Are we born believing in God?

[Gloria The Camel]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_7745000/7745514.stm

An interesting debate on BBC, when I read the title I thought "Oh god [excuse the pun], what a stupid argument!" But the more you think about it the more interesting it becomes...


p.s. did anyone else laugh when he said "By doing experiements wit little children" perhaps it's just me...

[The Meromorph]

Interesting...
But the first guy misses the point that you can't ask little children about this until they can speak (quite well) - and the only way children can learn to speak is by listening to speech, and therefore they are already culturally indoctrinated by the time you can ask them!

Two other significant points are vaguely and inadequately referenced in that discussion....
1. For sound evolutionary reasons (because they're more likely to survive early childhood if they do), small children are predisposed to accept statements from adults at face value, and as unerring truth.
2. For sound evolutionary reasons (because they're more likely to avoid/evade actively dangerous things if they do), all humans are wont to take an 'intentional stance' towards anything that moves or changes.

When a 'god(s) meme' is part of their cultural indoctrination under #1 above, then #2 makes them tend to continue to use it throughout their lives...

See 'The God Delusion' Richard Dawkins for a fuller discussion of this.

[Griffin NoName]

p.s. did anyone else laugh when he said "By doing experiements wit little children" perhaps it's just me...

Yes.

In fact, he pretty well blows his credibility with it. After all, most able academics are extremely careful about what they say and write.  

I think this links to the current knowledge explained in the recent documentary on what babies are hard-wired for in the womb - BBC3  Growing Babies: Baby Brainpower. Unfortunately no longer available. Excellent. Amazing stuff. But.... essentially it was around already having stuff like spatial awareness all ready and waiting for them to start drawing maps etc (ie. they will have been wired to begin the process of locating UP/DOWN or whatever so all they are doing in those first few months is fixing UP/DOWN into the pre-programmed/wired mechanism for development of understanding UP/DOWN properly.) (UM... I have to say the documentary explained it rather better). From this it is rather a huge leap to a knowledge of G-D, and slightly worrying that any old G-D might do as IF any old G-D will do that rather devalues the whole thing surely?).

Sounds like an attempt to pin the (theoretical?) G-D spot in the brain onto emerging science.

I don't know much about the "Institute for Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology" at Oxford Uni. Sounds like a cognitive distortion to me so I shall go and assess it  who established cognition evolves?

I also roared at the debate on chucking a load of babies onto an island to see what they come up with. We already know. They kill the fat boy !

I do hope Dr Barrett does not lead his witnesses. It's easy to guess his belief system as he said he thought children could be influenced by being told there was no G-D - I don't know any atheists who became so because it was "suggested". Now, if he were suggesting athesists only became so due to acting out the rebel child part of "self", I might believe him

[anthrobabe]

snip
Mero said "Interesting...
But the first guy misses the point that you can't ask little children about this until they can speak (quite well) - and the only way children can learn to speak is by listening to speech, and therefore they are already culturally indoctrinated by the time you can ask them!" end snip

BINGO!!!!!!!!
Ta-Da!
and this is why I had a professor literally tear his hair out of his hair out of his head when confronted with a class of non- anth students who were being taught how to do an ethnography and some picked little kids.

But I will go and read this more in depth later- it is always interesting-but again I am wary of someone trying to find a g-d gene or the like-- so thank you for sharing it!

The doing experiments with little children is pretty scary- naturally we do it as a culture all the time without even realizing it- we do after all allow untrained people to take newborn children home all the time! 

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

No.

What?  There's doubt?    

.....

Seriously, even if there does turn out to be a predilection for Cosmic Answers To Stuff, it does not automatically follow (as Griffin already pointed out) that the "god" we turn out to be wired for is the actual, bona-fide GOD.

Just looking at the historical data, humans have collectively worshiped thousands, if not millions of different gods in the past.  This rather proves that "just any old god will do", doesn't it? 

.....

I must confess, I did not listen to the whole interview, as it was clearly just a sound-byte sort; the "real" arguments were to be done elsewhere.   *sigh*

[Griffin NoName]

Seriously, even if there does turn out to be a predilection for Cosmic Answers To Stuff, it does not automatically follow (as Griffin already pointed out) that the "god" we turn out to be wired for is the actual, bona-fide GOD.

An' another thing. I know quite a few people who are hard-wired for being Princesses* etc in Previous Lives, which is a bit similar, and how can they tell they weren't G-D in their Previous Life?

* or  Great Red Indian Chief etc (there's a list of possibilities but it's remarkably short which often puzzles me).

.......the "real" arguments were to be done elsewhere.   *sigh*

Hopefully. Although there is some dislike (not me) of Dawkin here, at least he hangs out in Oxford, otherwise I'd probably be extremely concerned. In fact, him being there is probably motivatin this..... tee, heee.ee.

[beagle]

I was born believing the whole world revolved around me, but subsequently people have done their best to correct the impression.

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

I was born believing the whole world revolved around me, but subsequently people have done their best to correct the impression.

That's magnanimous of you.....you finally came to realize the world revolves around.....me.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

he pretty well blows his credibility with it.

Total agreement on that one. The guy doesn't mention any specific data, no methodology, no statistics, no populations, in fact (and forgive me for saying it as such) he sounds as if he had pulled the argument out of his @$$.

Now, I seem to recall a someone mentioning a study that linked a particular gene with something related with religious belief (anyone recalls that?), but the guy is pretty much adamant about a god when asked about tendencies for paranormal beliefs.

