What's the original origin of religion? Is it teleology? Agency detection? Theory of mind, or anthropomorphism? Those are byproducts of common social cognition So there was no benefit, huh? No function? Just a random bunch of intuitions and hunches Just mental eruptions in a population of primates Tryin' to keep track of each others' changeable mind states Minds play tricks like Scarface and Bushwick They see intentions in every rustle of bushes But so what if religion started kinda random Nothin' adaptive about it, Just a spandrel? That doesn't mean it stayed that way, It could've taken A turn for the beneficial and become an adaptation That's what happened to feathers, Birds can fly and soar Even if their descended from a terrestrial dinosaur But Jurassic World lost the plot a bit It pissed off a whole lot of palaeontologists 'Cause raptors had feathers, The question is why Would evolution produce a feather that can't fly? Here's a toast to the scavengers Leveraging advantages Makin' something outta nothin' Byproducts into benefits Here's a toast to survivors To the dumpster divers Makin' beauty out of blemishes Byproducts into benefits Take a look at a flock of velociraptors They can't fly but feathers are also attractive So they're good for displays and mating dances And they're fuzzy, So there's an insulation factor How else you gonna to keep a tyrannosaur warm in a rain storm? That's how the feather was formed But dinosaurs ran into an asteroid apocalypse A few survivors descended from archaeopteryx A new function for the feather was found Propelling an organism across the ground Mutations accumulated and spread them flatter Gradually makin' them more aerodynamic And dinosaurs survived; They recolonized the earth Today we know them as "birds" Okay, dinosaurs didn't make it, but their descendants did They turned a byproduct into a benefit Here's a toast to the scavengers Leveraging advantages Makin' something outta nothin' Byproducts into benefits Here's a toast to survivors To the dumpster divers Makin' beauty out of blemishes Byproducts into benefits The original origins of religion A side effect of social cognition An imaginary population of intuitions Ancestors, gods and apparitions But populations change, they're not static They fluctuate like soft plastic Some gods proliferate, others fade away Like Poseidon, who nobody prays to today You're a Poseidon atheist, admit it And you're comfortable with it, which makes you a militant Poseidon atheist – "Poseidon theology" Used to be huge, but now we call it "oceanography" Beliefs change and impact behaviour They spread from head to head through oral labia So what's religion, a byproduct or benefit? Well that depends on what you spread with it Here's a toast to the scavengers Leveraging advantages Makin' something outta nothin' Byproducts into benefits Here's a toast to survivors To the dumpster divers Makin' beauty out of blemishes Byproducts into benefits