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?"