Certainly it was a soundbite, but not a particularly encouraging one on regards of the validity of the argument, therefore until more data is released I wouldn't give it much credence.

[Griffin NoName]

....... therefore until more data is released I wouldn't give it much credence.

I fear we shall not have the techniques for such data extraction in our life times

[Darlica]

Well, I think he is both right and wrong.

I do think that human kind has a predisposition towards believing in a higher justice, someone or something that will make sure that "bad" people or behaviour are punished and that "good" people or behaviour are rewarded we also want something that can explain the unexplainable.

In fact I think it's two of our basic psychological needs. However the "it" that serves as a higher judge goes by many names from a uncountable numbers of gods to karma and there are even more explanations of the everyday wonders, at least one for every culture that ever existed.

What counts as unexplainable also differs between cultures and over time, once upon a time it was a mystery that day followed after night and that spring followed after a long and hard winter. We still have the same need to find explanations but today we can (and should) turn to science for most answers.

So I do think we are hard-wired to believe, in something, but what we believe in is down to first and foremost our cultural upbringing and then our education, it is after all our education that allows us to sit here and discuss this.  


     

[The Meromorph]

I posted this reply earlier on a motorcycle forum...  . There was a lengthy (15 pages and going strong) discussion about exactly this.

I believe in the existence of 'gods', but I have no problem declaring myself an 'atheist'.

IMO, They're all 'inside peoples' heads', they're not inside mine.

So I can believe in their existence, and I even have some hypotheses about how they came/come into existence that continue to be consistent with the modern developments of cognitive neuroscience. But they don't and can't affect me directly. And, no one can adequately define any particular one, or even justify it's claimed characteristics, because each particular one is all inside a particular persons head. Some people, on the basis of cultural indoctrination, agree on many commonalities about the 'god(s)' inside their heads, and they call that their religion.

I don't' have one, I don't have a religion. I'm an atheist... 

[Griffin NoName]

Mero, you are just an empty head

..... I think it's two of our basic psychological needs. However the "it" that serves as a higher judge goes by many names from a uncountable numbers of gods to karma and there are even more explanations of the everyday wonders, at least one for every culture that ever existed.      

I see it as a need to explain things yes, and yes a hope for justice (and <sigh> reward/punishment). But I am as happy to invest Tinkerbell (Peter Pan) as my answer as anything else.  I can't really do the leap from "needs" to therefore "there is", although I have no problem understanding that other people may find that leap easy.

I have a big problem with Karma outside the recycling via several lives theories. We may be making progress on explaining things (science) but I have never noticed any justice. But then I am stuck with my ego

[anthrobabe]

someone mention the "either or fallacy"?  Even if A is wrong that don't automatically make B correct-- it might be C for all we know and you know what that means
Aliens

Or D: Matrix
Or E: it really is noodly
Of F:


I suppose that originally the idea of good and evil came from well good and bad things and wanting an explanation for them
but leave it to humans to make them actually living beings with halos and pitchforks.

[Bluenose]

Interesting...
But the first guy misses the point that you can't ask little children about this until they can speak (quite well) - and the only way children can learn to speak is by listening to speech, and therefore they are already culturally indoctrinated by the time you can ask them!

Two other significant points are vaguely and inadequately referenced in that discussion....
1. For sound evolutionary reasons (because they're more likely to survive early childhood if they do), small children are predisposed to accept statements from adults at face value, and as unerring truth.
2. For sound evolutionary reasons (because they're more likely to avoid/evade actively dangerous things if they do), all humans are wont to take an 'intentional stance' towards anything that moves or changes.

When a 'god(s) meme' is part of their cultural indoctrination under #1 above, then #2 makes them tend to continue to use it throughout their lives...

See 'The God Delusion' Richard Dawkins for a fuller discussion of this.

Well said Mero.

I think it is akin to the built in drive for trout to eat very smal insects, to the point that the energy expended by an adult trout to catch and eat tiny midges and such like exceeds the energy gained by doing it.  It is a hold over from when the fish was tiny, its very existance depended on it being a voracious predator of such food items.  Evolution is not an efficient process and because the negative side of this trait doe not appear until the fish is much larger, and the effect is not so great that it is not outweighed by the other (larger) food items, there has been no or very little evolutionary pressure to remove the trait in larger fish.

Thus it is with humans.  Very small children are utterly dependent on their nearby adults and evolution has provided them with an inbuilt need to follow the example of older humans.  We can easily observe thisin action by the simple fact that children always grow up to follow the same religion as their parents, at least until they reachan age were they are able to think things out for themselves.  We do not see little 5 year old buddhists growing up in fundamentalist christian families, do we?  Indeed the programming is so strong that most people never break out if it, or even consider that such a thingis even possible.

Whilst I am not personally a believer anymore, I am definitely of the opinion that holding a faith for no other reason than it was the one of your parents is entirely the wrong reason.  I hope that more people will come to their positions on such things through a process of reason, in the future.  One benefit of this would be an appreciation that even though you may disagree with other people's opinions, and you are entitled to debate the "truth" of both their and your positions, under no circumstances is it reasonable to impose your ideas on others or vice versa.

I have very great fears for the world with the rise in fundamentalism and religious based government.  And that goes as much for the attempts to insert religious based ideas into school science curricula as it does for Established religion.  I don't know what the solution is, but I do think that the HOT is at least a small step in the right direction.



Edit:  Arrggghhh!  Sticky space bar!!!!