Are We Born Believing in God - BQO

2/13/2017 Are We Born Believing in God?
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Are We Born Believing in God?
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Justin L. Barrett Religion
March 5, 2013
I n conversation with Muslims and Hindus I have been told that

children come into the world already knowing God. This theme that
children have special access to the divine appears in various traditions,
Justin L. Barrett
Thrive
Professor
but independent of theological claims, do we have reason to believe of
that we are born believers in God? Understanding the question in the Developmental
most straightforward way, we do not have strong evidence that Science
and
children come into the world believingor not believingin God.
Director of
Understanding the question in a dierent way, however, opens up the Thrive
some interesting possibilities concerning childrens natural receptivity Center for
to theistic beliefs. Human

Development
in Fuller
Theological
https://www.bigquestionsonline.com/2013/03/05/are-born-believing-god/ 1/24
2/13/2017 Are We Born Believing in God? | BQO
By we let us mean the typical, ordinary human in typical, ordinary Seminarys

School of
human environments. For the sake of discussion, take born believers
Psychology.
to mean born with such propensities that under ordinary
developmental conditionsbiological, social, and culturalbelief will
typically arise. This use of born parallels the colloquial way in which Get BQO by E-mail
we may talk about someone as a born musician or born athlete
not actually coming out of the birth canal performing music or doing email address
sports but having strong natural propensities to attain mastery in a
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particular area. Let us take God to mean an intentional being or
agent with mental states and a will, who can and does act in the
natural world. Let us also understand God to designate such an
agent who has played some role in designing or ordering the natural
world, has superhuman access to information about what is the case ESSAYS
in the world, and is immortal. With these definitions in mind, then, the
big question is: Are typical humans born with such propensities that,
under ordinary developmental conditions, belief will likely arise in the
existence of at least one God (i.e., an intentional agent who has played
some role in ordering the natural world, has superhuman access to
information about the world, and is immortal)? If that is our question,
then we have reason to think the answer is yes.
To reach such a conclusion one must understand that childrens minds

Why Do Atheists Believe
are not generic, all-purpose learning devices that treat all information What They Do?
the same. Selective pressures appear to have led to a mind that has
natural dispositions to attend to some information over other and
process information in particular ways to solve specific problems in
navigating the world in which we live. To take one example, studies by
Andrew Meltzo and M. Keith Moore show that newbornsless than 24
hours oldcan already pick out human faces in their environment and
imitate facial expressions. Human minds have evolved in such a way as
to render this task automatic and easy for newborns, perhaps because
of how important it is for a hyper-social species such as ours to read
Would We Want to Live
each others attention, intentions, desires, and feelings from each Forever, If We Could?
others faces. Face detection, recognition, and imitation is only one
example of the many subsystems of the human mind that appear to
develop as a normal part of human maturationwhat philosopher

Robert McCauley has termed maturationally natural cognition.
Because these maturationally natural subsystems are a product of
biological predispositions and environmental regularities, these
systems are largely constant within and across cultures. These
subsystems structure human interactions with their environment and
subsequent learning and conceptual development. Consequently, they
serve to inform and constrain cultural expression, including religious Does Evolution Have a
beliefs. Direction?
These maturationally natural cognitive subsystems encourage belief in

at least one God, by creating a conceptual space that is most readily
filled by such a God concept. That is, rather than the idea of a God
being hard-wired into our cognitive systems, we are naturally inclined
to reason about the world in such a way that a God concept fits like a
key in a lock: God sits well with many of our natural intuitions such
that belief in a God makes sense of how we conceive of the world and
many events in our lives. I do not mean that we reflectively, rationally Does Religious Participation
consider aspects of the world (such as its mere existence, apparent Contribute to Human
Flourishing?
design or purposefulness, apparent coherence, etc.) and conclude that
the existence of a God best accounts for these observations, though
some people do. Rather, our naturally developing, untutored, BQO ROUNDUP
conceptual equipment leads us to find the existence of at least one
God intuitively attractive even absent any argumentation on the
matter.
The primary culprits for our natural receptivity to believe in God

appear to be the cognitive subsystems that we use to understand
intentional agents, minds, and features of the natural world. From the
first few months of life babies distinguish between those objects that
move themselves in goal directed ways from all other objects. Before
Who Wrote the Torah?
long they begin attributing rudimentary mental states such as goals
and desires. On this foundation they build sophisticated
understandings of how percepts inform beliefs, which guide the agent
to act on desires leading to positive or negative emotional states.
These mindreading abilities are unparalleled by any other species.

