Oxford research may have disproven atheism - people are born theist

According to this study the myth that people are born atheist seems to be false; people are actually born with intuition of a higher power. To me this seems to tie in with the belief the Founding Fathers had about self-evident truths, such as people being endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights.

If people are born with this innate intuition, I'd say it proves the existence of a God. In the same sense that we consider existence to be "real" despite not rationally being able to prove that it's not just "an illusion".

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/badcat...ts-atheists-arent-allowed-to-use-anymore.html

The argument goes like this: Babies aren’t born with any pre-conceived notion of religion, God, or the supernatural world. These falsehoods are forced upon the child’s innocent, atheistic mind by his parents. All religion is indoctrination — there’s nothing inherent or natural about it.

This is an argument heavily promoted by the whole RELIGION IS CHILD ABUSE crowd, which has always made me think, “Dang, I can’t wait to abuse my kids.” (What, you didn’t clean your room? Then I shall impose upon you…THE DOCTRINE OF THE EUCHARIST!)

The only issue I have with this particularly brilliant bit of intellectualism is that its face has been crushed by the massive fist of a 2 million pound, peer-reviewed study from Oxford.

The spent a whole crap ton of money, “involved 57 academics in 20 countries around the world, and spanned disciplines including anthropology, psychology, and philosophy” to conclude what I could have told you for five bucks and some likes on Facebook: Religion is an integral part of human nature. We are born with a belief in the supernatural. Children under 5, with no environmental or parenting influence, think religiously.

As Professor Roger Trigg, from Oxford University and the project’s co-director says: “Attempts to suppress religion are likely to be short-lived as human thought seems to be rooted to religious concepts, such as the existence of supernatural agents or gods, and the possibility of an afterlife or pre-life.”

To this I would only add this: If you deny a child religion, he will only create his own. Tell him nothing about God and the spiritual battle of good and evil — he’ll resist you. You’ll see him with a stick one day, swinging at the dragons that surrounds him — a dogmatic supernaturalist.

 

Off course belief is a natural thing. When dying most of us even atheists go through the stage of bargaining.

 

I don't see this as inconsistent with the atheist view, or the idea which sometimes is described as "people are born atheist". It is not at all surprising to me that we have a certain disposition for things like religion (you may recall me arguing that if one removes Christianity, Islam or religion as a whole, we'll just think up something new).

The idea of people being born atheists is more to do with the tremendous impact upbringing has on beliefs. The fact that children are happy to believe all kinds of things depending on their upbringing means that we should not give credence to religions based on how common they are. As such, the common religions lose standing compared to all other imaginable religions, including dead ones or even ones we will never think of.

 

Common misrepresentation.

It isn’t news that human beings have a natural instinct towards supernatural and magical beliefs. It’s probably a function of our imagination, curiosity and fear of the unknown. That’s why so many cultures all over the world developed so many different beliefs that evolved in to various mythologies, stories, social structures and religions.

None of that means babies are born theist. Theist means having a definitive belief in existence of a specific god or gods. Not only are babies not theists, they can’t be theists. They don’t have the conscious knowledge or understanding, any more than a hamster or a tree. Technically they can only be described as weak/passive atheists but it really doesn’t matter what you call it, the status of a new-born human baby is somewhat unique anyway.

The other problem here is the conflation of theism and religion. Even if someone is a theist, that doesn’t automatically mean they’re religious (and vice-versa of course). A religion is a set of practices, something a person does in response to their beliefs. Again, babies can’t be religious because they don’t have the conscious thought or ability to practice anything – everything they initially do is instinctive.

I do agree that when people use the “All babies are atheist” line as if it means anything about the rights and wrongs of the matter it’s ignorant and pointless, but no less so that doing the exact opposite.

 

Sounds like a boat load of confirmatory bias to me

The human brain wants to create a comprehensible understanding of the world around him
And when nothing else seems to explain events... Voila, we get supernatural explanations... Gods, demons, spirits, trolls, leprechauns, witches, medicine men , etc

 

"I'd say it proves the existence of a God."
I'd say the will of some religious people to "prove the existence of god" just proves their own doubts that their god actually exists.
No matter how many ways you try to "prove his/her existence", either with words or actions, you will never, ever 100% prove that "existence".
Your "god" is nothing more than a bigfoot/Sasquatch/yeti. You think/hope they exist but you will never have concrete proof they really do.....

 

FYI, The study is five years old and was undertaken by a theology professor.
The study may have been peer reviewed but somehow such common sense things as OF COURSE a 4 year old would have greater belief in the supernatural and the omnipotent powers of their mother are not questioned. The devil in this case is in the methodology and the obvious problem with stating a conclusion before the selecting the facts.

The idea that a human toddler has the intellectual capacity to be a theist is ludicrous. The idea that because a human toddler has a vivid imagination, they must be theists is equally absurd.

 

fail. I was raised without supernatural myths and god stories, as were my parents, and their parents. no dogmatic supernaturalists, and no religion. what theists often fail to understand is that if you're never taught that there is a 'hole' in your existence - something missing, something lacking - you never feel the need to fill it. untainted by the idea that completion necessarily demands religion, we find completion in life.

 

Spacepants, we're born with all sorts of instincts - some of them socially unacceptable and/or downright apalling. are you suggesting that all our instincts ought to be pandered to?

