Scientist

The crux of the biscuit is that we humans have the unique intelligence to develop a system to properly test cause and effect -- Science-based, robust, peer-reviewed analysis. We humans also have the primal genes to ignore this evidence any time we feel threatened. When all else fails groveling to Huey is harmless, however, when superstitious beliefs interfere with science-based analysis, our ability to direct our collective intelligence to problem solving is compromised at a time when it's most needed.

Simply put, Intelligence is anathema to Darwinian Evolution. It creates truthy traps that Homer Sap can never escape, not when the suspension of reason inherent in our lizard brain DNA takes over. We continue to abandon our failsafes at every bump in the night, at every unexplained or misunderstood phenomenon.

Eat, drink and be merry, folks -- with god on our side, tomorrow may never happen.