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The researchers introduced the children to three realities, the religious, the fantastic and the realistic version.
A study led by American researcher Kathleen H. Corriveau of Boston University examine how early exposure of children to religious belief affected skills to distinguish between fact and fiction.
The interesting fact that they discovered is that exposing children at an early age to religion, made them less able to see the differences between reality and fantasy.
Religious children 5 or 6 years old were divided into three groups: Children taught Christianity in school or church, children who did not attend church or religious school, and the third group were children with exposure to both.
They also studied a group that had no exposure to religion at school or church.
They found that the more children were exposed to the ideas of religion the more they treated reality and fantasy in the same way.
Study published in the scientific journal Cognitive Scienceamong other things says:
The most surprising aspect was the way the children judged the main character of the fantasy stories.
Children not exposed to religion considered the protagonists to be “fictional” and religious children judged them to be real.
Meanwhile all the children identified the stories of the characters as true.
Whereas when encountering religious history or“Impossible events that come from divine intervention,” religiously educated children identified the characters as real, which was not expected of researchers.
On the other hand, children without religious education identified the protagonist of religious stories as fictional.
The authors suggested:
“Even if children do not tend to believe in the divine or the supernatural, religious education encourages them to do so.”
“… Religious teachings, especially those with miracle stories, make children more open to the impossible, so they have a greater openness and accept that the impossible can happen even in ordinary relationships.”
About 28 percent of Americans surveyed 2013-2014 of the Gallup group believe that the Bible is in fact “the word of God” and should be interpreted as such, while 47 percent believe that the Bible is inspired by the word of God.
This is because they, according to scholars are not believers born but made such after exposure to religious teachings.
Scholars could not say whether early religious education made children more capable or better than others.
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