Do humans have a faith instinct?

[Undertoad]

Originally Posted by xoB

Notice the polls show the most religious people in the US are in rural areas. People that who at least observe nature (other than on the weather channel), and many actually interact with nature. These people know how delicate, how puny, how insignificant, humans really are. These people know, they can use help from any quarter... except the government.

Originally Posted by Obama

"You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them....And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." -Barack Obama, April 6, 2008 remarks at fundraiser in San Francisco

So many deep explanations. I think it's much simpler... just different schools of thought. What's new is in the third generation of a highly mobile society, we have been moving to be with people who think like us. We have been segregating ourselves according to beliefs. It used to happen at the neighborhood level, now it happens at the urban vs rural or even state vs state level.