Dr Justin Barrett, from Oxford University’s Centre for Anthropology and Mind, has claimed that humans are naturally disposed to believe in God from birth, in a lecture at Cambridge’s Faraday Institute.
He claims that his research has shown that small children have an innate belief that the natural world has been designed with purpose and intention.
The research project from which Barrett drew his findings came under severe criticism last year, due to the allegedly pro-religious leanings of the foundation which backed the study, which a Nobel prize winner claimed was attempting to “drag us back into the Dark Ages.”
The John Templeton Foundation, which has an endowment of over $1 billion, was founded in 1987 by lifelong Presbyterian and investor Sir John Templeton, a former Rhodes Scholar at Balliol College, who has said that “scientific revelations may be a goldmine for revitalizing religion in the 21st Century.”
Dr Barrett’s study received £1.9 million from the Foundation, which earlier this year denied that it only gave money to projects with a religious bias.
Speaking about his findings, Barrett said, “if we threw a handful of children on an island and they raised themselves I think they would be religious.”
He said that previous research supports his argument, continuing, “children younger than 10 favoured creationist accounts of the origins of animals over evolutionary accounts even when their parents and teachers endorsed evolution. Authorities’ testimony didn’t carry enough weight to over-ride a natural tendency.”
Critics, including Professor Lewis Wolpert, have commented that the research proves little beyond the logical nature of human minds and our need, both as children and adults, to search out knowledge and answers.
He told Radio 4’s Today program, “there’s nothing in our brains that makes us believe in one particular religion and a particular God.”
He added, “what our beliefs really want to do is they want to explain things that matter to us and that’s one of the evolutionary functions of religion.”
In February the study came under severe criticism from scientists who objected to the Templeton Foundation’s funding of the study.
Nobel Prize laureate Sir Harold Kroto commented that the John Templeton Foundation’s “only mission is to undermine the ethical position of the scientific community.
“They could not care a fuck what the outcome is they will still go on funding this sort of inane crap in an attempt to drag us back into the Dark ages. Galileo is turning in his grave.”
He added that the funding was only provided to gain “the reputation of Oxford University…to give their pathetic initiatives some apparent semblance of scientific credibility.”
Dr Barrett, in his lecture to the Cambridge University’s Faraday Institute this week has emphasized that the purpose of the study is to “encourage empirical research testing out claims about the natural, cognitive foundations of religion.”
The president of Oxford’s Christian Union, Dave Meryon, reacted to the research, “although this study cannot prove the existence of God or vice versa, it is fascinating because it corresponds to the Christian belief of a God who ‘has also set eternity in the hearts of men.'”
