![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/epiphenom\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/_8sY9bx8acNM\/SWE7RBSAhqI\/AAAAAAAAAP0\/e2xtWzxNRDQ\/s1600\/Barrett.jpg\")
<\/a><\/div>\nBack in November, he gave a talk at the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion in Cambridge in which he said a few things (such as: \u201cYou have to indoctrinate someone into being an atheist\u201d) that got AC Grayling\u2019s blood boiling (Grayling is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of London). Here\u2019s what Grayling had to say<\/a> about it:<\/p>\n Barrett and friends infer from the first half of these unexceptionable facts that children are hardwired to believe in a supreme being. Not only does this ignore the evidence from developmental psychology about the second stage of cognitive maturation, but is in itself a very big \u2013 and obviously hopeful \u2013 jump indeed. Moreover it ignores the fact that large tracts of humankind (the Chinese for a numerous example) have no beliefs in a supreme being, innate or learned, and that most primitive religion is animistic<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Barrett responded by complaining<\/a>:<\/p>\n Had Grayling attended the seminar as Brown did (or read my book, Why Would Anyone Believe in God?<\/span>), he would know that I do not say that religion is \u201chardwired\u201d or \u201cinnate\u201d \u2013 rather that children have propensities to believe in gods because of how their minds naturally work.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Well, luckily a video of the talk is archived at the Faraday Institute, (listed under Brain\/Psychology<\/a>). So we can see for ourselves what all the fuss is about.<\/p>\n The first 20 minutes or so is stuff we\u2019ve heard before from the likes of Scott Atran and Pascal Boyer \u2013 children seem to be programmed to see intention and design, rather than happenstance and random chance. Of course, this is true of adults too. Humans in general tend to err on the side of seeing patterns where there are none. But it\u2019s especially true of young children.<\/p>\n The more interesting bit starts at around 21 minutes, when Barrett starts discussing his own work on infant understanding of the mental states of other people.<\/p>\n What he shows is that 3-year-olds think that their parents have god like omniscience \u2013 they know everything that the child knows. And when you ask them about god, they think the same. It\u2019s not till kids reach 5 years that they understand that their parents do not know what\u2019s going on inside their own head, and that there are things that only they know.<\/p>\n But, when you ask 5 year olds about god, well, they still think that god knows everything (as do adult believers, of course). Barrett takes this as evidence that kids come with a \u2018correct\u2019 knowledge of god built in. Young kids get god right, and mum wrong, and he says of 5 year olds: \u201cThey are not dumbing down god, they are smarting up mom\u201d (30 minutes).<\/p>\n Now these facts are indisputable. It\u2019s the interpretation that\u2019s open to question. As Barrett says in the Q&A; session: \u201cWhat we do with the interpretation, depending on our worldview, is a completely different issue. But at least we can agree on what the science is starting to show.\u201d<\/p>\n So whose interpretation is right? Is Barrett right that belief in an omniscient god is built in, and we have to be persuaded otherwise? Or is Grayling right that very young kids just aren\u2019t smart enough to figure out how minds work. And that when they learn that others can\u2019t actually read their mind, then they would extrapolate that to god too if it weren\u2019t for cultural indoctrination?<\/p>\n My money is on Grayling. I think it\u2019s pretty clear what\u2019s happening here. Young kids, like animals such as monkeys, simply don\u2019t have a theory of mind<\/a>. They think that others know what\u2019s in their head, and of course when they are told about this invisible person called \u2018God\u2019 they extend these misconceptions to it.<\/p>\n As kids grow up they figure out that the people around them do not, in fact, know what\u2019s going on inside their heads. They have plenty of evidence from observing how people behave, and employ their increasing brain power to work out the truth.<\/p>\n Of course, they can\u2019t do this for God, because God is a fictional entity. All they have to go on is what adults are telling them. And so, following the lead of the adults around them, they continue to accept that God is omniscient. Many kids have similar beliefs about Santa Claus, and for the same reason.<\/p>\n Barrett says that young kids \u2018get god right\u2019. But the only reason they do this is that god is an extension into the adult world of childish understanding of how the world works. This isn\u2019t too surprising, of course. The Judaeo-Christian concept of god is a unabashed imaginary father figure. Adults attribute to it the superhuman powers they once believed that their own fathers had.<\/p>\n So the reason young kids \u2018get god right\u2019 is that their brains aren\u2019t fully developed. The reason older kids and adults \u2018get god right\u2019 is that god is their imaginary friend.<\/p>\n But what Barrett wants to know is \u201cWhy did these beliefs and not others?\u201d. So, is there any evidence that these beliefs are what you get if you start to degrade the adult brain\u2019s ability to reason about the world? Well yes there is.<\/p>\n Tania Lombrozo, Professor of Psychology at the Concepts and Cognition lab<\/a> at Berkeley, has done similar experiments to those described by Barrett, but in Alzheimer\u2019s patients rather than young kids. And it turns out that, just like kids, Alzheimer\u2019s patients tend to see design everywhere. This is an excerpt from an article on her work<\/a> in Berkeley Science Review:<\/p>\n Unlike children, most educated adults know that clouds form because water condenses, and that mountains exist because of plate tectonics. However, Lombrozo was interested in whether adults would fall back on teleological reasoning in the absence of background knowledge. To address this question, she and her colleagues Deborah Kelemen and Deborah Zaitchik examined a group of adults whose background beliefs were compromised, but who had otherwise developed normally: Alzheimer\u2019s patients. So kids are like adults but with an important bit of their brain missing. And that\u2019s why they \u2018get god right\u2019!<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Justin Barrett is a Senior Researcher at the University of Oxford\u2019s Centre for Anthropology and Mind and a lecturer in the Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology. He\u2019s also a devout Christian who believes that we have an inbuilt predisposition to believe not just in superstitious stuff, but also in a monotheistic god. And he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2091,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
\n\u201cAlzheimer\u2019s patients have some characteristics of adults and some characteristics of children,\u201d says Lombrozo. \u201cLike adults, they have undergone normal development and have presumably gotten rid of any reasoning strategies associated only with children. But like pre-school children, they might not have access to the kinds of rich causal beliefs that adults typically have access to.\u201d
\nIn her study, subjects were asked to identify the most appropriate answers to a series of \u201cwhy\u201d questions. For example, for the question \u201cWhy does the earth have trees?\u201d they could choose between \u201cbecause they grow from tree seeds,\u201d or \u201cso that animals can have shade.\u201d Lombrozo found that like young children, Alzheimer\u2019s patients were much more likely than age-matched control subjects to prefer teleological explanations, picking the teleological choice about twice as often as their healthy counterparts.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n