Children are born believers in God, academic claims

[koshergrl]

No, it doesn't, but whatever.

 

[Vandalshandle]

I find this lack of belief in the divinity of Zeus to be most distressing. I can assure you that he will not take your blasphemy lightly!

 

[Mr. H.]

Each child is born for greatness
With forces that surround them...

(a lovely song)

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBFJDA4RF7U]Nine Voices - YouTube[/ame]

 

[Hollie]

A child is accepting of the easter bunny, Santa, imaginary friends and the tooth fairy.

Special treatment: stop with this atheist stupidity! The divinity of the inescapable problem of origin/ultimate causation is not comparable to fairy tales. Shut up! Stop being an idiot! Stop lying to yourself! It's not a game. If you were to die right now in your sins, you would go to hell for eternity.

Kool Aid, anyone?

 

[Vandalshandle]

A child is accepting of the easter bunny, Santa, imaginary friends and the tooth fairy.

Special treatment: stop with this atheist stupidity! The divinity of the inescapable problem of origin/ultimate causation is not comparable to fairy tales. Shut up! Stop being an idiot! Stop lying to yourself! It's not a game. If you were to die right now in your sins, you would go to hell for eternity.

Kool Aid, anyone?

If I am stupid, and an idiot, I would expect that God would give me a little gratis about my lack of his approved belief system. I would not expect a retarded child to understand quantum physics, so why does god want to send an idiot to eternal hell?

 

[M.D. Rawlings]

Your premise completely contradicts what the Scriptures teach:

"So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God." (Romans 10:17)

If people were born with faith, then why did Paul say it came from hearing the Word of God?

Be careful that you do not mishandle the word of God and become a stumbling block for those who would seek Him. That’s dangerous ground to tread on.



In the context that you site, Paul is clearly talking about the faith of the gospel of Jesus Christ unto salvation. I’m talking about that simple understanding about divinity from childhood related to the first principles of reality/apprehension, unsullied by that old depravity of worldly arrogance and pride that foolishly pretends to be above it all, but in truth spouts nothing but irrational stupidities. I am talking about that which intellectual honesty necessarily acknowledges.


In unison with Paul, I am talking about the following:



Clearly, it is you who would make Paul out to be contradicting himself, not I. Context matters!

As Paul shows and as I demonstrate in the above excerpt from my blog, faith has nothing whatsoever to do with the recognition that God is or must be, and that we all fall short of His righteousness: these are not matters of faith; they are the stuff of reason, inherently self-evident to all. In this instance, Paul is making a simple philosophical observation regarding that which is universally understood by all prior to the saving faith of the gospel unto life everlasting. He is talking about the foundation of the hierarchy of true knowledge, which entails the apprehension of certain propositions. These are both rational and empirical impressions: recognized, processed, assimilated and integrated in obedience to the innate logical imperatives of the comprehensive expression of identity (the classical laws of logic) and the operational aspects of cognition . . . or not.

God’s existence cannot be rationally denied outright. There is nothing reasonable, rational or enlightened about atheism whatsoever!

Suffer the little children to come unto Me, for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven. (Mk.10:14).


Except ye become as a little child, ye shall in no wise enter into the Kingdom of God (Mat.18:3).

Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones; for I say unto you, That in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven (Mat. 18:10).

I read the bible. Ironic all those priest that bugger little children didn't take that same HEED. Suffer the children, indeed. The fact the Catholic Church made such efforts to cover up child molestation makes that ring hollow.

Uh . . . what? Christ's admonitions regarding children ring hollow? What do the evil actions of Catholic priests have to do with these truths? Indeed, what do the evil actions of anyone have to do with these truths? Do you hear what you’re saying? You’re not making any sense at all. Is it wrong to bugger children or not? Are you saying that it’s okay to bugger children? Is that what “ringing hollow” means? Yes? No? Maybe?

What is your point? Your statement makes about as much sense as saying that two plus two is no longer four because some dingbat came along and said it was five.

Behold, ladies and gentlemen, the irrationality that just flies right over the heads of those who are lost and resist God’s grace.

Here’s another for ya: “It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were thrown into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones” (Luke 17:2).

Does that ring hollow too?

Just out of curiosity, where do you stand on abortion? What are we up to right now in the U.S., roughly 55 million? How ya think that’s playing in heaven right now? How ya think it’s going to go down for the doctors and nurses who perform abortions? How about the mothers and fathers of these aborted children? How about the politicians and judges behind this phony right? Those who condone and support this phony right?

You think these priests are Christians? How stupid is that? Of course they’re not. They're depraved wolves in sheep's clothing. Liars. Frauds. Snakes.

Indeed, the Roman Catholic Church is the last expression of the “Mystery, Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots and Abominations of the Earth” (Rev. 17:5). What kind of Christian organization bans the printing, the distribution and the reading of the word of God? What kind of Christian organization tortures and murders human beings as the Roman Catholic Church did for nearly 600 years during the various inquisitions? Who do you think this depraved, Satanic sect was torturing and murdering in addition to Jews anyway? And the political intrigue and murder of the Jesuits in response to the Protestant Reformation, the ranks of the latter comprised of true Christians fed up with this papal degeneracy riddled with the idols and symbology and rituals of pagan filth! What kind of Christian organization makes packs with the likes of Hitler and Mussolini? Worshiping Mary?! Praying to saints?! Claiming the power to forgive sin?!