 

Good point, I think there's a difference between instinct and intuition though. I think instincts are more survivalist.

And even disregarding all mythology there's still a lot of good arguments for a God in the sense of objective moral truths or intuitions.

 

Then an atheist can never prove that God doesn't exist simply because "bad things exist in the world" or whatever other standards of evidence have been used to disprove it..

Some atheists use arguments which are more or less identical to "intelligent design" arguments (ex. not based solely on empirical evidence, such as the "Problem of Evil") yet criticize theistic people for doing the same thing, I find that a double standard.

"Yoda doesn't exist in real life..; therefore alien life exists no where in the universe".

Fail

 

I like theists. They are the kindling. Religiousitists are simply the paper. I am the fire. The wood? Well, that would be everyone else. Hello. Welcome to SpaceCricket. He wants you to be bad. I want you to be good. I mean really good. Take a twisted sister and relish her. THAT would be a dogmatic supernaturalist experience. SpaceCricket would be awed. He will thank you when it is over.

 

I don't think you understand the study.

Oh, absolutely. Confirmation bias is a real thing. But what you don't realize here is that it also works in the other direction. When you've already made a concrete decision to rule out the possibility of the existence of any kind of supernatural entity, you'll rationalize everything into purely material means in order to fit the understand you've created for yourself. Thus you're more likely to automatically filter out anything that points to supernatural existence rather than reconsider your entire belief structure.

 

no one is trying to prove your god doesn't exist. or that ghosts don't exist, or that fairies don't exist, or that invisible rainbow striped unicorns don't exist. and no one is saying that because yoda is a fictional character, no life forms exist anywhere in the universe. where on earth do you get these ideas, Spaceduds?

 

there really isn't. we like to make certain things seem more meaningful and glamorous so we call them intuition. it's all just vanity being aghast at the idea of base instinct.

and no, there really isn't. there are no objective moral truths, nor good arguments for a god or gods. there is only human vanity and human emotions.

 

Don't see why the existence of any objective truths would automatically rule out the existence of objective moral truths.

In fact I'd say that even animals have innate sense of "purpose" even though we typically don't call animals "moral" because we presume a lack of choice in their behavior.

Plus the whole concept of Constitutional rights is based on the idea of objective moral truths; if not then "rights" don't really exist, and slavery isn't "wrong" if either enough people or the state decide that it is.

 

Which is why i am an agnostic
I do not assert there is no god
of some description

But Given the plethora of deist conceptions,
Even within any specific religion
There sems no obvious basis to choose any particular conception of god

And what ever god might be,
The more comprehensible god becomes
The less god like and more anthropomorphic he also becomes

So in the end
Imo
There maybe a god
But we cannot usefully say much about him

So discussions of god
becomes akin to speculating about string theory or muliple universes

In other words
Endless gist for passionate but poinless discussions

 

But this doesn't mean that the god is Jesus or that gays shouldn't marry. It still may be child abuse for a parent to teach a kid things like that, even if there is a god, since our childhood intuition does not point specifically to a certain religion. I'm not saying it's wrong, I think people can raise their heathen kids how they want. But this study in no way addresses the argument that Christian indoctrination might be child abuse.

The existence of a god does not render it morally acceptable to make specific, unfounded claims about the god's character or desires. In fact, if there really is a god, I would think that making up things about it and claiming you know what it wants becomes an even worse offense than if there was no god.

 

How are you supposed to test that, you would need to put a child in an unbiased setting not teaching them any religion or the concepts of a deity and they would need to come up with the idea itself and this experiment repeated with enough subjects to prove the hypothesis.

 

Cool. Any reason why the rest of us should agree?

 

Any reason why you shouldn't?

I mean why "should" you agree that evidence gathered by the formal scientific method is the only standard of evidence on which to base belief?

I mean, if the same logic were applied to courts, then there would be "no reason to believe" that George Zimmerman is guilty since the highest standard of evidence (TM) found him not guilty. This is why Scientism is a faith based belief, just like any other philosophy.

 

Well where did the first human to walk the earth come up with the idea - if there were no other humans there to "indoctrinate" it into him?

I mean I've heard the theory that they came up with it as a way to "control" people, but that's just as non-testable.

 

A problem that a lot of people don't get is that Scientism (materalist reductionism) isn't the same as "science".

The scientific method was developed by men and the standard of evidence they use wasn't designed to be capable of "proving/disproving" a God to begin with. Just like a court of law can't "prove" that Hitler was evil, just whether or not he killed people - so when people believe Hitler is "evil" that's a faith based belief not provable with empirical evidence alone.

So if an atheist decides that the scientific method is the only standard of "evidence" they'll except as proof and rule out all other philosophy, then that is a faith-based belief. It's like a fundamentalist claiming there is no evidence for evolution while at the same time claiming the literal word of the Bible is the only standard of "evidence" they'll except.

So even if "atheism" isn't a religion, Scientism is a faith-based philosophy just like that of any religion.

 

That's an interesting point. What I'm getting at is that one could argue though that religion rose from innate belief rather than vice versa.

 

I don't see how "wanting" to think something is real means that it isn't real - anymore than "wanting" hell to not exist proves that it exists.