A Child's Intuition of Purpose in the Natural World Is No Accident
Young children perceive intuitively that the world is designed. In 1929, child psychologist Jean Piaget called children "artificialists" who tend to regard everything as "the product of human creation."1 Piaget's claim that young children's minds are not sophisticated enough to distinguish between human and nonhuman causes was controversial, and subsequent studies have shown that he was wrong.2 Yet he was right in saying that children start out with the intuition that the natural world was made for a purpose. In 2004, child psychologist Deborah Kelemen suggested that young children are thus "intuitive theists" who are "disposed to view natural...
