{"id":2636,"date":"2009-09-06T07:56:37","date_gmt":"2009-09-06T15:56:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/wordpress\/?p=2636"},"modified":"2009-09-06T08:01:18","modified_gmt":"2009-09-06T16:01:18","slug":"putting-the-natural-in-supernatural","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/putting-the-natural-in-supernatural\/","title":{"rendered":"Putting the Natural in Supernatural"},"content":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s nothing too new about this, but here via the London Times<\/em><\/a> is yet more reinforcement for those of us who believe that the religious impulse is innate. Various scientists are cited, so read the whole piece, but this is, perhaps, worth noting in particular:<\/p>\n

Bruce Hood, professor of developmental psychology at Bristol University, believes the picture is more complex. \u201cOur research shows children have a natural, intuitive way of reasoning that leads them to all kinds of supernatural beliefs about how the world works,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs they grow up they overlay these beliefs with more rational approaches but the tendency to illogical supernatural beliefs remains as religion.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hood, who will present his findings at the British Science Association\u2019s annual meeting this week, sees organised religion as just part of a spectrum of supernatural beliefs. In one study he found even ardent atheists balked at the idea of accepting an organ transplant from a murderer, because of a superstitious belief that an individual\u2019s personality could be stored in their organs. \u201cThis shows how superstition is hardwired into our brains,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

[snip]
\nProfessor Pascal Boyer, an anthropologist at Washington University and author of Religion Explained, supports Hood\u2019s view that the origins of religion may lie in common childhood experiences. In a recent article in Nature, the science journal, he said: \u201cFrom childhood, humans form enduring and important social relationships with fictional characters, imaginary friends, deceased relatives, unseen heroes and fantasised mates.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is a small step from this to conceptualising spirits, dead ancestors and gods, who are neither visible nor tangible.\u201d Boyer holds out little hope for atheism. \u201cReligious thinking seems to be the path of least resistance for our cognitive systems,\u201d he said. \u201cBy contrast, disbelief is generally the work of deliberate, effortful work against our natural cognitive dispositions \u2014 hardly the easiest ideology to propagate.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Fair enough, I think, and, I would reckon, yet more support for the idea that is better to channel the religious impulse by, as I argued here before<\/a>, giving children some sort of gentle religious grounding, preferably in a well-established, undemanding, culturally useful (understanding all that art and so on) and mildly (small c) conservative denomination that doesn\u2019t dwell too much on the supernatural and keeps both ritual and philosophical speculation in their proper place.\u201d<\/p>\n

Once again: better vicar than wicca….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s nothing too new about this, but here via the London Times is yet more reinforcement for those of us who believe that the religious impulse is innate. Various scientists are cited, so read the whole piece, but this is, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":64,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[321],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2636"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/64"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2636"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2636\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2639,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2636\/revisions\/2639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}