ITEMS OF INTEREST March 17, 2008 Issue

ITEMS OF INTEREST

with contributions from Ruth Gledhill, Meredith Hassett, Roy L. Williams

RESEARCHERS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD will spend £1.9 million investigating why people believe in God. Academics have been given a grant to try to find out whether belief in a deity is a matter of nature or nurture.

They will not attempt to solve the question of whether God exists, but they will examine evidence to try to prove whether belief in God conferred an evolutionary advantage to mankind. ... Researchers at the Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion and the Centre for Anthropology and Mind in Oxford will use the cognitive science disciplines to develop "a scientific approach to why we believe in God and other issues around the nature and origin of religious belief." ...

Justin Barrett, a psychologist who has been quoted in support of arguments by both the atheist Richard Dawkins and his critic, Alister Mc-Grath, a Christian theologian, said: "We are interested in exploring exactly in what sense belief in God is natural. We think there is more on the nature side than a lot of people suppose." ...

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