University of Oxford developmental psychologist Dr. Olivera Petrovich has spent years researching a single question: Are children predisposed to belief in a transcendent being?
This research, much deserving of greater exposure, intrigued me, since I have engaged atheism’s most prominent modern proponents.
I chaired three of atheist and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins’s debates with his Oxford University colleague, the mathematician and Christian John Lennox.
I debated Christopher Hitchens on stage, chaired a number of his debates, and wrote a book about those encounters. And I debated Tufts University cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett on Al Jazeera television with a Muslim tossed into the mix.
I even had a lively exchange with agnostic John Stossel on the “God question” on Fox News.
In each of these discussions, much was made out of the evidence — or, as some would have it, the lack of evidence — for God’s existence. Belief in God (or a god, if you prefer), they say, is a product of environment, wishful thinking (like belief in fairies or Santa Claus), or a “mental virus.”
“Part of what I want to say,” writes Richard Dawkins in his bestseller The God Delusion, “is that it doesn’t matter what particular style of nonsense infects the child brain.
Once infected, the child will grow up and infect the next generation with the same nonsense, whatever it happens to be.”
But as Dawkins’s archrival, the aforementioned mathematician John Lennox, has said, “Not every statement made by a scientist is a scientific statement.”
This appears to be just such an instance. According to Dr. Petrovich, Dawkins’ statement lacks scientific evidence. On the contrary, her research strongly suggests that children are “hardwired” to believe in God.
In a cross-cultural study of British and Japanese children who were shown photographs of manmade and natural objects and then asked to explain how those objects came into existence, children predominantly chose the theological explanation. Dr. Petrovich told me,
“The pattern of responding among Japanese children is highly significant in this context seeing that those children live in a culture that does not in any way encourage a belief in God as creator.”
“Yet, the most common reply given by Japanese preschoolers about natural objects’ origins was “Kamisama [God]! God made it.”
“Whilst there is growing research evidence that children from across different religious and cultural backgrounds consistently attribute to god the existence of natural objects, what is so interesting about the Japanese participants is that this particular causal inference is not a product of their education but a natural development in their understanding of the world.”
Part of what makes Dr Petrovich’s research so interesting to me is the current state of the scientific debate over God’s existence.
The current focus is on the “Design Argument,” the idea that the universe has a logical design and is governed by immutable laws, and thus it must have a Designer and a Lawgiver.
The incomparable Ben Stein, who is both a contributor to this website and a pop culture icon for my generation, hosted a film on this very subject called Expelled.
That film gets at the heart of the contentious debate. Continue reading