This one is about stones:
By 500,000 years ago, Homo had mastered the skill of shaping stone, bone, hides, horns, and wood into dozens of tool types. Some of these tools were so symmetrical and aesthetically pleasing that some scientists speculate toolmaking took on a ritual aspect that connected Homo artisans with their traditions and community. These ritualistic behaviors may have evolved, hundreds of thousands of years later, into the rituals we see in religions.
Agustín Fuentes, “How Did Belief Evolve?” at Sapiens
Some of us would be more impressed if the authors of this type of work attributed their own beliefs to these types of sources.
How about this: Belief that there is no design in nature comes from spending a lot of time reading boring useless papers and sitting in boring useless meetings, Eventually, homo academicus evolved to believe that all nature is like that.
There’s that’s a good enough thesis. Let’s publish it. But first we need to find a journal that is not run by homo academicus himself. Nah. Let’s do a Sokal hoax on this stuff instead. Any ideas?
See also: If naturalism can explain religion, why does it get so many basic facts wrong?
Evolutionary conundrum: is religion a useful, useless, or harmful adaptation?
and
Imagine a world of religions that naturalism might indeed be able to explain