Tags for this video have been changed from 'Andy Thompson, religion, psychology' to 'Andy Thompson, religion, psychology, why we believe in gods' - edited by Grimm

One should be extremely skeptical of this sort of thing. The fact that religion engages those areas of the brain should come as no surprise to anyone, whether religious or not. It's exactly what we'd expect.

Religion may engage certain areas of the brain. But it does not follow from that that religion was caused by that neural circuitry.

^You're right of course: Hypotheses about the origin of religion will probably remain speculation for some time.

But the talk is useful as a primer on the sort of concepts are used in modern psychology and how these apply to religion. After all, the main subject of the talk is what makes us vulnerable to religious belief.

i think it's kind of hard for religion to not be caused by neural circuitry since religion came (well) after the advent of that circuitry.

and really, this is just one of many, many nails in the coffin of religion. the body of evidence against it is getting pretty big.