ST. LOUIS -- Perhaps since the time of Galileo, science and religion have had a gentleman's agreement: You stay out of my business, and I'll stay out of yours.

Not any longer. A cadre of scientists, including Washington University anthropologist Pascal Boyer, are trying to explain why, in almost every human culture, people choose belief in God over unbelief -- why, it seems, the human brain is wired for belief.

And the scientists are finding something that would please Charles Darwin himself: Religion might have evolved through the same rules that led to big brains and opposable thumbs. From an evolutionary standpoint, they have found, belief can be useful.

"Supernatural beliefs are, in general, very easy extensions from beliefs that are useful in everyday life," Boyer said.

The last few years have seen a flurry of books written by atheist scientists, including Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion," Sam Harris' "The End of Faith," and Daniel Dennett's "Breaking the Spell." Last month, Christopher Hitchens unleashed another book in the same vein: "God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything."

These scientists describe faith as if it were a mental flaw, the functioning of a particularly illogical part of the brain. But Boyer, who predated them with books such as "Religion Explained" (2001) and "The Naturalness of Religious Ideas" (1994), says that religion isn't necessarily irrational if it arises from normal brain functions that help the human species survive.

Though he is an atheist himself, Boyer prefaces talks with a disclaimer: He's not out to debunk or defend God, only to present his research. Besides, he says, belief is so solidly engraved in human minds that it's probably not possible to eliminate. "It's a bit like saying life would be better without gravitation."

Many academics thought that as civilization moved to societies built on science and technology, religion would be discarded.

But 94 percent of Americans still believe in God or a universal spirit, according to a recent Gallup poll. In 1965, it was 97 percent. In 1944, it was 96 percent. Religion is not disappearing.

The mere presence of religion in human culture, however, doesn't explain how it got there. Scientists like Boyer began wondering if religion's persistence had something to do with a brain, wired for belief by the rules of evolution. Could religion have helped the human race survive?

Biologists who study evolution try to explain traits by measuring physical changes over generations and showing how they helped the species survive. It's more difficult to talk about the evolutionary value of a mental state like a belief in God because religiosity is difficult to measure. But there are correlations between religion and health.

For example, the men of Cache County, Utah, mostly devout Mormons, have the highest life expectancy in the country. Studies have shown that religiosity is associated with lower rates of cirrhosis, emphysema, suicide and heart disease. Of course, much of this health effect could come from religion'staboos on smoking, alcohol, drugs and sex -- which can all lead to disease.

A healthy mind

Evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson, at the University of Binghamton, says religion contributes to psychological health. For several years, he has been giving beepers to volunteers. Some are religious, some aren't. At different points in the day, the beepers go off. The subjects record their activities, habits, health and their moods.

Wilson said, "I can prove to you on a moment-by-moment basis that, statistically, religious believers are happier, are using time more productively, and are less anxious."

While religion might make for healthy individuals, the scientists say it also could be important at the group level. Richard Sosis, a University of Connecticut anthropologist, has shown how religion fosters social behaviors that allow individuals to thrive as members of a group.

In a 2000 study, Sosis catalogued 200 communes from the 19th century, some religious and some secular, and found that the religious ones were four times more likely to survive.

The group benefits of religion might seem counter-

intuitive at first, since members spend time praying that could instead be spent tending fields or earning money. But Wilson says the costs of religious rituals are outweighed by the benefits of a committed community.

Because those that go through the rites and rituals can be trusted, the religious groups don't need to weed out free-loaders with costly monitoring programs. God does the watching and keeps everyone in line.

Another group of scientists, including Boyer, say that belief in God isn't evolutionary; rather it's the mental modules that underpin and lead to religion that are useful.

Music, for example, hasn't helped the human species survive. Humans have important brain "software" for speech and speech recognition. This has been useful indeed for the survival of the species. But music came along as an add-on -- something diverting, captivating and addictive for the underlying software.

One such brain module is called agency, or the tendency for humans to see animate beings as responsible for phenomena -- to hear a rustle in the bushes as more than just the wind.

"We have an overdeveloped sense of agency," Boyer said. "When we see something moving, we immediately think that it must be an animal -- and then conclude that maybe it's not."

"There are good evolutionary reasons for that," he added. "If you mistake the wind in a tree for an agent, you've wasted two seconds of your cognitive system. If you mistake it the other way around -- seeing no predator where there is one, you're dead."

And so, just as it's easy for kids to have imaginary companions, Boyer argues that it is entirely natural for humans to befriend a God they can't see and to have relationships with the souls of dead people.

A second key mental system is what psychologists call "theory of mind," which refers to the way people understand that other people also have minds, with intentions and thoughts and beliefs of their own. Boyer has tested this with volunteers in France, Gabon and Nepal.

Think like God

He asks subjects what God is like. At first, they respond with doctrine: God is nebulous, God is everywhere, God can do everything all at once. Then he tells a story about God intervening in multiple crises simultaneously. When he asks his subjects to recall the story from memory, they say that God first does one thing, then does the next thing -- performing tasks sequentially, like a person would.

"Even when people say God's mind is incredibly different from ours, their spontaneous inferences show that they think of that mind as being similar to theirs," he said.

Boyer has continued to conduct experiments and gather evidence for the by-product theory. But his work hasn't garnered the best-selling attention of the other atheists' books. And academia hasn't taken much notice, either -- only about a dozen or so scientists labor in this field.

Justin Barrett, a psychologist at the University of Oxford, is another leading proponent of the by-product theory. Barrett is an evangelical Christian who finds his science and faith mutually reinforcing. "What could it mean for God to reveal himself to everyone if we don't have minds receptive to that revelation?" he said.

"Does finding a scientific or natural explanation for a belief undermine your justification for believing that thing? My answer is no. If science were able to tell me what brain states explained why my wife loves me, would I stop believing it?"

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