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Roach,
I think the general idea of the paper totally makes sense. It is for these reasons that I've always questioned the notion that there are institutional obstacles (ie. theism) between humanity and some sort of golden age of reason.
Humans are emotional beings first, rational second. And even rational people need to learn how to think. And even people who know how to think need to understand the subjects they're thinking about well enough to make proper sense of them. And even then, there are often multiple schools of thought for most subjects of interest.
I've been in enough arguments and seen and made enough flawed arguments that it seems completely obvious to me that reason is just as likely to be used as a way of maintaining a fantasy-based status quo as it is to be used as a way to pull back the curtain of ignorance.
I share your feelings on the evolution angle. Kinda funny that attempts would be made to explain the phenomena in terms of evolution, given that the subject of the paper in part speaks to how reason works in conjunction with confirmation bias. Because of course evolution has played a decisive role in everything qualifiable about humanity, why, just look at how easily we can conjure up an untestable narrative which provides evolutionary justification for everything humans do.
I like your description of evolution.
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