In Theory: Do children of faith have more difficulty differentiating between fact and fiction?
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A study published this month in the journal Cognitive Science and reported by the Huffington Post shows that young children exposed to religion find it more difficult to differentiate between fact and fiction than do their peers being reared in secular households. The study’s authors write that 5- and 6-year-olds who have been given religious teaching, “especially exposure to miracle stories, leads children to a more generic receptivity toward the impossible that is, a more wide-ranging acceptance that the impossible can happen in defiance of ordinary causal relations.”
Q: Tell us your thoughts on this study. Does the outcome surprise you, or raise any concerns?
It’s amazing how the wording of a question or the focus of a study exposes the bias of the one asking or conducting it. The issue isn’t teaching children to distinguish between miracles and what is real. The only issue is teaching children of faith to distinguish between the miraculous and the ordinary. They simply need to learn that God has established natural laws that normally apply, but that sometimes he suspends them for the purpose of revealing his truth and his character to people in an attention-getting manner. They have been given the great life advantage of knowing that God is there to help us, even at times in miraculous ways. They have been taught to remember and to be encouraged by the examples of miracles recorded in the Bible.
The miracles recorded in the Bible, though “miraculous”, were nevertheless absolutely real. God parted the Red Sea for Israel. God answered Elijah’s prayers and brought rain to a drought-stricken land. God raised his son Jesus Christ from the dead. Miracles happen to this day. God will save your soul and make you a new person if you place your trust in Jesus Christ who gave up his life for you on the cross.
A 2010 Pew Research Center report found that 79% of Americans, including 78% ages 18 to 29, believe in miracles. Any who cast dispersion upon educating children about the miracles recorded in Scripture will find themselves at odds with the vast majority of Americans, and even with God himself who does not need their opinion, or their approval, to exist and to strongly support his people.
Pastor Jon Barta
Valley Baptist Church
Burbank
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The study sort of surprises me, but I am not particularly worried. I look back at my own upbringing, and I was raised in a religious family, although not wacko religious! I also believed in Santa Claus for longer than most kids I knew, and I don’t think hanging on to such a belief hurt me particularly.
Anyway, is it so bad or hurtful to hang on to the concept of the miraculous for a while longer than those kids from “secular” households? I don’t think so. In fact, hanging on to the concept of the miraculous a little bit longer than most just might be a blessing and not a curse!
I should also say that I had great parents. They took us to church, yes, and we had devotions around our breakfast table — mighty short devotions, I’m sure my mother thought. But my parents, especially my mother, also made sure that I and my brothers saw the “real” world, a world in which not every child had loving parents. I still credit my mother for whatever social conscience I might have. She and my father thought racism was terrible; my mother also said more than once that it was “terrible” what the white race had done to Native American people.
So, again, that study does surprise me, but its results do not worry me.
The Rev. Skip Lindeman
La Cañada Congregational Church
La Cañada Flintridge
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I would not use “differentiate fact from fantasy” as much as I would say that children reared in a home that relates stories of miracles are less apt to be limited by the physical world than children raised in a secular world that has no belief in the super (meaning going beyond) natural world.
Once again this author, in the quest to make a point, limits the practitioners of understanding beyond the world of touch, taste, see, smell and hear, to those raised in a religious world. What about the children who read comic books or watch Sci-Fi TV, do we say they have trouble differentiating “between reality and fantasy” with that insidious implication of dishonesty and/or foolishness? No we say, they have great imaginations!
Earlier thinkers considered going to and landing on the Moon a miracle (read Jules Verne). Prior leaders of nations of the world believed an ocean going submarine capable of remaining underwater for many months and then rising to the air as beyond the laws of nature (Mr. Verne again). Groups of people believed that “returning from the dead” after surgery a miracle of medical science (Mary Shelley this time).
Finally, if we do not believe in miracles, look at the amputees, who have returned from combat without limbs competing in the Olympic Games (2012), or the ability of a grandparent to see and speak to their grandchild over thousands of miles (me, last week). To the scientists of the past, our present reality is the stuff of their miracles. Let us not infringe upon any child’s dreams, no matter their source, for the miracles in their minds may, God willing, be the reality of our future.
Rabbi Mark Sobel
Temple Beth Emet
Burbank
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It does not surprise or particularly concern me that young children sometimes confuse fantasy with reality. They studied 5- and 6-year-olds. The maturation process will sort that out in most cases.
Also bear in mind that for every child who is molded in early life into turning out just like their parents in what they believe, often as not there is another one who rejects her upbringing. This rule seems to apply to atheist-reared children too!
It is when adults appear to cling to magical thinking — for example, guns don’t kill people, climate change isn’t real or caused by humans, supply-side economics works — that we see big problems.
Unfortunately, I don’t think this dangerous confusion is caused solely by youthful exposure to miracle stories, nor does growing up necessarily lead to putting away childish things.
Roberta Medford
Atheist
Montrose
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The results aren’t surprising or cause for concern. As the study points out, earlier research found that the ability to separate religion from fantasy increases as children mature.
Real-world observation confirms this. Religious adolescents, teens and adults are fairly adept at distinguishing between Moses and Gandalf. This is partly the result of natural improvements in critical thinking. However, there is a more important to spiritual development. This is faith.
Paul defined faith as “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” The wording isn’t accidental. Faith stems from a spiritual affirmation that God exists, hears our prayers and, at times, intervenes. This affirmation, found through the influence of the Holy Ghost, is substantive in a way that may be difficult to describe but is definitive when it is felt.
Because of this we don’t simply tell our children that there is a God. We teach them to pray, read scripture and contemplate. In their innocence and in the limited capacity of early age, they may sometimes be confused. But as they grow and their search matures, their hearts are opened to the faith that Paul describes.
Just for the record, the Huffington Post headline is misleading. The study found that religious and secular children were equally adept at assessing “realistic” stories. They differed in how they evaluated religious stories and tales of extraordinary events lacking a religious element.
On an academic level, the study is inconclusive.
The aim was to test the hypothesis that we are born with a propensity to believe. The researchers assumed that religious children were shaped by their parents, by clergy or by church school curriculum. Ostensibly, children of nonbelievers absorb the skepticism of their parents. In both cases, a child’s innate disposition at birth is disrupted by these influences.
Michael White
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
La Crescenta