Saturday 12 September 2009

Have we evolved to believe in God ?

The Sunday Times, September 6, 2009, 'We are born to believe in God' by Jonathan Leake and Andrew Sniderman

Apparently: "The idea has emerged from studies of the way children’s brains develop and of the workings of the brain during religious experiences. They suggest that during evolution groups of humans with religious tendencies began to benefit from their beliefs, perhaps because they tended to work together better and so stood a greater chance of survival."

Similar arguments have been made for belief in design which seems hard wired into children, even those of atheistic parents. But there is a gapping hole in this argument for evolution. It is pertintent to ask. 'If I have evolved to believe I have not evolved, then does not evolution produce in me false beliefs? In which case how can I know I have evolved?

Science clearly works best in the context that there is a creator God who has brought order to nature.
Andrew Sibley

3 comments:

Larry said...

If some people have evolved to believe in God, then have atheists evolved to believe in atheism?

Seems to me that line of reasoning works both ways.

Anonymous said...

That is a good point Larry. Evolution becomes a universal explanation and therefore explains nothing - just like the marxists who found evidence for their theory when wages both rose and fell.

Anonymous said...

The design plan leads me to believe that I am designed to have true beliefs.

Evolution does not lead to true beliefs, but beliefs that enable survival.

‘Induction over the history of science suggests that the best theories we have today will prove more or less untrue at the latest by tomorrow afternoon.’ Fodor, J. ‘Why Pigs don’t have wings,’ London Review of Books, 18th Oct 2007