Hell and the Play Nice Christian

[FatAndFaithless]

Peer-reviewed journals, please. "Science" news media is notoriously shitty and adds conclusions and descriptions to experiments that have nothing to do with what the actual scientists actually claim.

[Thumpalumpacus]

This is why the latest international studies from Oxford Uni have concluded that children left alone to develop on a desert island with no outside interference, would come to believe in God, while they would have to be taught atheism.

Support this claim with a link to the study.

From your links:

A three-year international research project, directed by two academics at the University of Oxford, finds that humans have natural tendencies to believe in gods and an afterlife.

The £1.9 million project involved 57 researchers who conducted over 40 separate studies in 20 countries representing a diverse range of cultures. The studies (both analytical and empirical) conclude that humans are predisposed to believe in gods and an afterlife, and that both theology and atheism are reasoned responses to what is a basic impulse of the human mind.

You're clearly misrepresenting the study's results (if they are indeed being reported accurately), because nowhere does it indicate that children would come to believe in God, but rather, gods.

And according to your Bible, that dooms them to Hell -- for all eternity, says your Jesus in Matthew.

And:

In a lecture to be given at the University of Cambridge's Faraday Institute on Tuesday, Dr Barrett will cite psychological experiments carried out on children that he says show they instinctively believe that almost everything has been designed with a specific purpose.

In one study, six and seven-year-olds who were asked why the first bird existed replied "to make nice music" and "because it makes the world look nice".

Okay, that does sound simplistic enough to pass for Christian theology.

But I'd like to read the study itself. Do you have it on hand? Considering that the Dr Barrett in question is noted for his religious beliefs, I'd suspect bias on his part, especially since he leaps from "children believing that almost everything was designed for a purpose" to this is evidence for God ... a leap you foolishly follow.

[Crossless2.0]

[Mister Agenda]

[Metis]

Support this claim with a link to the study, or at least legitimate reportage about it.

Wish I had the journal to hand but I did read an article on Jstor the other day with a study done on Japanese kids in an environment who had never had contact with a religious tradition. Hard here but not too difficult in major urban centers there.

Apparently their beliefs were "suspecting the existence of a supreme, usually single being, spirit or force". I'll see if I can find it.

The study originally was directed around imaginary friends, but this developed out of it (since what puzzled the researchers was the kids all came up with a similar concept despite having no contact to share ideas).

[FatAndFaithless]

(not to mention children are 'naturally inclined' to attribute agency to completely natural, random, materialist shit like bumps in the night or spooky shadows or strange noises. Shocker, children are naturally inclined to be childish)

[SteelCurtain]

[Chad32]

People are superstitious by nature, and inclined to believe in supernatural forces. This could include one or more of a plethora of gods and godesses. One of many is Yahweh/Allah, or Jesus. The odds of someone coming to believe in a guy from Nazereth named Jesus, out of all the other ones, including a deity they may come up with themselves, are minuscule at best.

[Crossless2.0]

This shows a remarkable bias in their understanding of the data. They are doing some pretty intense extrapolation and ignoring the influence of religious indoctrination. Children are certainly born with an untuned ability to 'create' explanations for things that they cannot comprehend. This is obvious and easily explained. What is not obvious is the leap from this to mythical sky daddy creator-god that these studies seem to make.

Right. Further, show me a group of children who independently come up with Yahweh as the explanation for creation (without their parents indoctrinating them into this belief), and then we can talk. Otherwise, I'm pretty underwhelmed.

[The Reality Salesman01]