Importantly, the system that picks out intentional agents from other
objects and things does not require a human body or even a three-
dimensional form to be activated. Indeed, even three- and four-year-
olds commonly have invisible companions with which they interact
and converse, a demonstration of how facile humans are with agent
and mind-based reasoning even without the aid of physical bodies,
facial expressions, and other material data from which to work. Gods, Is Neuroscience the Future
then, pose no special problems. of Psychology or Its End?
Further, and more importantly, when children reason about agents

(seen or unseen), they appear to err on the side of over-attributing
access to information or knowledge in many situations. That is,
preschool-aged children tend to think others know what is true of the
world (at least as the child knows it), can perceive what is really there
(even under conditions of darkness or occlusion), and can remember
things that the child cannot remember. Indeed, research by Bradley
Wigger and Nicola Knight suggests that these attributions of Reality Is Not What We Can
superhuman information access may be especially true of unseen See
agents, including gods and invisible companions. Further, research by
Emily Burdett and others shows that the idea of a being that lives
forever appears to be acquired earlier by children than the idea that
humans will eventually die. The idea of a being that is god-like on
these dimensions appears to be easier for preschoolers to reason
about than a human being.
These observations speak to the readiness for children to

conceptualize a God, but not the motivation for them to do so. Some of
The Purpose of Sleep Is to
the most intriguing research concerning explanatory motivation Forget
comes from Deborah Kelemens research team. Kelemen has shown
that children naturally interpret features of the natural world as having
purpose. Animals, plants, and even rocks and rivers are the way they
are for a function external to themselves, and that is why they are here.
Kelemen has also shown that this perception of purpose or function is
closely related to supposing that the natural thing in question was
created by someone. Preschoolers know that function is best

explained by an intentional being bringing it about. This link between
perceived functionality and intentionality creates a conceptual space
for a designer or creator: who did it? Contrary to what Jean Piaget
argued in the early 20th century, children do not assume that humans
account for the design they perceive. They recognize the need for
someone(s) mightier. Enter a God.
Other scholars such as Scott Atran, Jesse Bering, Pascal Boyer, Stewart
Guthrie, Robert McCauley, and Ilkka Pyysiainen have identified
additional factors that may make belief in some kind of God relatively
natural. Further, Ara Norenzayan and Dominic Johnson have each
argued that belief in some kind of morally interested, watching deity
may also be part of an adaptive gene-culture complex that then is
selectively reinforced. Belief in a super observant moral police may
make us more trustworthy and generous community members,
leading to better fitness. Note that none of these scholars argue for the
naturalness of theistic belief from any theological conviction. They
recognize that the growing body of research in this area points to the
typical human being naturally drawn to belief in something like a God
by virtue of the way their minds develop in early childhood.
Questions for Discussion:
1. Given that humans are born believers in God in the sense

discussed, how does this observation bear upon whether theistic belief
(or unbelief) is rational, justified, or warranted?
2. The United Nations has long airmed the right to practice religion,
including raising ones children in ones religious tradition.
Contrariwise, some recent commentators have raised concern that
raising children in authoritarian, coercive religious traditions (if not all
religious traditions) is tantamount to child abuse. Does this new
perspective from the cognitive and evolutionary sciences importantly
bear on the debate over religious freedoms and freedom to

indoctrinate children?
3. Even if people typically are attracted to belief in God, not all people
are believers. Why not? What contribution do personal psychological
dierences and environmental factors make?
4. An inclination to believe in some God is a far cry from an inclination

to being devoted to any given God or even getting theology straight.
Might there be a sensitive period for religious acquisition akin to the
sensitive period for language acquisition? What other factors might
encourage or inhibit religious development?
Discussion Summary
The thesis I have presentedthat children naturally develop with

propensities toward belief in at least one godis one of a number of
similar, and oen complementary, accounts that draw upon cognitive
and evolutionary sciences to explain the recurrence of cultural forms
we typically call religion. In this scholarly sphere, the naturalness of
religion thesis has been a common, if not consensus, position for over
a decade, and versions were oered as early as 30 years ago. Stewart
Guthries rejuvenation of the anthropomorphism theory of religion
appeared in 1980, arguing that the cross-cultural recurrence of belief in
non-material beings that willfully act in the natural world (i.e., gods)
was due to the natural operation of ordinary human cognitive systems
for making sense of the world around them, specifically a tendency
toward anthropomorphism. Other theses that emphasized either
ordinary natural human cognitive systems or selection pressures
followed with various scholars from multiple disciplines making
contributions to this naturalness thesis.
The discussion here on Big Questions highlighted that this approach to

explaining religion is aimed at explaining why religious beliefs are
cross-culturally recurrent. That is, why do some cultural forms that we
tend to call religion appear across cultures in recognizable forms?

