For example, the emotions that accompany religious ecstasy clearly have a neurobiological source.
 
Propitiation & sacrifice, which are near-universals of religious practice, are acts of submission to a dominant being.

Countless studies of animal species, whose instinctive behavior is not obscured by cultural elaboration, 
have shown that membership in dominance orders pays off in survival & lifetime reproductive 
success. ..... better access to food shelter & mates than does solitary existance.
... 
As cults evolve into religions, the image of the Supreme Being is reinforced by myth & liturgy.
...
The symbol-forming human mind, however, never remains satisfied with raw, apish feeling in any emotional realm. 
... Ritual & prayer permit religious believers to be in direct touch with the Supreme Being;. . . ;the 
unexplainable is explained; & an oceanic sense of communion with the larger whole is made possible.
...
Scientists from another planet would notice immediately the parallels between animal dominance 
behavior on the one hand & human obeisance to religious & civil authority on the other.
     ....
The mind reflects in certain ways in order to reach ever higher levels of enlightenment,
until finally, when no further progress is possible, it enters a mystical union with the whole.
   ...
Perhaps, as I believe, these phenomena can all eventually be explained as functions of 
brain circuitry & deep genetic history.
...
.."That is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete & great."
     Of course that is happiness--to find the godhead, or to enter the wholeness of nature, or otherwise to grasp & 
hold on to something ineffable, beautiful,& eternal.  Millions seek it.  They feel otherwise lost, adrift in a life 
without ultimate meaning.  They enter established religions, succumb to cults, dabble in New Age nostrums.  ... 
     ..., these phenomena can all eventually be explained as functions of brain circuitry & deep genetic 
history.  ... the idea of mystical union is an authentic part of the human spirit.
....
For many, the urge to believe in transcendental existence & immortality is overpowering.
...
Acceptance of the supernatural conveyed great advantage throughout prehistory, when the brain was 
evolving.  Thus it is in sharp contrast to the science of biology, which was developed as a product of 
the modern age & is not underwritten by genetic algorithms.  The uncomfortable truth is that the 2 
beliefs are not factually compatible.   ...intellectual & religious truth face disquieting choices.
...
The essence of humanity's spiritual dilemma is that we evolved genetically to accept one truth & discovered another.
...
Human nature is biologically based, & it is relevant to ethics & religion.  The evidence shoes 
that because of its influence, people can readily be educated to only a narrow range of 
ethical precepts.  They flourish within certain belief systems & wither in others.
...
The idea of a genetic, eevolutionary origin of moral & religious beliefs will continue to be tested by 
biological studies of complex human behavior.  To the extent thet the sensory & nervous systems appear to have 
evolved by natural selection, or at least some other purely material process, the empiricist interpretation 
will be supported.  It will be further supported by verification of gene-culture coevolution, the essential 
process postulated by scientists to underlie human nature by linking changes in genes to changes in culture.
...
They will refuse to yield to the dispair of animal mortality.
...
Material reality discovered by science already possesses more content & grandeur than all 
religous cosmologies combined.
....
We are a single gene pool from which individuals are drawn in each generation & into which [most] they are 
dissolved the next generation, forever united as a species by heritage & a common future.  Such are the 
conceptions, based on fact, from which new intimations of immortality can be drawn & a new mythos evolved.
...
Religion will possess strength to the extent that it codifies & puts into enduring, poetic form the 
highest values of humanity consistent with empirical knowledge.  That is the only way to provide 
compelling moral leadership.  Blind faith, no matter how passionately expressed, will not suffice. .....

MORE WILSON QUOTES:
Asthetic tastes are epigenetic rules.