Are we born atheists?

It is often said online that every child is born an atheist and that belief in God comes only from upbringing or indoctrination. This paper tests that claim against three bodies of evidence: anthropology, the cognitive science of religion, and history.

Anthropologists have found religion in every known human society. The old idea that religion evolved in a straight line, from “primitive” animism up to modern science, has been dropped by the field. What remains is the observation that sacred rituals, sacred time and belief in unseen agents appear everywhere, in many different forms.

Cognitive scientists such as Justin Barrett, Pascal Boyer and Deborah Kelemen have studied how children think. Young children readily see purpose in nature, assume that someone made the world, and imagine minds that know more than any human. Many non-religious adults show the same instincts when they have to answer quickly. Large research projects at Oxford concluded that the pull towards religion is part of ordinary human thinking, and that atheism is a considered position people arrive at rather than a starting point.

History tells a similar story. Religion has lasted across every era and often revives after periods of decline, while sustained atheism has appeared only under particular social and intellectual conditions. The authors conclude that belief is the more natural human state. For Muslim readers this fits the Qur'anic idea of fitrah, the innate disposition to recognise the Creator.