This approach then is not primarily concerned with why any given
individual has the sorts of theological beliefs that they have. Further,
these explanations are only partial and probabilistic, allowing for the
reality that some people have no religious leanings.
These cognitive and evolutionary naturalness approaches to

explaining the recurrence of religious beliefs and practices may be
profitably contrasted with two other, common approaches:
indoctrination and abnormality approaches. Further, comparison with
these approaches suggests some possibilities to combine approaches
in hopes of yielding even more complete accounts.
In brief, indoctrination approaches emphasize the local social and

cultural dynamics through which people acquire religious beliefs from
others. How are religious beliefs taught so that they are so compelling?
How do religious communities guard orthodoxy and regulate
innovation? Of course, such questions may profitably benefit our
understanding of how religious ideas and practices spread, but an
indoctrination approach, by itself, runs the risk of being mind-blind.
That is, such approaches oen assume that any ideas can be acquired
as easily or readily as any othersthat minds resemble sponges in that
they passively soak up that with which they come into contactand so
the real explanatory factors are in the cultural environment. Minds are
not passive, however. The right amount of repetition, motivation,
clever pedagogy, or coercion will not account for the broad cross-
cultural recurrence of religious ideas and practices because they do
not square with cognitive science, nor do they account for the
recurrent content of religious thought. Why gods? Why aerlives? Why
souls and spirits? Indoctrination approaches run the risk of trying to
explain culture by reference to culture.
Even though emphasizing indoctrination has its limitations, it may be

that the normal communication and persuasion dynamics that
account for how much cultural information gets transmitted interacts
in some surprising ways with the content toward which naturalness

approaches say human minds are attracted. That is, perhaps injecting
ideas about gods, spirits, aerlives, and such into discourse
importantly changes the impact of normal communication dynamics
or otherwise opens up possibilities for indoctrination that otherwise
are unavailable. A helpful question, then, is: Might some interaction,
then, between the cognitive dynamics that naturalness theories
espouse and the persuasion dynamics that indoctrination approaches
champion produce an even more powerful account of why religious
ideas and practices are so recurrent?
In contrast, abnormality approaches seek the origins of religious

thought and practices in abnormal states of mind or brain
malfunctions. Epilepsy, schizophrenia, drug-induced altered states,
and others have been made for the source of religious ideas. Though it
very well may be that some religious ideas have their inspiration in the
unusual experiences of a small number of individuals, why abnormal
brain firing or hallucinations would converge on experiences of gods
and other recurrent themes, and why such ideas would be attractive to
others who have not had such experiences remains unexplained.
Clearly lots of strange dreams, hallucinations, and other experiences
are had that never lead to shared religious ideas. Most such
experiences and ideas are simply forgotten, even by the individuals
who have them. The problem of recurrence still needs to be explained.
Nevertheless, perhaps these approaches have something valuable to
oer for explaining at least some religious ideas. A big question for
continuing research is: Can naturalness, indoctrination, and
abnormality accounts be fruitfully joined; and if so, how?
The Big Questions discussion concerning whether children are born

believers also raises a question about big questions. Given my
experience with similar discussions, I suspect that some of the
participants were dismissive of the question because they are wary of
what implications may fall out from the answer. That is, I find that
when it comes to explanations of religion, it is very tempting to skip
the scientific arguments and interpretations and go straight to

whether the findings airm or challenge my own worldview
commitments. Some audiences have assumed the born believers
and naturalness theses are anti-religious and therefore reject or
embrace them based upon whether they themselves are religious or
not. These reactions have made me wonder about the big questions
listed below.
New Big Questions:
1. Can naturalness, indoctrination, and abnormality accounts be

fruitfully joined; and if so, how?
2. What is the folk epistemology behind how people tend to consider

whether or not something is a good big question and to what extent
they will engage the evidence oered in answer of a big question?
3. Are big questions concerning religion and theology in step with

ordinary dynamics of folk epistemology or are they deviant in some
specifiable way?
24 Responses
DonPhil
March 5, 2013 at 6:08 am
In conversation with Muslims and Hindus I have been told that

children come into the world already knowing God. This seems an
inadequate basis for discussion. Other communities (e.g.
Buddhists and non-religious people in historically Christian
countries) tell us their experience is that no child is born with
innate knowledge of God. At the minimum, we need a way of
arbitrating between these conflicting opinions.
Buddhism is recognized to be both a religion (or a cluster of related

religions) and an atheistic or nontheological religion at that.
Buddhism appears to enable religious discourse (and discussion of
what children know) without invoking disagreements about the
nature and knowability of God (e.g. disputes among the multiple
Moslem, Christian and Jewish traditions)
Justin Barrett
March 5, 2013 at 1:39 pm
DonPhil, you are absolutely correct that a few comments by

