Born to Believe?

[Michael V. Frazier]

Recently there has been some research that people apparently are born believing that everything has purpose and design, and that makes them predisposed to Creationism.

In 2008, Dr. Justin Barrett of Oxford University's Centre for Anthropology and Mind revealed that children as young as one year are able to recognize when an intelligent mind is at work, and to distinguish between what inanimate objects and people can do. For example, the research found that babies were surprised when they were shown a film where a rolling ball makes a neat stack of blocks from a disordered heap. This belief in plan and purpose led Barrett to claim that young people have a predisposition to believe in a supreme being because they automatically assume that everything in the world was created with a purpose. During an interview with BBC, Barrett commented, "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. If we threw a handful on an island and they raised themselves I think they would believe in God. . . . 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."

More recently (March 2, 2009), an article in New Scientist was featured in which Boston University evolutionary psychologists Deborah Kelemen and Evelyn Rosset report that teleology, i.e., belief in purpose, is the default mode of the human brain. The result comes from analyzing the results of their survey given to 230 university students from all ages and backgrounds. Kelemen commented, "It suggests that we're quite explicitly failing in science education, certainly with these undergraduates."

Reviewing Kelemen’s work, psychologist Paul Bloom of Yale University says, "What her work suggests is that the creationist side has a huge leg up early on because it fits our natural tendencies. It has implications for why most people on earth are creationists, I think."

Secular media source information here:
BBC 4: http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_7745000/7745197.stm
Telegraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/3512686/Childre...
New Scientist: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16687-humans-may-be-primed-to...

John MacKay of Creation Research commented:
Since research does seem to confirm that belief in a deliberate creation and in the existence of a Creator God seems to be the natural or inbuilt mode of our thinking, it follows that belief in naturalistic or random process is therefore anti-natural. THEREFORE educators are now on record as stating they have obviously failed to eradicate such a belief in purpose by the time students get to university so they have now publically recommended finding new ways to educate people to get them to reject creation or purpose and disbelieve in a creator God! This is no surprise as such researchers are simply confirming two things the Bible has stated for the last 2,000 years: The apostle Paul wrote the evidence of God is so clearly seen in creation there is no excuse for unbelief (Romans 1:20), and the apostle Peter wrote that sceptics will deny both Creator and Creation because they chose to be deliberately ignorant (2 Peter 3:5). We remind such researchers of an educational warning from Christ, who is the Creator, that if anyone leads astray one of these little children who believe in Him, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea, rather than face an eternity being punished in Hell. (Mark 9:42-43)

Indeed!

[Nathan Miller]

Exactly! History has shown that it is ONLY through vast propagandizing (think communism, socialist education, etc.) that people are led to divest themselves of a belief in God and NOT the other way around. These studies reiterate that.

[Donnie Gillum]

Quote -Dave Huston: This inborn knowledge has to be trained out of a person, not into.

I believe this is certainly true...and this underscores the basic reason our children are best kept out of the atheistic, government controlled, anti-God schools.

[David Huston]

Michael, this is significant information. It confirms the basic underlying premise of the Bible that it is not necessary to prove the existence of God. Deep down, everyone starts out life knowing that God is. This inborn knowledge has to be trained out of a person, not into. As we raise our children and as we work to win people to the Lord, we ought to always remember this: we are on the side of inherent human reason--it is the atheist and evolutionist who is on the side of irrationality. We have nothing to be defensive about. Believing in God is as natural and normal as believing in the sun and moon. I think all ministry of the Word should be founded on that one unspoken premise.

[Donnie Gillum]

Interesting indeed. It shouldn’t be so hard to get the little buggers to believe in God after all. It's good to have this vital area of input on the Network.