(no subject)

Whenever I encounter a new universe, either as a fandom or in an RP AU, at least one person in my headcast tries to wriggle its way into it and set up a tiny little nest. I feel like they're being parasites or something but it's hard to help.

...Brother Peter would fit way too snugly in "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" canon.

And in the department of Really Cool Shit...

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/04/magazine/04evolution.t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=3

Which is the better biological explanation for a belief in God — evolutionary
adaptation or neurological accident? Is there something about the cognitive
functioning of humans that makes us receptive to belief in a supernatural deity?
And if scientists are able to explain God, what then? Is explaining religion the
same thing as explaining it away? Are the nonbelievers right, and is religion at
its core an empty undertaking, a misdirection, a vestigial artifact of a
primitive mind? Or are the believers right, and does the fact that we have the
mental capacities for discerning God suggest that it was God who put them there?

In short, are we hard-wired to believe in God? And if we are, how and why did
that happen?

It's a collection of several scientific theories on the evolutionary development of religion, a process which actually makes a lot of sense even if belief in something immaterial seems at first detrimental to the basic functionings of a primitive society. A bunch of pages long, yeah, but an intriguing read.