Muslims and Hindus regarding their theological convictions is
not much to go on by way of a serious discussion regarding
childrens tendencies toward theistic beliefs. But it does make
for a good rhetorical hook! My point is not to argue for or
against any Muslim, Hindu, or Buddhist doctrines directly.
Rather, this discussion concerns whether we have any natural
tendencies toward belief in supernatural agents that emerge in
early childhood, and if so, what the character of those
tendencies are. Whether Buddhism is theistic or atheistic or
supports the idea that children have privileged access to the
divine is beside the point. The claim is, however, that even the
majority of Buddhists are likely to have some cognitive
attraction toward the idea of superhuman agents with special
access to information about the world, immortality, and the
like. That peoples theology and intuitions contradict would
not be surprising from this perspective. Indeed, D. Jason Slone
in his book Theological Incorrectness (Oxford, 2004) gives some
examples from Buddhism in which Buddhists seem to run afoul
of their own theology in ways that are explainable in terms of
cognitive tendencies or biases.
DonPhil
March 6, 2013 at 3:13 am
JB clarifies: Rather, this discussion concerns whether we

have any natural tendencies toward belief in supernatural
agents . . . . the majority of Buddhists are likely to have
some cognitive attraction toward the idea of superhuman
agents with special access to information about the world,
immortality, and the like. The clarification, however,

threatens to exclude what the 18th century called natural
theology, systems of belief that qualify as religious
while avoiding supernaturalism (knowledge by divine
revelation, gods as agents intervening in human history,
etc.) The key word here may be special which the
natural religionists sought to repudiate. Such theistic
philosophers as Whitehead sought a natural theology,
repudiating claims of special agency as both theologically
unnecessary and socially divisive.
Justin Barrett
March 6, 2013 at 7:13 am
Quite so. The aim here is not inclusiveness. The claim

I have argued for is not that any and all religious
systems of thoughttheistic or otherwiseare
maturationally natural. Some theologies are going to
be closer to the ground than others. Absent unusual
cultural support (or scaolding), the closer to
natural cognitive biases a belief system is, the more
likely it will be to spread and persist, particularly
among the folk and in day-to-day life.
I regard it as a virtue of cognitive approaches to the
study of religion that they are not overly concerned
with explaining every belief or behavior that may be
considered religious based on surface-level
similarities or for historical or political reasons. To do
so would be analogous to insisting that all plants that
have been called trees must be close biological
relations and explainable in terms of a common
evolutionary historyeven though (from what I am
told) botanists have rejected such a notion. As a
scientific approach, of greater concern is whether the
phenomena under consideration are causally related
in some meaningful way and not whether observers
have regarded them as members of a particular
category.
enuka
March 5, 2013 at 8:58 am
Define the question so that there is no other way to answer it

except the one that you predetermined?
Until you can find a wolf boy with a religious bent, arguments in
this area seem to be doomed to the definition of premises.
Re: Buddhism; it is not atheistic or nontheological; the Buddha has
defined the problems with which he deals as out of that
realm(e.g.Acintita Sutta, a short version). He witnessed his
enlightenment before Mara, the Hindu deity.
Justin Barrett
March 5, 2013 at 2:07 pm
It is true that I could have defined or interpreted the question

in dierent ways, but I regarded this one as the most
productive in terms of relevant scientific and scholarly work. I
could have simply ended with I dunno, but I that would be far
less fun.
I do take issue with the claim that all that is at stake here is a
matter of defining premises. If that were so, I could claim that
by God we mean belief in a flying spaghetti monster (a
popular divine alternative in some pseudo-scientific
neighborhoods) and then conclude that children are born with
tendencies to believe in thatnever mind that there is no
credible evidence in this regard. No, I picked the attributes I did
because they approximate what I see as an emerging
consensus in the cognitive science of religion and religious
development literatures. I did not pick being made of
semolina or even being a non-temporal triune person
because the evidence to date does not support the claim that
children find such properties for a god attractive.

