I was reading an article on Scientific American recently called "Creationism Feels Right, But That Doesn't Make It So". http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=creationism-feels-right-but-that-doesnt-make-it-so
I agree with the title outright -- however right or natural it may feel, Creationism is flat wrong. But I disagree with the thrust of the story (and I realize the author of the article is merely reporting the research) that our cognitive systems are hardwired to believe it so, and I think it is a line of thinking that is common and misleading among both sides. I'm no psychologist or professional in the field, but here's my rant.
The article states that "...5- to 7-year-old children give either spontaneous generationist (e.g., "it got born there") or creationist (e.g., "God made it") responses." I don't see why this has to be fraught with implication. Children ask questions about everything from the time they are able to talk meaningfully. Sure, "Why is the sky blue" and similar questions are often answered either religiously or scientifically, "Because God made it so" or "See, light is scattered more ..." But how much of our lives is man-made? We "make" nearly everything around us. Mommy makes coffee, daddy makes dinner, Bobby made a mess on the floor. Someone or something made that car, that shirt, that door, that stain on the wall. Perhaps some of our tendency to look for a "Maker" in everything owes to the ubiquity of "make" as an action verb, but it's not hard to see that nearly everything children see and interact with is "made", to one degree or another.
Combined with this is the tendency of children to learn from everyone and everything around them. Sure, Bobby's parents are Creationists, but that doesn't mean his teachers are. Suzy's parents are atheists, but her playmates aren't. These people form just as strong an influence on a child's thoughts as the parents themselves. To me, as with all factors of the "human experience", it's nigh impossible to pare it down to a simple answer.
So when a child says that the first turtle or fox is either "born" or "made", I think it represents both incomplete knowledge of the world around him and assumptions based on what he does know. How often do scientists ask children where the first pen came from? Or where the first word came from? I think any child at that age would fall back on one of two assumptions on the world: either it was "made", like the house he lives in, or "born", like his little brother.
The same goes for the 8-10 range. I don't feel that to say "Nature" made something is creationist at all. They're taught that the Sun makes light, clouds make snow, dogs make puppies, cats make kitties, and pop makes pee. On a purely scientific level pop doesn't "make" pee -- our bodies use what they can from pop and excrete the remainder. But that's an awfully detailed response for most at that age, and heck, probably more than most parents even know, so it's easier to just say "make". So it's no wonder that children at that age, who are starting to learn more about the world around them, look at everything as being "made". It seems natural then that by age 10 and above, when they're not only learning in more detail but being given more detail by their parents, while simultaneously staking out an identity for themselves shaped by their upbringing, that they start to fall on ideological lines.
Similarily, later the article discusses teleo-functional thinking as another example of our "hardwiring" for Creationism, but again this is misleading. We look for a function in man-made objects because we know that nearly all objects are made for a purpose. Even seemingly useless art is explained away as being "art". And we know from evolution that the majority of "affordances" on animate objects are because they are beneficial to it in some way. If ivy has hooks, it's to scale walls. We have hair to keep us warm. Some of these affordances may be baffling to us, but that doesn't mean they don't have an explanation. The same goes for a strange new Sharper Image device -- we may not grasp that meaning at first, but once we do it seems as clear as day.
Ultimately, I don't think humans are hardwired to believe in a Maker. Rather, we humans have come to a point where we either can make (or reproduce) everything, or understand how it was made, and this influences our perception on the origins of anything and everything. I'm sure ancient humans undoubtedly figured out that clouds make rain, but couldn't figure out where clouds come from so created a Creator for them. Modern humans are the same, but we're running out of things that we can't figure out. The origin of humans is far too contentious for us to ever come to a definitive answer, but using cognitive hardwiring to explain our fascination with naming a mystical Being as the Ultimate Maker is grasping a bit.
