system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Is the conception of god innate in humans? If you could link me to any works on this topic, I would be highly grateful.

I was recently going through Chomsky's work on Generative Linguistics... which is influenced by rationalism. Can this view of rationalism be extended to religion?
gpt
Two early modern figures that are good to look at for this are Descartes and Locke.

Descartes argues in his 'meditations on first philosophy' that, since everything has a cause, and nothing can come from something less than itself (a ball cannot travel further than the ability of the thrower) we cannot generate our perception of God (something perfect cannot come from something inperfect). We also do not perceive him through our senses, so the only way that we know God is through an innate sense (this is his 'trademark argument', meditation 3). 

Descsrtes is especially interesting concerning rationalism extending to religion.

In contrast to him, Locke argued that all our knowledge comes from experience, thus we are a tabula rasa - a blank slate. He argues this in his work 'an essay concerning human understanding' where he notably points out empirical examples of societies that have developed without the idea of God, thus it cannot be considered innate.

Hope this helps!