Teleology, Intelligent Design, and Children

Studies show that children are much more likely than adults to infer the existence of purpose or design in events around them. Whatever the event, children seem to instinctively reach out for an "explanation" that includes some conscious, personal force causing it according to specific intentions. Do you think this sounds familiar?

Chris writes:

Recent research has led to the Promiscuous Teleology theory, which argues that children tend provide teleological explanations for a broader range of instances than adults, from artificacts, to biological kinds and natural, non-biological kinds such as rock formations and whether phenomena. This tendency results from a further tendency to give purposeful explanations when other types of causal explanations are not obvious, as well as a hair-triggered intentional reasoning mechanism. Researchers have shown that up until about 10 years, an age at which most U.S. children will have received a sufficient amount of science education to provide non-teleological explanations for non-biological natural phenomena, children give teleological explanations for these sorts of phenomena.

When asked what the "function," if there is one, of various properties of the properties of artificats, biological kinds, and non-biological natural kinds, U.S. children younger than ten will readily provide a functional explanation, and prefer functional to physical explanations when given a choice. Children who are told stories about the origins of natural kinds (biological or non-biological), and later asked to recall those stories, often "reconstruct" them in order to make them fit more teleological explanations. British children have also been shown to have this tendency, though it is not as strong in them as it is in U.S. children, a fact likely due to the differences in religiosity between the the U.S. and the U.K. Children in the United States are more likely to be exposed to design explanations for natural phenomena at an early age than British children are.

If children have a natural tendency to give teleological explanations for natural phenomena, they may also believe that such phenomena were intentionally created by an intelligent designer. And, in fact, U.S. children between the ages of 5 and 11, from both highly religious and non-religious households, will, if given the choice, answer that biological entities were created by God. Only after 11 do the tendencies to believe that God created animals begin to diverge for these two groups. [references omitted]

Chris offers some interesting examples of this tendency from studies done in Britain, and I recommend following the above link to read his complete article. It's a fascinating area of study that I hadn't known about before. As Chris notes at the beginning, "religious cognition utilizes ordinary cognitive mechanisms," and therefore all cognitive research has implications for religion. In this case, however, the implications extend to the popularity of creationism and Intelligent Design in America.

As Chris also notes, the tendency to offer teleological explanations for natural phenomena begins to reduce when children are exposed to extensive science education. The more science education one gets, it seems, the less likely one is to be stumped by a problem and instinctively reach out for a nonscientific idea about "design." The path, then, would be clear: increase funding for more science education in schools.

Read More:

• Religion 101
• Theism 101
• Does God Exist?
• Evolution vs. Creationism