Sunday 6 September 2009

Hardwired to get really wired

Research revealed in the Sunday Times today suggests that human beings might be hardwired to believe in Richard Dawkins. The idea has emerged from studies of the way the human mind behaves during heated debates about religion and evolution. Scientists think that humans are born with a tendency in such situations to display self-righteous indignation, especially when confronted with views of the natural world that conflict with their own.

Bryce Hoodwink, Professor of developmental randomness at the University of Bristols apparently believes that children display a "natural intuitive way of reasoning that leads them to all kinds of supernatural beliefs. Never mind that fact that their parents tell them that there are such things as Father Christmas and Tooth Fairies. If their parents didn't them these things they'd make them up anyway."

Professor Hoodwink believes that the same goes for God and Richard Dawkins. "School children don't believe in one guy or the other because their parents or teachers have told them to believe in them. Oh no. If God and Dawkins weren't mentioned even once throughout their lives, kids would simply have to make them up. The fact of the matter is that we all need something to believe in."

However a spokeperson for the Department of Disbelief today stated: "Struth! You couldn't make it up, could you? If we are all hardwired to believe in Richard Dawkins or even in God for that matter, then who exactly was it who put the wiring there in the first place? That's what I would like to know. Was it God or Richard Dawkins? These people make me laugh... For crying out loud, some people nowadays wonder whether Richard Dawkins is bigger than Jesus... But then that is what they once wondered about the Beatles, didn't they?"

22 comments:

  1. Menachem the Beginning6 September 2009 at 13:28

    Any fule kno that religous belief is a meme that ensures its own existence. That or it was invented by God. Your choice.

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  2. I believe science has much to say about what God did and how God did it, but nothing to say directly about any God worth believing in.

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  3. Dawkins is a nutbag who stopped publishing in peer-reviewed journals many, many years ago. He's no longer a scientist (if he ever was) but a Darwin fundamentalist

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  4. These debates about evolution and intelligent design are not really about science, but about a struggle for control of our educational establishments and about freedom of thought.
    In one corner... in the other corner...

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  5. Does anyone know why God created Richard Dawkins?

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  6. He wanted to stir some debate

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  7. Why did the chicken cross the road?
    Because he was looking for an egg-sit strategy

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  8. Jeezuss... God really doesn't exist.

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  9. Dawkins states quite clearly that we must teach generosity and altruism without ever suggesting from where such concepts sprang, and why.
    Maybe we should just take them for granted, unlike religion.

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  10. Fookin' hell, what is all this religion and science stuff? Whatever happened to current affairs???

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  11. I think it went the way of Dawkins...

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  12. As Chesterton said, when men stop believing in God they believe in anything and Dawkins

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  13. Re: Altruism... there is a large body of research and of literature looking at altruism in an evolutionary context.

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  14. Dawkins states quite clearly that altruism does not exist, and then tells us that it must be taught.

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  15. There is more to this than just Dawkins on the subject of altruism and evolution. He's predominately a populariser with a relatively narrow perspective on evolution. Read some of the other guys.... Gould perhaps?

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  16. Fine... just oddly enough I thought that we were talking about Dawkins here, that's all.
    Sorry for any misunderstanding

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  17. The selfish gene created the selfish ego...

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  18. Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
    The chicken came first and fertilised the egg.

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  19. Hell's teeth, that Ehrlichman guy shouldn't give up the day job.

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  20. What are my boys doing here, populating this Godless site?

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  21. Thought that roosters inseminated eggs... or is it one of dem generic chickens that people are talking about?

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  22. Which came first, the Dawkins or the egg?

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