In your review of Nicholas Wade’s The Faith Instinct: How Religion Evolved and Why it Endures (London: Penguin, 2009) you point out that he is “convinced that a Darwinian approach offers the key to understanding religion” (“Spirit Level,” December 19, 2009). This is hardly surprising nowadays, though. But he promotes the still controversial idea of group selection: “Groups which practiced religion effectively and enjoyed its benefits were likely to prevail over those which lacked these advantages.” Although you contrast Wade’s ideas with those of some noted Darwinian critics of religion, including Richard Dawkins, you fail to point out that Dawkins’ idea of cultural replicators, or memes, provides an adequate explanation of reproduction of religious ideas along proper Darwinian lines, where selection takes place at the level of individuals only. Indeed, religion cannot be shown to be an “adaptive” phenomenon, as it is not difficult to demonstrate that many groups practicing different religions are now extinct. If the memes stemming from such religions are still bouncing around, this only shows that faith as such is a useless byproduct of human development, as Dawkins would argue. The faith instinct is thus a fraught idea.