During the past two decades, several good nonfiction writers have taken aim at the mental processes that underlie human religion. Their books sold well, but left their more incisive readers still wanting to know how evolution produced the religious mind. I have in hand the answer to that question. Here's the shortest possible summary: It is hard to accept at face value that religion, with its huge attendant costs to the species, could have emerged from the process of natural selection. As we all know, though, all of life's features result from evolution by natural selection. It cannot be...