The S-Files

Turning Indoctrination on its Head

Contra Celsum is pleased to announce an S-Award for Oxford academic, Justin L Barrett.

For a long time now one of the pieces of received wisdom of Athenian Unbelief is that there is no compelling evidence for the Living God in the material world. Therefore, if children believe in God, it can only be as a result of extensive (familial) indoctrination. In other words, the null hypothesis is always Unbelief. The Believer is the one who “moved” from the truth.

We, at Contra Celsum love pricking the balloons of those who advocate such nonsense. One of the enduring myths of Athens is that it is a City of rational objective inquiry, without prejudice or superstition. Nothing could be further from the truth. Athens is riddled with superstitions—none more so than in the Academy.

The philosophical sceptics who have attacked the very foundations of rationality have been hated as blasphemers within the City because they so thoroughly undermine the pretense of rational objectivity. The Hume's and Wittgenstein's of the Academy are regarded as intolerable black sheep, those disgusting relatives, which no-one likes to talk about. The effort and energies devoted to keeping the myths intact within the City are prodigious.

Justin L Barrett, a senior researcher at the University of Oxford's Centre for Anthropology and Mind, has recently argued that there is an abundance of evidence that all children are born believing in God. The existence of God is therefore the null hypothesis in fact. When children stop believing it is because they have been indoctrinated by extensive familial propaganda—to which we may add, not just familial propaganda, but the relentless mind-altering propaganda of the liberal-academic complex which is the guardian of Athenian religion and mythology.

Barrett argues that there is a growing body of evidence from psychological experiments conducted with children to show that they instinctively believed everything had been designed for a specific purpose. He concludes that the experimental evidence suggests that "children's normally and naturally developing minds make them prone to believe in divine creation and intelligent design. In contrast, evolution is unnatural for human minds; relatively difficult to believe."

This implies that children only comes to believe that all things exist as a result of stochasticity and chaos due to the relentless application of secular humanist religious propaganda. In other words they come to believe it as a result of programmed conditioning. Barrett argues that if we were to put a handful of babes on a desert island and they were to raise themselves, they would all grow up to believe in a god of some sort.

Now, we confidently predict that Barrett's research and argumentation will not be well received in the Academy. It strikes at the heart of what it means to be Athenian. For citizens of Jerusalem, however, we are not at all surprised at the research findings. They are hardly earth shattering. It is what we would expect to be the case.

It is nonetheless both diverting and entertaining to see the butcher's knife being laid to the throat of one of Unbelief's most sacred of cows.

Justin L Barrett, Senior Researcher at the University of Oxford's Centre for Anthropology and Mind : S-Award, Class I for actions in the course of duty that have been Smart, Sound, and Salutary.