You are assuming that magical thinking is the optimal survival strategy as opposed to a lesser-evil byproduct of advanced cognition in a particular environment. This is like assuming that because all humans have appendices, having an appendix is necessarily a better survival strategy. It's not. It may have once served a purpose, but now the best it can do is kill you.

Nukes could wipe out the human race, but so could an asteroid. Coincidentally I'd be much less worried about having nukes if there was a lot less magical thinking in the world.