Humans are naturally predisposed to believe in gods and life after death, according to a major three-year international study.
Led by two academics at Oxford University, the £1.9 million study found that human thought processes were “rooted” to religious concepts.
But people living in cities in highly developed countries were less likely to hold religious beliefs than those living a more rural way of life, the researchers found.
The project involved 57 academics in 20 countries around the world, and spanned disciplines including anthropology, psychology, and philosophy.
It set out to establish whether belief in divine beings and an afterlife were ideas simply learned from society or integral to human nature.
One of the studies, from Oxford, concluded that children below the age of five found it easier to believe in some “superhuman” properties than to understand human limitations.
Children were asked whether their mother would know the contents of a closed box. Three-year-olds believed that their mother and God would always know the contents, but by the age of four, children start to understand that their mothers were not omniscient.
Separate research from China suggested that people across different cultures instinctively believed that some part of their mind, soul or spirit lived on after death.
The co-director of the project, Professor Roger Trigg, from the University of Oxford, said the research showed that religion was “not just something for a peculiar few to do on Sundays instead of playing golf”.
“We have gathered a body of evidence that suggests that religion is a common fact of human nature across different societies,” he said.
“This suggests that attempts to suppress religion are likely to be short-lived as human thought seems to be rooted to religious concepts, such as the existence of supernatural agents or gods, and the possibility of an afterlife or pre-life.”
Dr Justin Barrett, from the University of Oxford’s Centre for Anthropology and Mind, who directed the project, said faith may persist in diverse cultures across the world because people who share the bonds of religion “might be more likely to cooperate as societies”.
“Interestingly, we found that religion is less likely to thrive in populations living in cities in developed nations where there is already a strong social support network.”
Re: Belief in God is part of human nature - Oxford study
it don't take £2m to work that out, just a bit of common sense
He it is Who sends blessings on you, as do His angels, that He may bring you out from the depths of Darkness into Light: and He is Full of Mercy to the Believers. [Quran {33:43}] www.QuranicAudio.com www.Quran.com
Re: Belief in God is part of human nature - Oxford study
format_quote Originally Posted by aadil77
it don't take £2m to work that out, just a bit of common sense
Are you saying die hard atheists have no common sense?
This study only conform what Allah has told us through Rasulullah SAW that we were imprinted with the knowledge of God (swt) before we were born, and only our upbringing and environment that change it.
Re: Belief in God is part of human nature - Oxford study
salaam
Fitrah (Inate goodness)
peace
Do you think the pious don't sin?
They merely:
Veiled themselves and didn't flaunt it
Sought forgiveness and didn't persist
Took ownership of it and don't justify it
And acted with excellence after they had erred - Ibn al-Qayyim
Re: Belief in God is part of human nature - Oxford study
lol Trumble will now jump in and say "exactly, belief in God/gods was easy to accept for primitive man or even animal-man in order make sense of his emergence out of no-where through evolution but it does not mean such belief is right. It is perhaps only a sub-conscious adaptation to the haunting reality of existence and we atheists have overcome that, sort of new evolution."
we can read your mind, which is not hidden anymore unlike those in sand *referring to the ostrich pic you posted earlier*
Last edited by CosmicPathos; 05-15-2011 at 12:12 AM.
Help me to escape from this existence
I yearn for an answer... can you help me?
I'm drowning in a sea of abused visions and shattered dreams
In somnolent illusion... I'm paralyzed
Re: Belief in God is part of human nature - Oxford study
format_quote Originally Posted by mad_scientist
"exactly, belief in God/gods was easy to accept for primitive man or even animal-man in order make sense of his emergence out of no-where through evolution but it does not mean such belief is right. It is perhaps only a sub-conscious adaptation to the haunting reality of existence and we atheists have overcome that, sort of new evolution."
Lol!
It sounds very trumble-ish though it could have easily been from him!
Re: Belief in God is part of human nature - Oxford study
format_quote Originally Posted by mad_scientist
we can read your mind
If you could, you would know that my mind is just as 'rooted' to religious concepts as that of anyone else here! They just happen to be different ones from yours, and do not involve that of God. Actually, I'm not all surprised by the results of the study. The only difference is in the degree of sophistication and realization of those concepts, which is an 'evolutionary' process - but one of history and culture, not of natural selection.
Note, incidently, that despite the thread title, the article refers not to "belief in God' but to 'belief in divine beings and an afterlife" and "supernatural agents or gods, and the possibility of an afterlife or pre-life". Hence it's findings would be just as applicable to Vikings or ancient Egyptians as for modern muslims or Christians.
