Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
> Call it God; call it superstition; call it, as [Scott] Atran does,
> "belief in hope beyond reason" — whatever you call it, there seems an
> inherent human drive to believe in something transcendent,
> unfathomable and otherworldly, something beyond the reach or
> understanding of science. "Why do we cross our fingers during
> turbulence, even the most atheistic among us?" asked Atran when we
> spoke at his Upper West Side pied-à-terre in January. Atran, who is
> 55, is an anthropologist at the National Center for Scientific
> Research in Paris, with joint appointments at the University of
> Michigan and the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. His
> research interests include cognitive science and evolutionary biology,
> and sometimes he presents students with a wooden box that he pretends
> is an African relic. "If you have negative sentiments toward
> religion," he tells them, "the box will destroy whatever you put
> inside it." Many of his students say they doubt the existence of God,
> but in this demonstration they act as if they believe in something.
> Put your pencil into the magic box, he tells them, and the
> nonbelievers do so blithely. Put in your driver's license, he says,
> and most do, but only after significant hesitation. And when he tells
> them to put in their hands, few will.
This seems like a horrible way of sampling. Students are [typically]
young, impressionable and somewhat immature with respect to their belief
systems and such. I would gladly put my hand in the silly box and I will
wager that 99% of PEN-L non-believers would do the same. I am a bit
shocked that someone could build an academic programme (as the article
mentions) out of such a poor experiment!