Duncle

Yes, I agree. We do have a large set of traits that appear to be adaptions to an aquatic environment. On the other hand, we don't have the capacity to hold our breath underwater for very long. Aquatic mammals such as sea lions and whales have high levels of myoglobin in their muscle tissue, which allows them to store large amounts of oxygen, and therefore remain underwater for prolonged periods. This adaptation has obviously evolved multiple times. The fact that we aren't adapted in this way perhaps points towards a weak version of the AAH.

A short and easy to understand explanation of the chemistry of blood colours here.

The issue of why people continue to have supernatural beliefs while living in the modern world- a world that is shaped by the fruits of scientific inquiry- is to my mind a really fascinating question. It's a shame that it can't be discussed without the thread being terminally derailed by bizarre theistic meanderings. Much of what recursion says falls into the category of nonsense. For example, this paragraph: There isn't any sort of argument here. Just a lot of long words being used to say nothing.

First of all: Why do you assume that the universe was created- that something did come out of nothing? It's at least as plausible that the universe has always existed. Some interesting lines of current scientific inquiry that seem to point in that direction: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/rainbow-gravity-universe-beginning/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/2-futures-can-explain-time-s-mysterious-past/ Secondly: The 'God of the Gaps' is an exceptionally poor argument for the intellectual viability of religious belief. Just because science can't explain some phenomenon now doesn't mean that will always be the case. Rather than resorting to supernatural pseudo-explanations, it's much more rational (and intellectually honest) to say that we simply don't know the answers to certain questions, but we're working on them. To return to the question posed by the OP.... I think another relevant issue here is the nature of scientific truth. Science gives us models which approximate the behaviour of some element(s) of reality as we apprehend it. All scientific theories are falsifiable, and science as an enterprise encourages, indeed depends on, attempts to falsify them. All scientific disciplines are subject to revolutions/ paradigm shifts. And historically, major disciplines have had their underlying assumptions radically revised by new theoretical insights- Biology by Evolution and then Genetics; Physics by Relativity and QM; Geology by Plate Tectonics; Psycholgy by the 'Cognitive Revolution' of the 1950s-60s. Religion, by contrast, purports to offer something very different- access to absolute knowledge. The Bible/ Torah/ Qur'an/ Vedas/ whatever are claimed to be perfect knowledge, divinely given. They're also, of course, much easier to understand than science (see my point 3 above). So the choice that people have is: - Believe in truth that makes no claim to absolute certainty, is frequently revised, and is bloody hard to understand. or - Believe in truth which comes from God, represents absolute certainty, is eternal and not subject to revision, and is completely comprehensible. Unsurprisingly, many choose the second option.

I'm not convinced that fear of damnation is the biggest thing that leads people to believe in religion. It's surely one factor, at least for some people, but I don't think that it's the most important one. Some other factors: 1. Upbringing. Most people follow the dominant faith of their culture, which they were brought up into. Breaking with these culturally validated beliefs can be difficult. 2. Ignorance. Most people don't understand science, and lack critical thinking skills. For them, the idea that God created the world in 4004 BCE is just as plausible as the scientific alternative. They simply have no way of discriminating a lousy argument (e.g. creationism) from a good one (e.g. arguments from Planetary Science and Evolutionary Biology). 3. Propaganda. There are a lot of people with a strong vested interest in the continuation of religion. Those people do their best to convince themselves and others of the veracity of religious claims, sometimes resorting to every fallacious argument in the book (check out creationist websites to see what I mean). 4. Social Conformism. In many countries, including the US but probably excluding Japan and most of Northern Europe, believing in religion is the norm, and atheists face discrimination. In some Islamic countries, apostasy is a capital crime. 5. Misplaced Search For Meaning. People seem to naturally anthropomorphize the world, and look for meaning and pupose in the inanimate universe. This is a simple category error: meaning and purpose are human ideas, which simply don't apply to stuff like stars and galaxies. Religion gives meaning to the meaningless- it's completely wrong, but many people find it comforting.