“Is there growing evidence that humans are hard-wired to detect agency?”

Editor’s note: This post originally appeared on Think Apologetics. Tabernacle of David considers this resource trustworthy and Biblically sound.

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Can a Scientist Believe in Miracles?: An MIT Professor Answers Questions on God and Science (Veritas Books) by [Hutchinson, Ian]

Here, Ian Hutchinson answers the question as to  if there is  growing evidence that humans are hard-wired to detect agency, does this  mean that  religion is less plausible and should be  pushed  into the shadows? Hutchinson says: 

“When it is said that humans are hard-wired to detect agency, what is meant is that we have well-tuned mental and physiological abilities to perceive agents, such as animals and other humans. Does this ability render religion less plausible? The antitheistic argument is approximately that the ability is “overactive,” that we have a built-in tendency to detect agency even when it is not there. And that, it is said, explains religion, ghosts, demons, and other superstitions: we are detecting agents that aren’t there because our agency-detecting circuits are overactive. An evolutionary advantage is conveyed by agency-detecting ability, since it helps us (and many other animals) find prey and avoid predators. However these arguments are not science and affect the plausibility of theism hardly at all.

First, it is completely obvious, regardless of any modern research, that we possess strong and sensitive agency-detecting abilities. The most elementary observation of an infant can persuade anyone of that. Casual observation also reveals humans’ tendency toward anthropomorphism: attributing quasi-human attributes (especially agency) to nonhuman entities. Skeptics have for centuries taken the anthropomorphic language of most religious expression to indicate that religion is nothing but anthropomorphism. Science adds little to that presumption.

Second, there is to my knowledge no demonstration, experimental or otherwise, or persuasive argument that the agency-detecting ability is systematically overactive. In fact, if evolution is responsible for it, one would expect it to be active to just about the optimal degree: not too much, not too little, so as to make our survival chances about the best they can be. And that seems to be roughly true by inspection. Certainly our agency detection is imperfect and subject to errors. Sometimes we detect an agent when one is not there; we see what we take to be a sheep when it is really a rock. Sometimes we fail to detect an agent that really is present, and it surprises us, maybe bites us! But that is insufficient for a demonstration that it is overactive. It is (so far as I can see) just as often underactive. I’d say we might be detecting God when he is not there, or we might be not detecting God when he is there.

What is at work, then, when evolutionary psychology “explains” an aspect of religion is a scientistic attempt to explain away a higher-level perception by offering a scientific-sounding alternative explanation. The presumption is that reductionist scientific explanations are always preferable and supersede other types of explanation. However, once you concede that our agency-detecting ability is actually very good at detecting agents, it is just as plausible to say that a God who wants us to “detect” him as agent (because he wants us to have a personal relationship with him) arranges to make agent-detection capability a part of our standard mental equipment. If evolution is some (or even most) of how he did that, it changes nothing. It simply reaffirms what we knew already: that the ability is natural. We do not say that our having a hard-wired ability to detect agents renders our friends less plausible; why would it do so to God?”

— Ian Hutchinson, Can a Scientist Believe in Miracles: An MIT Professor Answers Questions on God and Science (IVP Books, 2018), 90-91.

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