> while claiming other people don't have the cognitive tools you do. I'm amazed this comment didn't get downvoted.

it's the HN psuedo-intellectualism. Most HN readers tend to believe in their above-average intelligence, and that their view point comes from a place of rationalism and superior intellectual capability to analyse the world.

I myself, also fall into this category.

What bonafides are needed to think ?

Being religious isn't a weakness, it is an inevitability. A human mind is very limited and not up to the challenge of understanding everything - people have to accept most of their knowledge through social proof. Once social proof is involved religious-looking structures evolve rapidly. It isn't a matter of having or not having cognitive tools, it is that the tools necessary to avoid faith and community can't exist. At least without a level of change that shatters what it means to be human.

That is a bad definition of religion. I will accept a field of study's conclusions in the absence of time myself to investigate. However, if it turns out that field is incorrect (say with the reproducibility crisis), then I won't "have faith" and believe anyways. In other words, belief != faith, and I'm willing to update my beliefs based on new evidence.

That is hardly a strong argument, religious people can do all that too and still be highly faith based.

I don't think the GP's intent was to project his own superiority. Rather, if we're unable to use mythologies as a metaphor for the human experience, that is, for our self-expression, we are not as smart nor as strong as we fashion ourselves to be.

I read the last paragraph analytically, as in the Sapir Whorf hypothesis. It can be difficult to identify that one is in a religion if one assumes that it will call itself one. In this case, missing the “cognitive tools” could be a precise way of describing the shortcoming.