Posted on 02/18/2009 8:33:54 AM PST by GodGunsGuts
Study Shows Our Minds Are Tuned to Believe
by Brian Thomas, M.S.*
“It seems that our minds are finely tuned to believe in gods,” according to a new report appearing in the journal New Scientist.1 A group of scientists undertook the task of studying the “science” of religion, which they suggested “probably evolved for survival.” Or did it?
The researchers studied cognition patterns in children to test their capacity for belief in the supernatural. According to anthropologist Justin Barrett from the University of Oxford, children “have a strong natural receptivity to believing in gods because of the way their minds work.” Paul Bloom, a Yale University psychologist, noted that humans of an early age have an “innate assumption that mind and matter are distinct.”1 This assumption provides some of the basic framework for mankind to be able to consider the divine.
They also found that people possess a sense that “primes us to see purpose and design everywhere.” This tendency, also required for religion, is supposedly an “over-attribution of cause and effect.” And the researchers also discovered that “education and experience teach us to override…the default setting of the human brain.”1
Studies of both children and adults, near and far, atheists and theists, led the researchers to conclude that “religion is an inescapable artefact of the wiring in our brain.”1 Psychologist Pascal Boyer concluded that “disbelief requires effort,” for a man must willfully reprogram these innate assumptions if he intends to disbelieve in God. But this sounds like something the apostle Peter knew long ago: “For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old.”2
There is thus strong empirical evidence that human brains were “finely tuned” to believe in the supernatural, with confirmation that extra labor and “education” is required to override that basic programming. Since humans were made for God’s good pleasure,3 these observations are exactly consistent with the creation message of the Bible. It seems clear now that only willing, purposeful ignorance would cause people to not believe.
References
1. Brooks, M. 2009. Born believers: How your brain creates God. New Scientist. 2694: 30-33.
2. 2 Peter 3:5.
3. Revelation 4:11.
ping!
I learned about this in a world religions class I took last semester in college.
You mean the Creator designed us to believe in Himself?!?
Do you have a ping list? If so would you add me? I sometimes miss your posts.
No, in Obama.
Thanks for the ping!
I suppose the same thing applies to Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy.
No problemo. Welcome aboard to the HMS Creation!
“You mean the Creator designed us to believe in Himself?!?”
-This actually is a brilliant post on a lot of different levels.
the stronger someone claims he’s an athiest the more I think he’s trying to deny that he actually belives in something. Poor bastards.
“That’s not a bug - it’s a feature!”
Now, where have I heard that before?
…And this is your brain on prayers
That biology, in some way, compels the spiritual urge.” Or as others have put it, human brains are wired for god.
Genesis 1:
26: And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
27: So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
You believe in the Tooth Fairy?
Very interesting. I’ve added this to my bookmarks. I think it’s particularly interesting that this finding can be used to support a variety of theological positions. It can even be used to disparage theism in general, albeit in a cynical way.
At any rate, I think this is an example of how the sciences of theology and biology can intersect. Such events do happen on rare occasions.
“Inside of every man there is a God-shaped vacuum that only God can fill.”
- Pascal
Hmmm whoda thunk? Ok, this is funny, the spell checker doesn’t like hmmm or whoda but it thinks thunk is ok! LOL
You can lead an atheist to evidence, but you can’t make him think.
“He hath made everything beautiful in its time: also he hath set eternity in their heart, yet so that man cannot find out the work that God hath done from the beginning even to the end.”
Ecclesiastes
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.