Thanks Mitchell for the comments & for the link to your book, which I shall now read. I concur that one of the problems with religion/superstition is the seemingly counter-evolutionary problem of unnecessary resource utilization which at first sight does appear maladaptive. But there are plenty of examples in nature of maladaptive traits (behavioral and physiological) which exist because they’re a side-effect of a highly adaptive trait and thus the cost/benefit is sufficient to ensure that the apparently maladaptive feature is retained because losing it would also mean the loss of the more important adaptive feature. But I’m going to read your book now to get a better understanding of your argument, so I may end up changing my mind on this topic.