I find these "theories" that anti-theists come up with to try to explain the origins of religion to be insulting and elitist more than anything else.
Have you considered that this "insult", only exists in your head? That that is just how YOU take that info in?
The real quesiton is if it is
meant to be insulting.
I can tell you that it isn't. What the OP describes, are just the honest findings of fields like psychology etc. And it is behaviour that is not just apparant in humans, but in
most animal species.
It's also really not only about religion. It's about ALL superstitious beliefs. From religion all the way to homeopathy. This applies to atheists just as much as it applies to theists. Because it concerns
the human condition. If you are a human, then you have to deal with human psychology. And this happens to be part of human psychology.
Psychologists etc didn't come up with these ideas
to explain away religion...
Psychologists merely concluded these ideas based on their behavioural and psychological studies of not just humans, but plenty of other animals as well. And the explanatory model that came out of that data, just happens to be a model that can explain why humans invent and believe in religions.
If you want to take it personal, that's upto you off course.
It's always some sort of cognitive malfunction in the view of your ilk,
"your ilk"?
Again, these are scientific findings. If you wish to argue against it, you're arguing against the science, not against the mere opinions of someone who supposedly doesn't like religion....
and the elitism comes in because you think the small number of people in the group you're a part of have somehow managed to escape this "trap". (Sounds pretty religious to me. Like an atheist Neo).
You can't escape this "trap", because you can't escape your human psychology.
At best, you can be aware of the flaws of human psychology and try and keep it in mind and try to avoid it.
If it was such a negative thing to our survival, natural selection would've selected against it long ago. No species exists where the majority of its members has a cognitive malfunction.
It seems you completely misunderstood what was actually said.
Nobody is saying that it is a negative thing to our survival. In fact, what is being said is the exact opposite.
Here's the example again:
You hear a noise in the bushes. Is it just the wind? Or is it a dangerour predator sneaking up on you?
Person A infuses the noise with agency ("it's out to get me") and engages in a type 1 cognitive error (the false positive), and then runs like hell.
Person B doesn't engage in those, and instead stays in place while gathering more data to see if it really is a tiger or not.
If it's not a tiger, then both A and B live. A ran for nothing, but both A and B live.
If it IS a tiger, then A who ran away, lives. B is lunch.
So, yes, in evolutionary history, those being prone to infusing otherwise random events with agency and engaging in type 1 cognition errors, had an evolutionary advantage over their peers, who didn't ran and instead stood around in their scepticism, gathering more data.
This is why tendencies to superstition are seen throughout the animal kingdom - especially in those species that are lunch to other species.