>And just how does the "just the facts, ma'am" brigade explain
>religious belief and the influence of religion in politics in
>this country without just calling people stupid?
I believe I have given the answer to the first question once before, religion is simply a strategy for passing social traditions, including experience and knowledge, down through the generations.
Without social customs and beliefs, then there is no society in any meaningful sense, just a collection of individuals. There can be no social customs without a way of passing them from generation to generation, and in pre-modern times there was no other way of passing on such a large body of knowledge, except as religious dogma.
The second question is more difficult to answer, at least for me (ask an anthropologist who has studied the US culture) but a couple of responses in this thread are interesting.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas