It is a good piece, although it can be strengthened in several ways:
1. Consider anthropological evidence (esp. Bronislaw Malinowski's work in Trobriand islands which links religious superstition to the absence of effective technological control of tasks needed for survival (e.g. rich magical rituals surrounding open ocean fishing, and no such rituals surrounding lagoon fishing).
2. Consider the effect of path dependency on the persistence of theistic beliefs - the development of modern states was characterized, inter alia, by the adoption of certain traditional social institutions and beliefs to legitimate the power of the state (cf. Emanuel Todd, _The Explanation of Ideology_). In some states (e.g. Italy, or Thailand) it involved cooptation of religious institutions, in other states (cf. France or Russia) it involved suppression of religious institutions, and in still other states (e.g. Japan - subsumptioin of such institutions (i.e. the state became the secular source of legitimacy. Other options involve states in which struggle for national independence was carried to a significant extent through religious institutions (e.g. Ireland or Poland), since secular institutions were suppressed by the occupying powers.
The net result of this process is setting a certain path - more or less religious or more or less secular - in the development of authority and its legitimation system. In states that initially depended more heavily on religion to establish the legitimacy of their sovereignty and power, the rates of atheism are lower. Path dependency variable is difficult to measure - it requires coding of the archival data - but it is possible, and I think it can explain quite a bit of the variance that cannot be explained by variations in living conditions.
3. The neuropsychological and cognitive argument is not without merits, if we consider the fact that the development of the brain takes place until adolescence and is significantly shaped by life experiences. Thus, people who are exposed more to religious superstition through enculturation may develop brain structures that re "wired" for that superstition later in their lives. That is certainly consistent with the path dependency view which I outlined above.
S. Wojciech Sokolowski, Ph.D. Senior Research Associate Institute for Policy Studies Johns Hopkins University Baltimore, MD 21218 (USA) email: sokol at jhu.edu voice: +1 410 516 4056 fax: +1 410 516 7818
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