Rather than children adopting religious beliefs simply because of gullibility, recent cross-cultural and developmental research suggests that children have natural propensities toward religious beliefs including the belief in at least one divine creator with super properties such as superhuman knowledge and perception and immortality. In this lecture representative studies demonstrating natural receptiveness to religious thinking are presented and the question “Are people born to believe?” is answered.
Ths lecture was part of the Cambridge Festival of Ideas 2014.
