Finally got to watch “ Raised by Wolves “ and it resulted in me recalling the thoughts about a god gene. Any thoughts on if there is strong scientific evidence for it or if children in general mostly believe in a god?

[SkovandOfMitaze (Mi Krumm)]

As mentioned a few times I’m a huge horror fan. I am also a big fan of Ridley Scott’s work from Prometheus, Aliens, and recently Raised by Wolves. One constant reoccurring theme in those films is the argument about what constitutes life ( can androids have souls ) and humanity tracking down their creators.

This is not really a major spoiler. It’s revealed fairly quickly and does not hinder anything about the show. But in raised by wolves there is a war that breaks out between atheists and believers and the believers win so some kids are sent off to a distant planet with a Android to raise them with an atheistic world view. But a kid , despite being raised to not believe in a god is seemingly inherently drawn towards faith. I have family members where one or both parents are atheists and the kids still talk about god. Sure they also talk about fairies and believe in Santa but they also believe in God. One of my cousins is a atheist and so is his wife. They are even fairly hostile towards religion. Not necessarily towards religious people but definitely towards faith. Despite this, one of them when they were 11 called me on their phone to pray for their cat. Her parents have also vented to me about their anger over her stopping her belief in fairies and Santa as she got older but she still clearly believes in God and sometimes have been caught with her barbies being told made up stories about God.

So I was wondering if anyone who may be around kids more often, including kids not raised by religious parents, still being up God or if there are any good books or blogs on the “god genes”.

I’ll go back and listen to the psychology series about this as well and I’ve read the God , genes, and determinism post previously.

[mitchellmckain (Scientist and Christian)]

I think Klax got it right when he attributed this to an overactive agency detector. I have said some similar things before… that if there is one difference in religious people is a bit higher tendency to see patterns in things. So… I don’t think it is a God gene, so much as a side-effect of some other aspect of human mental operation – and I wouldn’t be so sure that this is exclusive to the human species. I have also said that human beings are a religious animal and so I think one of the more important functions of organized religion is to channel this impulse and guard against bad religion.

Of course none of this means that God does not exist or that God does not play a role in wakening our awareness of the divine. But does suggest that not all of religion is inspired by God alone – and there is plenty of evidence for that even in Bible.

[cewoldt (Craig Ewoldt)]

“Dr Justin Barrett, a senior researcher at the University of Oxford’s Centre for Anthropology and Mind, claims that young people have a predisposition to believe in a supreme being because they assume that everything in the world was created with a purpose.” His book is “Born Believers.”
Interestingly enough, he says the default is believing in God as the creator–intelligence and design-- and not believing in evolution.

[SkovandOfMitaze (Mi Krumm)]

Well I can’t imagine kids have a in-depth understanding of faith and science to make that particular distinction of evolution verses intelligent design.

[Dale (evolutionary providentialist)]

Little children don’t believe their lives are useless – they have to be taught that by cruel parents or teachers and professors that believe that. That speaks to why the Father/child and Christian familial relationship in scripture is so enormously important.