Justin Barrett, senior researcher at the Centre for Anthropology and Mind, Oxford University, has conducted research over the last decade which, it is claimed, shows that children are born with a predisposition to see the natural world as designed and purposeful with an intelligent being behind that purpose.
He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme:
The preponderance of scientific evidence for the past 10 years or so has shown that a lot more seems to be built into the natural development of children’s minds than we once thought, including a disposition to see the world as designed and purposeful and that some kind of intelligent being is behind that purpose.
In The Guardian in an article entitled “Children of God?” A.C. Grayling, a Professor of Philosophy at the University of London, began by mocking Barrett’s research, saying:
The research is funded by the Templeton Foundation, an organisation keen to find, or to insert, religion into science and to promote belief in their compatibility – which, note, comes down to spending money on "showing" in the end that the beliefs of ancient goatherds are as good as modern physics.
Justin Barrett, a Christian and member of the centre’s research team (whether it is research or propaganda is the moot question here) says with his colleagues on the centre’s website:
Why is belief in supernatural beings so common? Because of the design of human minds. Human minds, under normal developmental conditions, have a strong receptivity to belief in gods, in the afterlife, in moral absolutes, and in other ideas commonly associated with ‘religion’ … In a real sense, religiousness is the natural state of affairs. Unbelief is relatively unusual and unnatural.
Barrett protested that Grayling had chosen to ignore the science and instead had focused on Barrett’s alleged motivations. Barrett argued that Grayling, by attacking an argument not on its merits but by discrediting the arguer, had committed the ad hominem fallacy.
Responding to the allegation that his position was religiously motivated he points out that atheist evolutionary psychologist and anthropologist, Pascal Boyer, had once stated his view that if two children were left on an island to raise themselves they would probably become religious. Similarly, another prominent atheist anthropologist, Scott Atran, stated in his book In Gods We Trust:
Supernatural agency is the most culturally recurrent, cognitively relevant, and evolutionarily compelling concept in religion. The concept of the supernatural is culturally derived from an innate cognitive schema…
Ironically, Atran and Boyer were demonised by religious writers for daring to suggest that religion is the product of natural predispositions, while now a prominent atheist accuses Barrett of a religious agenda –being a closet intelligent design defender – for saying the same thing.
Posted March 8, 2009
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