Intimations of immortality and omniscience in early childhood

Abstract

Children aged three, four and five years, drawn equally from one secular and one religious school in Spain, were questioned about the psychological and biological constraints that apply to two different types of person: an ordinary human being (their best friend) and an extraordinary being (God). Children were asked to assess whether: (1) the knowledge available to either being is constrained by perceptual processes and (2) the life cycle of either being is constrained by biological processes. Three year olds provided few signs of distinguishing between the two types of being. Five year olds, on the other hand, were quite systematic in their differentiation. They judged that the knowledge available to a friend-but not to God-would be constrained by the need for perceptual access and they judged that the life cycle of a friendbut not that of God-would be constrained by the biological processes of birth, growth and death. Implications for current accounts of children's conceptual development are discussed. Recent research has shown that children increasingly recognize major constraints on psychological and biological processes (Rosengren, Gelman,

The role of religious context in children's differentiation between God's mind and human minds

“…However, in contrast to some recent studies (Gim enez-Das ı et al, 2005;Kiessling & Perner, 2014;Lane et al, 2010Lane et al, , 2012, children rarely attributed mental state limitations to God even as their understanding of the limitations of human minds improved. Analyses confirmed the hypothesized religious group affiliation differences in differentiation.…”

“…In some studies, with American Protestant (Barrett, Newman, & Richert, 2003;Barrett, Richert, & Driesenga, 2001;Richert & Barrett, 2005;Wigger, Paxson, & Ryan, 2013) and Yucatec Mayan participants (Knight, Sousa, Barrett, & Atran, 2004), children rarely attributed mental state limitations to God even as their understanding of the limitations of human minds improved. In other studies, with Spanish children in secular or religious schools (Gim enez-Das ı, Guerrero, & Harris, 2005), Greek Orthodox children (Makris & Pnevmatikos, 2007), American children in secular or Protestant schools (Lane, Wellman, & Evans, 2010, 2012, or Austrian children in Catholic schools (Kiessling & Perner, 2014), for some period during the preschool years or depending on the way in which questions are phrased, children attributed human-like limitations to God's mind.…”

Judgments About Fact and Fiction by Children From Religious and Nonreligious Backgrounds

“…Children growing up in a Christian community will encounter many contexts in which the actions and utterances of adults presuppose the existence of a God with extraordinary powers. Many young children in the United States and Europe not only believe in the existence of God (Harris, Pasquini, Duke, Asscher, & Pons, 2006), they also accept that God has special powers to do the following: answer prayers (Bamford & Lagattuta, 2010;Woolley & Phelps, 2001); create species ex nihilo (Evans, 2001); live forever (Gim enez-Das ı et al, 2005); gain knowledge in an extraordinary fashion (Barrett et al, 2001;Gim enez-Das ı et al, 2005;Lane et al, 2010Lane et al, , 2012; and ensure an afterlife (Harris, 2011;. To the extent that children accept that God has such superhuman powers, they are likely to regard stories describing the exercise of those powers as realistic rather than fantasticalas confirmed by the present results.…”

Contradictory or Complementary? Creationist and Evolutionist Explanations of the Origin(s) of Species

“…Some have contended that very young children think that all sentient agents are allknowing [e.g., Barrett & Richert, 2003] and thus, unlike adults, children have no difficulty with the biblical depiction of God's mental infallibility [for studies inspiring these claims, see Barrett, Richert, & Driesenga, 2001;Knight, Sousa, Barrett, & Atran, 2004]. However, recent research conducted with children in the United States, Spain, and Greece, with children from religious and nonreligious backgrounds, has demonstrated just the opposite -young children initially attribute human-like, limited knowledge to humans and to extraordinary beings [Giménez-Dasí, Guerrero, & Harris, 2005;Lane, Wellman, & Evans, 2010, in press;Makris & Pnevmatikos, 2007]. Thus, when children first begin to understand that ordinary humans can be ignorant or can hold false beliefs (around 4 years of age), children tend to attribute those same fallibilities to other agents, even God.…”

“…By the end of the preschool years, children are willing to grant certain extraordinary beings privileged knowledge about the here and now (e.g., knowledge about the contents of closed containers) [Barrett et al, 2001;Giménez-Dasí et al, 2005;Lane et al, 2010;Makris & Pnevmatikos, 2007]. Moreover, this understanding emerges slightly earlier among children who are heavily exposed to ideas about extraordinary religious beings and who are reminded about agents' special mental capacities just prior to testing [Lane et al, in press].…”