The more interesting question in your comment concerns the
wolf boy test. Of course, any child raised in complete isolation
from other humans is likely to be cognitively and behaviorally
exceptional in many ways, making us doubt that such a child
would be representative of normal human development, and

thus providing good evidence from which to generalize. Where
then do we turn for evidence? Much as when Noam Chomsky
and his ilk began producing arguments for a naturally-
developing language learning faculty in humans, cognitive
scientists of religion (or other cognition and culture scholars)
turn to several types of evidence to support the thesis that
humans naturally are drawn to religious or other cultural
beliefs and practices: (1) the cross-cultural recurrence of
certain ideas and practices, particularly in cases in which they
seem to have arisen in similar ways independently; (2) early
emergence of certain beliefs and practices in human
development, especially if under explained by cultural inputs;
(3) systematic developmental changes that are not readily
accounted for by changes in the environment; and (4) evidence
for cognitive systems that appear to undergird religious
thought and practice that are operational in other, non-
religious domains, and therefore, would likely be present even
without religious inputs. With these types of evidence in hand,
we can build a cumulative case for some degree of natural
receptivity to certain cultural ideas and practices, including
religious ones. In his book, Why Religion is Natural and Science
Isnt (Oxford, 2011), philosopher of science Robert McCauley
argues for these among other clues that a cultural
phenomenon may be very natural in terms of underlying
cognitive systems.
Justin Barrett
March 7, 2013 at 5:27 pm
Konika Banerjee and Paul Bloom wrote a brief opinion

piece for the January 2013 issue of Trends in Cognitive
Sciences. In it they argue that the sorts of cognitive biases
that I argue for in my Born Believers book (and here) are
insuicient to answer airmatively to the question of
whether Tarzan or a wolf-boy would generate religious
beliefs without cultural input. Since they use me (among
others) as their foil, let me be clear that I do not argue that
any isolated child with no human social or cultural
interaction would necessarily believe in one or more gods,
the aerlife, souls, or the like simply on the strength of

naturally-developing cognitive dispositionseven if we
granted that such a child developed normally (which is
unlikely). On this matter, I agree with Banerjee and Bloom.
jbjorck
March 7, 2013 at 5:42 pm
I agree with your qualification, but unless I am

missing something, it would seem that the wolf boy or
Tarzan arguments are spurious. For example, we also
cannot expect Tarzan or the wolf boy to develop
language because modeling is an integral part of
language development. This does not, however, mean
that humans are not genetically predisposed to
develope language.
Justin Barrett
March 7, 2013 at 6:31 pm
jbjorck, thanks for the

comment. You are quite right. If
we take wolf boy or Tarzan
questions scenarios at face
value, the failure to develop
religious thoughts would not
demonstrate that there are not
strong natural dispositions that
facilitate acquisition. Language
acquisition is a good parallel
example. Fear of snakes is
another: there is good evidence
that we are prepared to form
fear of snakes, but we wont
likely be afraid of snakes if we
have never ever encountered
one (and not everyone is afraid
of snakes). So, would a child

raised in isolation be afraid of
snakes and have language? No.
But it doesnt follow that we
dont have strong natural
receptivity to fear of snakes or
language acquisition. Thanks,
for raising this point.
Lime
March 5, 2013 at 4:20 pm
As a believer in sercular humanism, this article makes almost no

sense.
Justin Barrett
March 6, 2013 at 5:00 am
That people are, in general, born believers in at least one God,

does not entail that there will not be secular humanists or
committed atheists. (We would expect them to be a relatively
small proportion of humanity and they are.) Analogously,
humans are born believers that other humans have conscious
minds with beliefs, desires, emotions and other mental states,
but not all children and adults believe in others minds. There
are three major classes of people who do not believe in minds:
those who have a developmental abnormality (e.g. autistic
people), those who have reasoned their way to the rejection of
minds (e.g., some philosophers and cognitive scientists), and
those who have been indoctrinated by those who have
reasoned to reject the existence of minds (e.g., the students of
some philosophers and cognitive scientists). Likewise, though
the cognitive science of atheism is young, we may expect that
some people do not believe in any gods because of dierences
in the development of their cognitive systems (through
biological or environmental dierences from what is typical),
reasoning, or indoctrinationor some combination of these
factors.
dukeohrive
March 6, 2013 at 9:13 am
@DonPhil I think JB is quite correct here. To formulate a causal

perspective on something as messy as religion were going to have
to identify some cross-culturally recurrent components of
religiosity for explanandums.

