{"id":1011,"date":"2008-11-24T14:29:35","date_gmt":"2008-11-24T18:29:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/anglicansamizdat.wordpress.com\/?p=1011"},"modified":"2008-11-24T14:29:35","modified_gmt":"2008-11-24T18:29:35","slug":"born-to-believe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/born-to-believe\/","title":{"rendered":"Born to believe"},"content":{"rendered":"

From the Telegraph<\/a><\/p>\n

Children are born believers in God, academic claims<\/strong><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

He says that young children have faith even when they have not been taught about it by family or at school, and argues that even those raised alone on a desert island would come to believe in God.<\/p>\n

“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 predisposition to see the natural world as designed and purposeful and that some kind of intelligent being is behind that purpose,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.<\/p>\n

“If we threw a handful on an island and they raised themselves I think they would believe in God.”<\/p>\n

“Children’s normally and naturally developing minds make them prone to believe in divine creation and intelligent design. In contrast, evolution is unnatural for human minds; relatively difficult to believe.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Almost looks like a Divinely planted predisposition, doesn’t it? Richard Dawkins would have to claim that the genetic inclination to believe in God is a product of evolution; in which case, he and Christopher Hitchens must be throwbacks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From the Telegraph Children are born believers in God, academic claims 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 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":1,"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[2136],"class_list":["post-1011","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christianity","tag-evolution"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1011","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1011"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1011\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}