A similar theory has emerged from a field called evolutionary psychology, which views the human mind as a collection of adaptations sculpted by natural selection in our primordial past. Some evolutionary psychologists have speculated that soon after infancy all healthy children manifest an innate, intuitive ability to infer the state of mind of other humans. This awkwardly named “theory of mind” capacity has obvious survival value, because it helps us predict the actions of others for our own benefit. Damage to this capacity may cause autism. Autistics often seem incapable of distinguishing between humans and inanimate objects.
Many, perhaps virtually all, healthy humans have the opposite problem: an over-active theory-of-mind capacity. We unthinkingly discern sentience and complex psychological states not only in other humans and in animals but also in rainstorms, droughts, and shooting stars. Hence religion. But if we decide that supernatural phenomena - telekinesis, clairvoyance, ghosts, gods, and, yes, demiurges - are all illusions generated by our overactive causal and anthropomorphic operators, must we conclude that all our mystical insights are illusions as well? In other words, is it possible to be both a skeptic and a mystic?
— John Horgan. Rational Mysticism. Mariner Books, 2003.