I tend also to see this type of research as a more humble and
responsible alternative to the grand theorizing that tends to occur
in my own discipline, anthropology. JB aims to explain just a few
tiny parts of human religiosity (though even that would be a huge
accomplishment) rather than to account for human religiosity in
toto.
Justin Barrett
March 6, 2013 at 6:22 pm
Thanks for the support. Yes, the cognitive approach is generally

piecemeal in character: can we explain the recurrence of gods?
Of aerlife beliefs? Of certain ritual forms? Then, can they be
put together? If so, so much the better. If not, some identifiable
cultural phenomenon has still been explained (at least in part
and probabilistically). Former president of the American
Academy of Religion, Ann Taves, has been advocating similarly
for a building blocks approach to the study of religion.
trent.g.dougherty
March 6, 2013 at 12:51 pm
This is interesting research. I have lots of questions about the

relevance of certain particular studies, but the general line of
though seems to open up an interesting new line of evidence for
God, at least from a philosopohy of science perspective.
Justin Barrett
March 6, 2013 at 6:26 pm
Where do you think the most interesting lines of evidence for

God fall out from this research? Many writers in and around the
cognitive science of religion area seem to think this work
presents evidence against warranted belief in God (Jesse
Bering, Dan Dennett, and Paul Bloomat some moments but
not others are examples).
jbjorck
March 7, 2013 at 5:38 pm
I truly enjoyed the authors fine essay, and this is an interesting

conversation. I wonder if the author knows of any research that
might also point in the other direction, toward a genetic propensity
for humans to strive for the experience of self-suiciency (e.g.,
being god-like)? In other words, might each human also be born
with a propensity toward viewing the self as All there is, and when
reality almost immediately contradicts this (e.g., with hunger that
cannot be satiated without an other person), humans might begin a
life-long attempt to compensate, continually striving to regain and
optimize a sense of mastery and control?
Such a tendency would seem to be commensurate with various
components of some psychodynamic theories of development. For
example, in response to the fear arising from a failure to maintain
suiciency, various defense mechanisms might develop.
Seen in this light, might a developing belief in God be viewed as
one means of obtaining suiciency/control by proxy (e.g., if the God
concept includes the idea of a powerful Helper)? I realize that there
may be no cognitive science research going in this direction. I
merely voice the possibility as another lens with which to view the
development of the God propensity, which could place it more
squarely in the realm of a survival mechanism to cope with the
fears caused by insuiciency.
Justin Barrett
March 8, 2013 at 4:48 am
jbjorck, writes: I wonder if the author

knows of any research that might also
point in the other direction, toward a
genetic propensity for humans to strive

for the experience of self-sufciency
(e.g., being god-like)? In other words,
might each human also be born with a
propensity toward viewing the self as
All there is, and when reality almost
immediately contradicts this (e.g., with
hunger that cannot be satiated without
an other person), humans might begin a
life-long attempt to compensate,
continually striving to regain and
optimize a sense of mastery and
control?
If such research exists, I am not familiar with it, so thank you

for the interesting suggestion. You question does raise an
important issue concerning natural cognitive dispositions of
any kind, and that is that maturationally natural does not
mean innate or hardwired or developing without important
environmental cues. A universal feature of human
development is that they come into the world dependent upon
at least one much more powerful intentional being. Such a
feature of their environment is likely just as important for their
cognitive development as the regularity of gravity acting upon
objects around them or that animals move themselves.
Justin Barrett
March 9, 2013 at 9:22 am
Banerjee and Bloom (Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Jan.

2013) seem to think we have no evidence that children
ever spontaneously generate religious ideas. In an
uninteresting sense they are right. From common
cognitive science of religion perspectives, an idea isnt
religious until it is shared. Thus, no one persons
spontaneously generated idea is religious. Tarzan
couldnt, by definition, have religious ideas or any other
cultural ideas. Similarly, Tarzan couldnt spontaneously
generate a languageassuming language is a form of

shared cultural expression.
But what if ideas about an invisible being or an aerlife
spread to othersother Tarzans raised together but with
no previous culture (if that is even possible)? When an
idea does spread, we should wonder why others were
receptive to it. For this reason, as Pascal Boyer has argued
in his two books on the matter, explaining why we are
receptive to cultural ideas is where the action is, not
explaining so-called spontaneous generation (if that ever
occurs). For this reason, when asked the Tarzan question,
Boyer once answered that one child raised in isolation
would not create religious ideas and practices, but two
raised together very well might.
Justin Barrett
March 10, 2013 at 7:34 am
Is there any evidence that children generate their own

