Children are born believers in God, academic claims

[nitroz]

this academic needs their license revoked.

 

[nitroz]

kids also have a predisposition for liking boogers and making my iphone sticky.

they can't help it.

Kids are born sticky.

look at all these things that i can put my mouth on!

 

[Skull Pilot]

The Telegraph
By Martin Beckford, Religious Affairs Correspondent
2:54PM GMT 24 Nov 2008


Children are "born believers" in God and do not simply acquire religious beliefs through indoctrination, according to an academic. Dr Justin Barrett, a senior researcher at the University of Oxford's Centre for Anthropology and Mind, claims that young people have a predisposition to believe in a supreme being because they assume that everything in the world was created with a purpose.


Children are born believers in God, academic claims - Telegraph

_______________________

Naturally, the default position has always been theism given the atheist's logically indefensible ontology and pathological intellectual dishonesty. Atheism truly is the gravest depravity.

Children have undeveloped brains.

 

[there4eyeM]

Since it is, by definition, absolutely impossible to separate a human from socializing influences, the premise of the 'academic' and the o.p. is untenable.

Go back to 'start'.

 

[editec]

The Telegraph
By Martin Beckford, Religious Affairs Correspondent
2:54PM GMT 24 Nov 2008


Children are "born believers" in God and do not simply acquire religious beliefs through indoctrination, according to an academic. Dr Justin Barrett, a senior researcher at the University of Oxford's Centre for Anthropology and Mind, claims that young people have a predisposition to believe in a supreme being because they assume that everything in the world was created with a purpose.


Children are born believers in God, academic claims - Telegraph

_______________________

Naturally, the default position has always been theism given the atheist's logically indefensible ontology and pathological intellectual dishonesty. Atheism truly is the gravest depravity.

Makes sense.

I think that we are predisposed to seek clarity, and the GOD explaination is a handy explanation for children who are, let's face it, still basically magical thinkers.

 

[Hollie]

Since it is, by definition, absolutely impossible to separate a human from socializing influences, the premise of the 'academic' and the o.p. is untenable.

Go back to 'start'.

True. Cultural influences (ones family heritage), is the greatest determining factor for religious belief.

Many South American tribes have no conception of gods.

As to a theologian "discovering" that humans have a predisposition toward gods (the more recent conceptions / inventions of gods), well, gee whiz, never saw that one comin'.

 

[editec]

Many South American tribes have no conception of gods.

Really?

Didn't know that.

Can you name a few of those tribes?

 

[koshergrl]

Since it is, by definition, absolutely impossible to separate a human from socializing influences, the premise of the 'academic' and the o.p. is untenable.

Go back to 'start'.

True. Cultural influences (ones family heritage), is the greatest determining factor for religious belief.

Many South American tribes have no conception of gods.

As to a theologian "discovering" that humans have a predisposition toward gods (the more recent conceptions / inventions of gods), well, gee whiz, never saw that one comin'.

Cite the study that proves it.

Meanwhile, kids believe in God, according to another study, because:

"It was hard-wired into the human psyche, but it was important not to build too much into the concept of God. "It's the concept of God as creator, primarily," she said. Dr Petrovich said her findings were based on several studies, particularly one of Japanese children aged four to six, and another of 400 British children aged five to seven from seven different faiths. "Atheism is definitely an acquired position," she said.

Read more: Infants 'have natural belief in God'


​

 

[koshergrl]

" God is a natural idea for children to acquire. But the fact that there are, conversely, few natural atheists appears to offer little comfort to the religious believer. For the research raises an obvious question: does it not undermine mature belief by showing that belief in God is essentially childish? THIS s the conclusion articulated by another researcher in the field, Dr Jesse Bering, director of the Institute of Cognition and Culture at the Queen’s University, Belfast, and author of the recently published The God Instinct. His work confirms the tendency to see agency in the world, which he interprets as a kind of evolutionary excess.
When our ancestors were living on the savannah, the story goes, their chances of survival were better if they interpreted every swish of grass and every crack of a twig as a stalking predator. Better to be jumpy and survive, than blasé and die. Such interpolations were so adaptively advantageous that human beings evolved to detect agency everywhere, on earth and in the heavens. Hence, the belief in gods. The tendency is reinforced by another powerful intuition, namely, that what is going on inside your head is pretty much like what is going on inside mine.
We make that assumption because we cannot inspect what is going on inside each other’s heads. But by assuming my fear is like your fear, or that my laughter means the same as yours, we are able to have social lives. And, again, sociality is enormously advantageous when it comes to survival — although, once more, we tend to overdo it.
"As a direct consequence of the evolution of the human social brain," Dr Bering writes, "we some times can’t help but see intentions, desires, and beliefs in things that haven’t even a smidgeon of a neural system there to generate the psychological states we perceive." And it is only a small step from believing that other people have minds, to believing that things have minds, to seeing minds in objects that do not exist.
Like God."


Templeton-Cambridge | Mark Vernon - Are Humans Hard-Wired for God? [April 2011]

 

[there4eyeM]

Je repete:

Since it is, by definition, absolutely impossible to separate a human from socializing influences, the premise of the 'academic' and the o.p. is untenable.

