Comment by gjm11

Hyperactive attention-detection. It's a reference to the idea that the origin of religious beliefs might be an inbuilt propensity to think of other bits of the world as conscious agents paying attention to us, because it's much more costly not to notice the tiger hiding in the bushes that might want to eat you than it is to imagine a tiger hiding in the bushes when there isn't actually one. On a scale larger than "is there something in that patch of undergrowth looking at me?" this might produce the idea that (e.g.) storms are the result of some powerful entity being angry with us.

(Of course questions like "whyever do people believe in gods?" will feel less like questions that need such answers to those who themselves believe in gods, because "duh, because there actually are such beings and sometimes people interact with them and sometimes we notice that" is a good answer if its premise is true.)