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.

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.”

He compared believers to three-year-olds who “assume that other people know almost everything there is to be known”. Dr Barrett, who is a Christian, is the editor of the Journal of Cognition and Culture and author of the book "Why Would Anyone Believe in God?" He said that the childish tendency to believe in the omniscience of others was pared down by experience as people grew up. But this tendency, necessary to allow human beings to socialise and cooperate with each other in a productive way, continued when it came to belief in God.

“It usually does continue into adult life,” he said. “It is easy, it is intuitive, it is natural. It fits our default assumptions about things.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article3393198.ece

Long before any results come out, there is a session entitled "Is our behaviour determined by our evolution?" at the Battle of Ideas in London. Including religion, it widens the debate to other forms of behaviour such as political affiliations. Studies have claimed to find a genetic basis for political beliefs and behaviour – apparently liberals can be picked out by the activity of their anterior cingulate cortex, and voter turnout is correlated to particular alleles of the gene MAOA.

http://www.battleofideas.org.uk/index.php/2008/session_detail/1228/

The evolution of speculative philosophy into natural philosophy continues.