The Huffington Post | By Shadee Ashtari
Young children who are exposed to religion have a hard time differentiating between fact and fiction, according to a new study published in the July issue of Cognitive Science.
Researchers presented 5- and 6-year-old children from both public and parochial schools with three different types of stories — religious, fantastical and realistic –- in an effort to gauge how well they could identify narratives with impossible elements as fictional.
The study found that, of the 66 participants, children who went to church or were enrolled in a parochial school were significantly less able than secular children to identify supernatural elements, such as talking animals, as fictional.
By relating seemingly impossible religious events achieved through divine intervention (e.g., Jesus transforming water into wine) to fictional narratives, religious children would more heavily rely on religion to justify their false categorizations.
“In both studies, [children exposed to religion] were less likely to judge the characters in the fantastical stories as pretend, and in line with this equivocation, they made more appeals to reality and fewer appeals to impossibility than did secular children,” the study concluded.
Refuting previous hypotheses claiming that children are “born believers,” the authors suggest that “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.”
According to 2013-2014 Gallup data, roughly 83 percent of Americans report a religious affiliation, and an even larger group — 86 percent — believe in God.
More than a quarter of Americans, 28 percent, also believe the Bible is the actual word of God and should be taken literally, while another 47 percent say the Bible is the inspired word of God.
SOURCE: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/21/children-religion-fact-fiction_n_5607009.html
Categories: Americas
I would assume that this relates more to Christian children than to Muslim children as Islam and science do not clash
“Let me say at the outset that I am both a believer as well as a practising Muslim. I am a Muslim because I believe in the spiritual message of the Holy Quran. As a scientist, the Quran speaks to me in that it emphasises reflection on the Laws of Nature, with examples drawn from cosmology, physics, biology and medicine, as signs for all men. Thus
“Can they not look up to the clouds, how they are created; and to the Heaven how it is upraised; and the mountains how they are rooted, and to the earth how it is outspread ?” (88: 17)
and again,
“Verily in the creation of the heavens and of the earth, and in the alternation of the night and of the day, are there signs for men of understanding. ” (3: 189-190)
Seven hundred and fifty verses of the Quran -(almost one eighth of the Book) -“exhort believers to study Nature, to reflect, to make the best use of reason in their search for the ultimate and to make the acquiring of knowledge and scientific comprehension part of the community’s life”. The Holy Prophet of Islam (Peace be on him) emphasised that the quest for knowledge and sciences is obligatory upon every Muslim, man and woman.
This is the first premise on scientific knowledge with which any fundamentalist thinking in Islam must begin. Add to this the second premise – eloquently reinforced by Maurice Bucaille in his essay on “The Bible, the Quran and Science”. There is not a single verse in the Quran where natural phenomena are described and which contradicts what we know for certain from our discoveries in sciences.”
From the essay: Islam and Science, April 1984, Dr. Abdus Salam, Nobel Laureate in physics.
http://www.globalwebpost.com/farooqm/study_res/abdus_salam/i_science.html
I think the study would be true for all religions including Islam. We see fantastical and magical thinking in Muslims of all denominations. I can quote many examples but let me point out only one. Countless Muslims believe that honey has great healing powers. They derive this from Quran. Most Muslims give honey to their newborn child as the first food. Medical science tells us that honey should not be given to the newborn as it can cause life threatening allergic reaction.
Now God has not claimed any physical cures by honey in the Quran, but who can stop the onslaught of those who will condemn the science and continue to believe in its magical powers.