RESEARCHERS in Oxford plan to spend three years and nearly £2 million in the search for an answer to religion’s Big Bang question: is belief in God natural, or does it have to be taught?
The question is one of a number that researchers want to tackle scientifically. The US-based John Templeton Foundation has given £1.9 million to fund a three-year development of the methodology needed for such research.
Professor Roger Trigg from the Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion is leading the project with Dr Justin Barrett from the Centre for Anthropology and Mind. Professor Trigg said on Tuesday: “The assumption people make is that religion is somehow ‘natural’ in human beings, but we want to know how specific that could be.”
“In many ways, it is similar to the issue of morality and ethics. Is religion similar to that vague sense of ‘purpose’ that humans have, or the way they feel that they have a mind as well as a brain? Or is religion more specific, so that belief in gods, or even monotheism, is engrained?
“There is an assumption that belief began with polytheism and was refined down to belief in God with a capital G. But maybe they started with the idea of God.”
Despite the difficulty of the question, it was not unanswerable, he said. Research into the psychology of little children could suggest whether there was tendency towards monotheism. Anthropological studies could also help to suggest whether that was the case. “One question is what is meant by religion? This could be crystallised in the research.”
A new £33,000-a-year post has already been advertised for a researcher. He or she will also control a small grant programme aimed to spread the research net more widely.
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