ideas about disembodied or invisible beings that may
be god-like? Yes. Marjorie Taylor reports that about
half of preschool aged children have invisible friends
that (typically) they alone believe exist. Bradley
Wigger has found that these invisible friends are oen
granted super knowledge or perception even when
they understand the limits of their visible friends.
Given that children oen do spontaneously
generate ideas concerning invisible beings, it does not
strike me as incredible if sometimes their interaction
with the world, usual experiences, or even a little bit
of reflection could lead some childreneven in a
Tarzan-like environmentto postulate the existence
of a god-like being or an invisible being that accounts
for what they perceive as design or purpose in events
and structure around them. But again, spinning an
origin story is probably not where the action is. We
are cultural animals that develop in cultural
environments, so why such ideas spread and become
shared and agreed upon is a more interesting
question.
Stewart Guthrie
March 10, 2013 at 12:40 pm
Barrett brilliantly summarizes a complex topic by presenting

central consensual findings in the cognitive science of religion
(CSR), a field to which the author has long been a key contributor.
Reporting these findings, Barrett shows that science can clarify the
human propensity for religionlong thought mysteriousjust as it
can clarify other aspects of human thought and action.
Probably the major CSR consensus reported here is that human
perception of the world is biased to detect agency, with evolved
sensitivities to such physical features as faces (as when newborns
prefer them to other things in their environment) and to such
behavioral features as goal orientation. Human sensitivity to goal-
seeking behavior and to purpose in the world in general, in turn,
may be seen as aspects of our unusual capacity for, and interest in,
reading the thoughts, feelings and motives of others. These and
related sensitivities and abilities mean, as the author notes, that
ideas about varied humanlike agents, including gods, fit our minds
like keys in locks. Whether or not particular agents really exist is a
separate question from why we so readily entertain ideas about
them.
Defining religion and god remains contentious, a situation
exemplified by some terminology in the article. The most
important term here is God, and capitalizing it, in my view, colors
the discussion by emphasizing dierences between gods and other
humanlike agents. God, Barrett writes, may be taken to mean an
agent with a role in designing the world, superhuman access to
information, and immortality. Yet many gods are more humanlike
than this (indeed some begin their careers as actual humans): they
may have limited knowledge of the world and little hand in making
it, and they may be subject to death.
This apparent lack of a bright cross-cultural line between gods
and other humanlike agents, however, by no means undercuts
Barretts basic position. On the contrary: our readiness to conceive
and deal with gods is, as he suggests, continuous with our capacity
to conceive and deal with other intentional agents. In sum, this
article represents state-of-the-art CSR concisely, accurately and
persuasively.
Justin Barrett
March 10, 2013 at 5:31 pm
Stewart, thanks for the comment. Of course, Prof. Guthrie is

correct that many gods are more human-like than God as
described here. In his numerous articles and book chapters,
and especially his book Faces in the Clouds (Oxford, 1993), Prof.
Guthrie lays out his account of why it is people are so naturally
drawn to believe in gods. We agree that the strong human
tendency to make sense of their world in terms of the presence
and activity of minded intentional beings is the key cognitive
attribute that makes humans inclined toward belief in gods
whether they are ghosts, spirits, local deities, or a cosmic God.
ianful
March 11, 2013 at 3:08 am
Believing in God and knowing God are not the same. What Hindu
and Muslim theologies mean is that a new born baby is still
connected with God through its soul. What they are not saying is
that as the child establishes its perception of its physical world, and
as it builds the virtual reality of a self, then the connection with
God fades and is usually lost.
The self doesnt owe its existence to God and indeed has no use for
anything that is not a physical entity or something of its own
devising. The self may choose to believe in God because that is
culturally accepted, but it cannot know God. The realm of God is in
the inaccessible abstract as far as the self is concerned (this
abstract is not the contrived abstract of numbers and things that
do not fit in our world). God is only accessible through the soul.
Justin Barrett
March 11, 2013 at 6:02 am
ianful, thanks for the comment. You make an important

distinction between believing that a god exists and knowing
god in some sense. We could also say, that believing in a god
(or God) is not the same as being devoted to that god or re-
ordering ones life around the conviction that the god exists. I
may believe in the existence of anti-matter and it not change

