1. Christopher Columbus Caused the Little Ice Age
As if he didn't have enough to answer for.
2. Kids Don't Get Religion Without Help
Absolutely fascinating. The concept that human beings are born with an evolutionarily programmed predisposition to explain their surroundings via the supernatural is challenged by this study, in which children demonstrate that their minds don't run immediately to the supernatural. While this by no means disproves this hypothesis, it certainly raises questions about how and when we acquire this tendency. It also begs the question of what more our kids might be capable of if we don't indocrinate them into religion during their developmental years.
@2: This is an interesting challenge to mainstream research on religious cognition. The one fundamental flaw of getting the information from a website that is pushing an agenda as opposed to an objective outlet is they don't really tell you much more about the study than you can glimpse from the abstract.
ReplyDeleteI could not find the actually manuscript (ie, I was not willing to pony up $35 from the publisher). The immediate methodological problems that appear on the website involve the sample (relatively small, multiple ages, unbalanced size amongst subgroups), and the way measurement constructs are defined (God v. Luck). Depending on how the concept of "supernatural" is presented to the subject, it might not be addressing the religious predisposition hypothesis at all. I would assume they controlled for these obvious red flags in the study... but again, I couldn't get a hold of it.
My views are evolving on this, and at the moment I'm inclined to think human beings are born with certain innate instincts, yes, but rather than a specific predisposition to see the supernatural under every rock I think it's more akin to problem-solving or curiosity. My current theory is that our ancestors worked with what they had an bequeathed first shamanism and then full-blown religion to us and we've been spending the past several centuries trying to clean up the mess. For some, the inborn instincts of curiosity are satisfied by regular visits to their local church. For others, it is not. As to observing the behavior of kids in this respect, speaking strictly anecdotally I've come to think that kids really are, for the most part, empty buckets into which knowledge (or garbage, depending on the parents and schools) is dumped. I know my son never volunteered spiritual or supernatural explanations for unexplained experiences. Instead, he repeatedly asks "why?" and uses the answers I give him to reach his own conclusions the next time around. What's telling, or at the very least interesting, is that children can be quite imaginative (though their imaginations are usually limited to mixing and matching elements they've been familiarized with in their interactions with others), but they seem only interested in using their imagination to entertain themselves or others, and not necessarily to seriously explain unfamiliar occurrences.
ReplyDeleteIt seems far more likely that people only become religious insomuch as their parents indoctrinate them or they become emotionally vulnerable later in life and have an overwhelming personal epiphany that steers them toward religion. If I say things much more plainly than that I think I risk offending vast swathes of people.