I thought for a moment, John, that you were about to support the concept, developed (and later withdrawn, I think) by Dawkins of ‘memes’, or cultural replicators which operate analogously (is that a word?) to genes.

Does the prevalence of religious belief in the US have something to do with the covenants which formed the basis of the nation? I don’t mean the US constitution, but the sanctuary sought by the founding fathers of the nation as a place of freedom from persecution in Europe, and a place where their beliefs could form and shape the new life they were seeking to lead?

And even though, on the face of it, religion would appear to have been marginalised by the strong separation of church and state in the US, the reality was that religion was always highly respected - unlike France, for instance, where the revolution was an anti-ecclesiastical move as much as anything else, and secularism was part of the republic’s raison d’être for the nation.

But this is only a superficial glance at the subject; it doesn’t fully explain the phenomenon which you have interestingly drawn attention to.

Incidentally, contributors to this thread may be interested to know that tonight, Richard Dawkins is appearing at our local theatre, the Yvonne Arnaud theatre, Guildford, in “An audience with Richard Dawkins”. I would have been more interested had it been “A conversation with Richard Dawkins”. Also, anyone interested in pursuing a critique of Dawkins’s excursions into the realms of faith should read “Dawkins’ God - genes, memes and the meaning of life” by Alister McGrath. The book is useful for anyone grappling with the relationship of science to faith, and more particularly the influence of modernism as the unseen manipulator of attitudes to science and faith.