Go back to 'start'.

 

[there4eyeM]

By the way, is that a kosher dog? It looks as if it may be hot.

 

[koshergrl]

"...scientific critiques of religion often also deploy childish conceptions of God. This is rather like restricting a study of music to nursery rhymes. When you ignore the sophistication of Bach or Mozart, it is no surprise that music looks like nothing more than a hangover from primitive times. Scientific debunkers of religion typically reach similar conclusions, having ignored theology’s virtuosi."


Templeton-Cambridge | Mark Vernon - Are Humans Hard-Wired for God? [April 2011]

 

[Hollie]

Many South American tribes have no conception of gods.

Really?

Didn't know that.

Can you name a few of those tribes?

Here's two. I'm trying to capture the links on my phone's browser but the formatting (text and url data ) is difficult.

Pirahã people - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



The Cincinnati Quarterly Journal of Science - Google Books

Cincinnati quarterly journal of science - Volumes 1-2 - Page 283 -Google Books Result books.google.com/books?id... Samuel Almond Miller, L.M. Hosea - 1874 - Science

The Toupinambas of Brazil had no religion.

 

[koshergrl]

"
Studies of identical twins have found a genetic component to religious belief: Identical twins, who share the same genetic makeup, are much more likely to have the same belief system as their sibling [source: ABC News].
But when it comes to explaining those genetically influenced beliefs, researchers make a crucial distinction between spirituality and religion. Humans do have a predisposition toward the spiritual: To various degrees, our brains search for a larger meaning in the world around us, and belief in a higher, all-knowing power can fill this need. Specific religious practices and teachings, on the other hand, are a product of environment and upbringing.
Molecular biologist Gene Hamer, author of the "The God Gene: How Faith is Hardwired into Our Genes," isolated the specific gene that makes humans more likely to be spiritual. The presence or absence of this gene can explain why some people feel drawn to spiritual matters, searching for a higher being or transcendent moment that makes them feel at one with the universe."


Is there a neurological predisposition for religion? - Curiosity

 

[koshergrl]

"Time magazine posed the question "Is God in Our Genes?" on its October 2004 cover after molecular biologist Dean Hamer published a book titled "The God Gene: How Faith is Hardwired into Our Genes." The answer, according to the accompanying article, seems to be yes. After using a personality test called the Temperament and Character Inventory to measure levels of self-transcendence in 1,000 men and women, Hamer found a direct correlation between individuals' levels of spirituality and a variation in a gene known as VMAT2."

Hollie is an anti-science zealot.

Is there a neurological predisposition for religion? - Curiosity


"Experiments involving adults, conducted by Jin Zhu from Tsinghua University (China), and Natlie Emmons and Jesse Bering from The Queen's niversity, Belfast suggest that people across many different cultures instinctively believe that some part of their mind, soul or spirit lives on after death The studies demonstrate that people are natural 'dualists' finding it easy to conceive of the separation of the mind and the body."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/07/110714103828.htm


Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2011-05-humans-predisposed-gods-afterlife.html#jCp

 

[PratchettFan]

The Telegraph
By Martin Beckford, Religious Affairs Correspondent
2:54PM GMT 24 Nov 2008


Children are "born believers" in God and do not simply acquire religious beliefs through indoctrination, according to an academic. Dr Justin Barrett, a senior researcher at the University of Oxford's Centre for Anthropology and Mind, claims that young people have a predisposition to believe in a supreme being because they assume that everything in the world was created with a purpose.


Children are born believers in God, academic claims - Telegraph

_______________________

Naturally, the default position has always been theism given the atheist's logically indefensible ontology and pathological intellectual dishonesty. Atheism truly is the gravest depravity.

Ok. If so then this says something about the nature of the human mind. We tend to create answers when none are available.

 

[koshergrl]

Atheism is a learned concept that is unnatural to the human brain, is what it teaches us.

 

[PratchettFan]

Many South American tribes have no conception of gods.

Really?

Didn't know that.

Can you name a few of those tribes?

Here's two. I'm trying to capture the links on my phone's browser but the formatting (text and url data ) is difficult.

Pirahã people - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



The Cincinnati Quarterly Journal of Science - Google Books

Cincinnati quarterly journal of science - Volumes 1-2 - Page 283 -Google Books Result books.google.com/books?id... Samuel Almond Miller, L.M. Hosea - 1874 - Science

The Toupinambas of Brazil had no religion.

Those studies really don't relate to this issue. They deal with a more comparative idea of organized religion and beliefs which reflect our own views of religious thought. If you looked further into those studies you would find a variety of beliefs dealing with the supernatural which need to be taken on their own rather than as a comparison to western belief.

 

[PratchettFan]

Atheism is a learned concept that is unnatural to the human brain, is what it teaches us.

By that standard, so is driving a car. Leaning is not unnatural to the brain. Therefore a learned concept is not unnatural. In point of fact, Atheism is no more a learned concept than Theism. It is merely another attempt to create answers where none exist.

 

[koshergrl]

True. However, what the atheist zealots claim is that it is our *natural* state to be atheist, and faith in a creator is a completely learned concept.

It isn't.