Espresso Retro: Born With a Belief in the Supernatural
Every now and again, posts from the past will resurface here that I think were important when they were written and believe they're still relevant. I hope you enjoy them. The following post was first published here on September 6 of last year.
Religions will continue to thrive despite the rise of science and rationality because we are all born with a tendency to believe in the supernatural, according to research published yesterday.He's right on one point, it does operate at a fundamental level. For a scientist, he made a very rational statement. The foundational question is, why? Why is it a fundamental part of our make up? Some scientists, like Professor Hood, would like to make us believe that it's simply the way we evolved. Though, if it is something that is a part of evolution, and evolution necessarily leads to determinism, how could it be that so many scientists are atheists? How did they overcome this fundamental part of their make-up? Interesting.
"Magical thinking" is hard-wired into our brains, according to Prof Bruce Hood, of the University of Bristol, speaking at the British Association's annual festival in Norwich. Prof Hood challenged the assumption of Prof Richard Dawkins and other "ultra rationalists" that belief in the supernatural was spread by religions in gullible minds.
"Rather, religions may simply capitalise on a natural bias to assume the existence of supernatural forces," he said.
"It is pointless to get people to abandon their belief systems because they operate at such a fundamental level that no amount of rational evidence or counter evidence is going to be taken on board to get people to abandon these ideas." [Full article]
I believe the answer lies in the fact that we are not products of evolution and, thus, not subject to determinism in which the blind series of cause and effect in a closed cosmological system would render us, we actually do have the freedom to choose to supress the truth that there really is a creator (Romans 1). See, I think that if Professor Hood were to let down his hard-fought, scientific predisposition to Naturalism, we would see that he doesn't really believe we're simply products of evolution. Look at some of his word-choices: "'Magical thinking' is hard-wired into our brains...". Later in the article, he says, "The mind is programmed to see coincidences as significant and to think that inanimate objects have minds." (italics added) Words like "hard-wired" and "programmed" imply design. Nothing is hard-wired by accident and nothing is programmed by accident. When was the last time you saw an accidentally "hard-wired" computer that was "programmed" by chance? And those of us who believe in God are irrational?
As I said before, the fact is we are hard-wired and programmed to believe in the supernatural much like, as Alvin Plantinga pointed out, we're hard-wired to believe that all people have brains even though we can't see them...because they are reality; because we see evidence of them (usually), and it is right to make this assumption based on the evidence.
Most of us who have not convinced ourselves otherwise at least believe that there is "something else" beyond life and death on this earth. Most people on earth are convinced of this. The fact is, eternity is built into us. As Professor Hood so eloquently stated, we are programmed with this. God has put eternity into our hearts and too many times, we try and cast it off as superstition, fantasy and myth. However, too many people have experienced supernatural events in the real world that cannot easily be explained away.
The bottom line is this: those who are convinced that the supernatural cannot happen may never change their minds unless God determines to reveal Himself in a very real way (which He has certainly done before). However, listen closely and you will hear even those who say they don't believe in anything beyond evolution describe the cosmos in very design-oriented terms. Why? Because to use terms that imply mindless chance to describe the most complex systems of the universe sounds simply...well, irrational. And the truth is, it is.
Technorati Tags:
Labels: Christian, Christianity, creation, creator, Darwin, David C. Price, Evolution, Naturalism, religion, science
posted by DAVID C. PRICE at 9/12/2007 06:30:00 AM
0 comments
links to this post
|