me in any way, even if anti-matter does exist and it matters
very much to my life whether I know it or not. I have not argued
here (or in my book Born Believers) that we are born religious
devotees.
Justin Barrett
March 11, 2013 at 4:52 pm
ianfuls comment also raises the matter of how the

scientific findings in the cognitive science of religion (and
also evolutionary studies of religion) bear upon dierent
theological propositions. Muslim, Hindu, Jewish,
Christian, and Buddhist theologies teach many dierent
things, sometimes at odds within and across traditions,
but do the scientific findings matter to these claims? Do
they make some claims more or less likely? Or do the
theologies lead to some interpretations of the science to
be more or less favorable? To give but one example, within
the Reformed branch of Protestant theology multiple
views of the sensus divinitatis exist: the idea that within
each human is a natural sense of the divine. The views
dier along many dimensions including how narrowly this
sensus divinitatis points people to God as opposed to the
supernatural more generally, whether this faculty is
always operational or only triggered under certain
conditions (such as when seeing a particularly spectacular
sunset), and what the consequence of human sin on the
deliverances of the faculty might be. Whereas the science
to date is far from conclusive on such matters, I find it
conceivable that more progress could provide empirical
evidence that bears on questions like these. Already the
evidence should suggest to the Reformed Christian that
the sensus divinitatis is at least more specific than simply
inclining people to believe in the existence of some Great
Otherness, but rather encourages belief in one or more
minded, intentional beings, perhaps with the power to
create or order features of the natural world, immortality,
and superhuman knowledge.
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2/13/2017 Are We Born Believing in God?

ABOUT BIG QUESTIONS ONLINE ARCHIVE

Are We Born Believing in God?

I n conversation with Muslims and Hindus I have been told that

to theistic beliefs. Human

By we let us mean the typical, ordinary human in typical, ordinary Seminarys

To reach such a conclusion one must understand that childrens minds

develop as a normal part of human maturationwhat philosopher

These maturationally natural cognitive subsystems encourage belief in

The primary culprits for our natural receptivity to believe in God

These mindreading abilities are unparalleled by any other species.

Further, and more importantly, when children reason about agents

These observations speak to the readiness for children to

created by someone. Preschoolers know that function is best

Questions for Discussion:

1. Given that humans are born believers in God in the sense

bear on the debate over religious freedoms and freedom to

4. An inclination to believe in some God is a far cry from an inclination

The thesis I have presentedthat children naturally develop with

The discussion here on Big Questions highlighted that this approach to

tend to call religion appear across cultures in recognizable forms?

These cognitive and evolutionary naturalness approaches to

In brief, indoctrination approaches emphasize the local social and

Even though emphasizing indoctrination has its limitations, it may be

in some surprising ways with the content toward which naturalness

In contrast, abnormality approaches seek the origins of religious

The Big Questions discussion concerning whether children are born

the scientific arguments and interpretations and go straight to

New Big Questions:

1. Can naturalness, indoctrination, and abnormality accounts be

2. What is the folk epistemology behind how people tend to consider

3. Are big questions concerning religion and theology in step with

In conversation with Muslims and Hindus I have been told that

Buddhism is recognized to be both a religion (or a cluster of related

DonPhil, you are absolutely correct that a few comments by

JB clarifies: Rather, this discussion concerns whether we

immortality, and the like. The clarification, however,

Quite so. The aim here is not inclusiveness. The claim

Define the question so that there is no other way to answer it

It is true that I could have defined or interpreted the question

would be representative of normal human development, and

Konika Banerjee and Paul Bloom wrote a brief opinion

the aerlife, souls, or the like simply on the strength of

I agree with your qualification, but unless I am

jbjorck, thanks for the

of snakes). So, would a child

As a believer in sercular humanism, this article makes almost no

That people are, in general, born believers in at least one God,

@DonPhil I think JB is quite correct here. To formulate a causal

Thanks for the support. Yes, the cognitive approach is generally

This is interesting research. I have lots of questions about the

Where do you think the most interesting lines of evidence for

I truly enjoyed the authors fine essay, and this is an interesting

jbjorck, writes: I wonder if the author

genetic propensity for humans to strive

If such research exists, I am not familiar with it, so thank you

Banerjee and Bloom (Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Jan.

generate a languageassuming language is a form of

Is there any evidence that children generate their own

Barrett brilliantly summarizes a complex topic by presenting

Stewart, thanks for the comment. Of course, Prof. Guthrie is

ianful, thanks for the comment. You make an important

may believe in the existence of anti-matter and it not change