Humans predisposed to God and afterlife, conclude Oxford researchers, according to an article in ScienceDaily 14 July 2011.
An international team of researchers led by two Oxford University academics has carried out a number of studies of religious beliefs in 20 different countries, involving many cultures and religions. The project was named “The Cognition, Religion and Theology Project” and cost 1.9 million British pounds (around 3 million US dollars).
According to ScienceDaily the researchers were not trying to prove or disprove the existence of God, but wanted to know if “concepts such as gods and an afterlife appear to be entirely taught or are basic expressions of human nature” and they concluded “that humans are predisposed to believe in gods and an afterlife, and that both theology and atheism are reasoned responses to what is a basic impulse of the human mind”.
One of the research directors, Professor Roger Trigg, from the University of Oxford’s Ian Ramsey Centre, explained: “This project suggests that religion is 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. 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”.
Editorial Comment: We could have saved them 1.9 million pounds by recommending they accept the Biblical teaching that man was made in the image of the Creator God who is an eternal Spirit, so it follows that spiritual awareness aka religious belief, along with the belief in a life beyond our earthly existence, is built into humans because our image reflects the nature of our Creator. As this research discovered, deep down people know/suspect/conclude that death is not the end to their existence.
That is what makes atheists such hypocrites. If there really is no god why bother fighting us God worshippers about it – just leave us alone in our delusion and we will die happy even if they won’t. But Atheists and Agnostics can’t seem to do that. They act as if they are compelled to foist rejection of God upon all of society. Rather than being a “reasoned response”, the God deniers of atheism and agnosticism are in deliberate reasoned rebellion against the Creator, as they willingly forget that it was our rebellion that got us into this mess in the first place.
It would be a tragedy if the academics involved in this project spent 1.9 million pounds, to find out how spiritual we all are, but failed to accept the free gift of eternal life offered by the Creator and Saviour Jesus Christ.
Evidence News 3 August 2011
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