With all These Hidden Innuendos; Just Waiting to Arrive

I come from a long line of cowards.  Indeed, though my family never had the modicum of nobility necessary to bestow upon my namesake a family crest, if one ever was appointed to my family, I imagine it not to look not like this:

But rather something like this:

Anxiety is a peculiar phenomena--with ancient roots.  Peter Watts, probably my favorite sci-fi author of recent vintage suggested the following vignette in his novel "Echopraxia:"  (and I'm paraphrasing)

Three cavemen (cave-people) each hear something rustling in the grass. One of them thinks its a tiger and runs like hell.  But it turns out to be the wind.  His friends all laugh at him for being such a chickenshit. One of the other cave-people thinks it's a tiger and runs like hell, and it turns out to be a tiger.  He gets away. The third one hears the rustling in the grass and he blows it off.   He becomes dinner for the tiger.  When this little scenario is recounted millions of times over millions of years, it follows that human survivors tend to be naturally inclined paranoia. Chicken shits have more off-springs than corpses.  Natural selection shapes us to be paranoid.

Lets go a few steps further.

What are the characteristics of paranoia besides fear?  Isn't paranoia in someways an increased sensitivity or recognition of patterns in the natural environment?  The patterns may be delusional, but they still are patterns.  The idiot who hears the rustling in the grass and ignores it in some ways is not sensitive to the pattern in the environment (the rustling) and what it signifies.  It might be said in some ways that the development of human consciousness is a paranoid reaction to the environment with either the recognition or construction of patterns in the environment.  Paranoia is hardwired in our consciousness to become our new reality.

This notion could also be seen as turning religion on its head.   We are the products of a natural selection that instills in us a belief that unseen things are watching us.   In this way, could it be said that a belief in God is nothing more than the sum or all of our fears?

Me?  I'm afraid of dying.  I'm afraid of dark alleys--especially alleys with cactus plants that make you see things that aren't there...lol