Re: Belief in God is part of human nature - Oxford study
Last time I checked history and culture didn't make people NATURALLY PREDISPOSED to things.
Peace be to any prophets I may have mentioned above. Praised and exalted be my Maker, if I have mentioned Him. (Come to think of it praise Him anyway.)
Re: Belief in God is part of human nature - Oxford study
format_quote Originally Posted by Yahya Sulaiman
Last time I checked history and culture didn't make people NATURALLY PREDISPOSED to things.
May I suggest you 'check' your understanding of my last? AS I SAID the research suggests a natural predisposition to RELIGIOUS CONCEPTS, not to a monotheistic God exclusively as the thread title implies (i.e. such concepts include pantheistic and polytheistic beliefs, and indeed those of religions such as Buddhism and Daoism). It is WHAT THOSE CONCEPTS ARE that is the result of different histories and cultures. Hence your religious beliefs are not the same as those of an Ancient Egyptian, although you both - it is suggested - were/are naturally predisposed to have religious beliefs of some sort.
Re: Belief in God is part of human nature - Oxford study
Can you really do no better than to try so weakly to divert the issue from your ludicrous and desperate claim that culture and history can change people's inherent predispositions from birth to the absence of some specific trait of the predisposition I never even claimed was there?
Peace be to any prophets I may have mentioned above. Praised and exalted be my Maker, if I have mentioned Him. (Come to think of it praise Him anyway.)
Re: Belief in God is part of human nature - Oxford study
Assalaam Alaikum Wa Rahmatullahi Wa Barakatuh,
Scholar Bediuzzaman Said Nursi RA says:
" Without any shadow of a doubt, man cannot live without religion, aimlessly. He cannot. Even the most irreligious person is compelled to take refuge in religion. For the only point of support for impotent man in the face of the innumerable disasters and the external and internal enemies that plague him, and the only point from which he may seek help and assistance in the face of the innumerable needs with which he is afflicted, and his desires that stretch to eternity, despite his utter want and poverty, is in recognizing the Maker of the world, in faith, and in believing and affirming the hereafter. There is no help for awakened mankind apart from this.
If the jewel of true religion is not present in the shell of the heart, material, moral, and spiritual calamities of untold magnitude will break loose over humanity and man will become the most unhappy, the most wretched, of animals."
“An hour’s reflective thought is better than a year’s worship” Hadith
"We Muslims, who are students of the Qur’an, follow proof; we approach the truths of belief through reason, thought, and our hearts. " Bediuzzaman Said Nursi
Re: Belief in God is part of human nature - Oxford study
format_quote Originally Posted by Yahya Sulaiman
Can you really do no better than to try so weakly to divert the issue from your ludicrous and desperate claim that culture and history can change people's inherent predispositions from birth to the absence of some specific trait of the predisposition I never even claimed was there?
My 'claim' is quite clear, and far from from being 'ludicrous and desperate' is both straightforward and, I would have thought, quite uncontroversial. It's just a pity you can't peer over the top of your vastly over-inflated ego long enough to admit you have made a straightforward comprehension mistake as a result of not reading carefully enough. We all do it occasionally, nothing to be ashamed of.
I have NOWHERE claimed that culture and and history are either responsible for, or can change people's inherent dispositions. I 'claimed' what to my mind is obvious, as illustrated by the example I gave, that the particular religious concepts in which any such natural predisposition is manifested are shaped by culture and history. How else would you possibly explain the huge diversity in religious views?
Read more carefully next time and you won't make a fool of yourself.
Re: Belief in God is part of human nature - Oxford study
Salaam,
£1.9 million study? That is too expensive.
I was looking at myself talking to myself and I realized this conversation...I was having with myself looking at myself was a conversation with myself that I needed to have with myself.
Re: Belief in God is part of human nature - Oxford study
format_quote Originally Posted by Guestfellow
Salaam, £1.9 million study? That is too expensive.
Researchers also have home mortgages to pay, you know. It's better to lavish funds on science, research and studies, than on frivolous expenses, like MPs holiday benefits
Re: Belief in God is part of human nature - Oxford study
Actually this doesn't prove anything like you guys are trying to make out to do.
A proclivity to believe in God does not in any way mean that there is a God. There's a clear distinction that must be made there.
Religion has existed for millenia, long before Islam or Christianity or even Judaism existed. Why? Well there are many reasons and they have evolved with time, but essentially it comes down to humans needing to give our existence meaning.
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