I had one grunch, but the eggplant over there.

I heard it phrased as most modern religions were dreamed up by unbathed, bronze age goat herders who had no idea where the sun went at night.

Skado's latest spruiking of god botherer academia included reference to several forms of evolutionary religiosity including the adaptive, the by product, and a new one to bolster their publish or be damned cred.

The idea that religions are an evolutionary trait is pure garbage. Religions came into being as a coping mechanism for humans with little knowledge or developed reasoning to cope with the fact that there was so much that they did not understand, or control. Humans created omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent gods to which they attributed the best and idealized human traits . In so doing, they debased ad devalued humanity itself. In so doing they limited and damaged the human evolutionary process.

There are a few other features which follow from evolution and could lead to the development of religion, such as the well known positive error bias.

Which may be hard wired into us, because for example. If you see a glint of light in the forest, which could be the reflection in a predators eye, it is better to assume that it is, say a tiger, and run away, than to think that it is maybe only a trick of the light. Because if it is a tiger, you could lose your life if you don't run away, where if you mistakenly run from a random glint on a leaf, all you lose is a little energy. And the reverse applies, if you think you see food, then it pays to move towards it, because if you are right then you get a meal, while if you are wrong, all you lose is a few seconds. A false positive error usually costs little where a false negative can be very costly.

For which reason we may tend to assume we see dangerous and helpful beings like tigers, and gods, everywhere. Rather than be tend to be sceptical. In other words we may be hard wired to be gullible. But of course, in the modern world, most of us do not live in the jungle, but in an environment built by human culture, where most of the cultural things we encounter, are made by humans to manipulate other humans, probably by exploiting our weaknesses, in which case the best error preference may now be quite the reverse.

I see that you say you have been reading Gould which is very good, you may also find that it is good for balance to read Richard Dawkins as well. Since they were great rivals and held opposite opinions, on exactly these sorts of subjects, although they were great friends for a long while and had great mutual respect.

I see clouds in the sky that look just like Jesus. I think others look like Mary also. Bet ya Muslims have favorite cloud formations as well. Are there any clouds that look like Brigham Young or is he now on another planet?

Setting aside that vast disparities, in sects and religion and just using Catholicism as an example, it exploits the need to feel part of a group and the inarticulate and instinctive need to feel safe. God protects you is a very powerful appeal to childish emotion not logic but we all have primitive parts of our brains.

I would go with spandrel adding an Ernest Becker death denial chaser (aka terror management theory). In one of Gould’s articles on exaptation, he even says our brains built large for other reasons facilitated the ability for our ancestors to contemplate their own mortality but attributed that insight to Freud rather than Becker.

Dean Hamer in his over the top god gene stuff framed the putative but questionable genetic proclivities as related to self-transcendence, which isn’t necessarily religion. Even non-believers can immerse themselves in an “oceanic feeling”.

The one interesting aspect of religion or perhaps identity based ideologies in general might be to indicate trustworthiness in larger social networks beyond capacity of human memory to recall intimate details of who is who and did what to others. The upper limit is conjectured as the Dunbar number and the concept I might be reaching for is costly signaling.

Reasonable, a complex and variable behavior as is religion, it's seemingly impossible to even draw parameters much less a firm conclusion.