{"id":5583,"date":"2009-09-06T15:37:29","date_gmt":"2009-09-06T19:37:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/anglicansamizdat.wordpress.com\/?p=5583"},"modified":"2009-09-06T15:37:29","modified_gmt":"2009-09-06T19:37:29","slug":"wired-to-believe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wired-to-believe\/","title":{"rendered":"Wired to believe"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It seems that we are <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/news\/article-1211511\/Why-born-believe-God-Its-wired-brain-says-psychologist.html\" target=\"_blank\">programmed to believe in God<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Humans are programmed to believe in God because it gives them a better chance of survival, researchers claim.<\/p>\n<p>A study into the way children&#8217;s brains develop suggests that during the process of evolution those with religious tendencies began to benefit from their beliefs &#8211; possibly by working in groups to ensure the future of their community.<\/p>\n<p>The findings of Bruce Hood, professor of developmental psychology at Bristol University, suggest that magical and supernatural beliefs are hardwired into our brains from birth, and that religions are therefore tapping into a powerful psychological force.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration:underline;\">There are two possibilities:<\/span><\/p>\n<p>God does actually exist and he designed us; it should come as no surprise that we are inclined to believe in him.<\/p>\n<p>God does not exist and the proclivity to believe he does is a product of evolution: evolution has programmed us to believe a lie. If evolution predisposes us to believe something to be true that isn\u2019t, we cannot trust our ability to deduce from evidence; therefore, no amount of evidence can prove evolution to be true.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It seems that we are programmed to believe in God: Humans are programmed to believe in God because it gives them a better chance of survival, researchers claim. A study into the way children&#8217;s brains develop suggests that during the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wired-to-believe\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/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":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[141],"tags":[2136],"class_list":["post-5583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-evolution","tag-evolution"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5583","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=5583"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5583\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}