And you Catholics, many of whom I’m sure sincerely love the Lord, come out of that Roman Whore from the pit of hell! It’s the Beast, for crying out loud!

Atheists, stow your blather about pedophiles and crusades and inquisitions . . . ad infinitum. Hypocrites! We are all guilty before God, and the false and filthy accusations of the unrepentant—their eyewash, their shoe shine—against Christ and His teachings in the face of His sacrifice on Calvary for their salvation will not stand in the Judgment! Jesus, the Christ, the incarnate God Almighty Who took on human flesh, the sinless God Who became sin for you and me: you think you can dance past that with this line of crazy? You think you can harp on the debauchery of some rube in a black dress rattling beads?

Folks! Snap out of it! You’re going to spurn Christ and go to hell with a bead-rattling snake to spite . . . who exactly? Are you mad? Who is whispering these stupidities in your ears? What are you thinking?

Is this how you raise your children? “It’s okay that you hit your little sister, Johnny, the papacy is riddled with pedophiles. Now go have some milk and cookies. Sally, stop your sniveling.”

Get this straight. Christ came. He was crucified. He rose from the dead. He is God! Fact!

Christ is Holy. You are not. You are a bundle of filthy rags, full of sin. Repent. The day of salvation is now!

 

[varelse]

Two questions for some of the Christians in this thread:
1) Why should I believe anything in your book? What evidence do you have that it is a reliable and true source? Sure, it's old, but the Vedic texts (some of them, anyway) are older. Sure, you can cite your religious experience or your neighbor's, but so can a number of Sihks, Zoroastrian's (you know, the the Windows Vista to your Windows 7), Shinto, Native Americans, Asatru', and whatever the term is for the people who believe in the old gods of the Aztecs.

2)If children/people are 'naturally drawn to god', how do you explain their being drawn to different gods in different places and times? Either they are not drawn to god, but rather to a theory of mind as an explanation of observed phenomenon and events- or you must admit that their are multiple gods (or at least multiple forms or incarnations of some common deity), which would be contrary to basic Christian tenants.

 

[varelse]

Interesting:

"Dr Justin Barrett, a senior researcher at the University of Oxford's Centre for Anthropology and Mind, claims that young people have a predisposition to believe in a supreme being because they assume that everything in the world was created with a purpose."

"Dr Barrett claimed anthropologists have found that in some cultures children believe in God even when religious teachings are withheld from them.
"Children's normally and naturally developing minds make them prone to believe in divine creation and intelligent design. In contrast, evolution is unnatural for human minds; relatively difficult to believe."

Children are born believers in God, academic claims - Telegraph

Gross misrepresentation. He cites studies suggesting children have an inherent theory of other minds, which they project outward onto the world around them, seeking to explain the actions of other people and things based on their own motivations and actions.

You then present this as a believe in capital-G 'God'- that is, YHWH, the particular deity of a specific Middle Eastern religion. ('children born believing in God'). One could just as easily- and just as dishonestly- call it a belief in Brahma or Odhinn.

Are you actually here for a meaningful discussion?

 

[varelse]

So a child raised by orangutangs would eventually contemplate the existence of a supreme being?

So the atheist imagines that mindlessness came to contemplate itself? How's that abiogenesis, the latest version of that old yarn of spontaneous generation, workin' out for ya?

Life's First Spark Re-Created in the Laboratory | Wired Science | Wired.com

How Did Life Begin? RNA That Replicates Itself Indefinitely Developed For First Time

[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=U6QYDdgP9eg#[/ame]!

 

[M.D. Rawlings]

A child is accepting of the easter bunny, Santa, imaginary friends and the tooth fairy.

Special treatment: stop with this atheist stupidity! The divinity of the inescapable problem of origin/ultimate causation is not comparable to fairy tales. Shut up! Stop being an idiot! Stop lying to yourself! It's not a game. If you were to die right now in your sins, you would go to hell for eternity.

Kool Aid, anyone?

Kool Aid? You're the one thinking that consciousness can arise from dumb rocks; you're the one batting 2% of the human population!

If you do not repent, if you do not accept Christ, you will go to hell.

 

[koshergrl]

A child is accepting of the easter bunny, Santa, imaginary friends and the tooth fairy.

Special treatment: stop with this atheist stupidity! The divinity of the inescapable problem of origin/ultimate causation is not comparable to fairy tales. Shut up! Stop being an idiot! Stop lying to yourself! It's not a game. If you were to die right now in your sins, you would go to hell for eternity.

Kool Aid, anyone?

No dear, you've had enough.

 

[koshergrl]

Two questions for some of the Christians in this thread:
1) Why should I believe anything in your book? What evidence do you have that it is a reliable and true source? Sure, it's old, but the Vedic texts (some of them, anyway) are older. Sure, you can cite your religious experience or your neighbor's, but so can a number of Sihks, Zoroastrian's (you know, the the Windows Vista to your Windows 7), Shinto, Native Americans, Asatru', and whatever the term is for the people who believe in the old gods of the Aztecs.

2)If children/people are 'naturally drawn to god', how do you explain their being drawn to different gods in different places and times? Either they are not drawn to god, but rather to a theory of mind as an explanation of observed phenomenon and events- or you must admit that their are multiple gods (or at least multiple forms or incarnations of some common deity), which would be contrary to basic Christian tenants.

Nobody made the claim that children's willingness and desire to believe in God is evidence of God's existence. The reason it is fascinating is because anti-Christian loons have, including those on this site, said that children only believe in God because they're indoctrinated to it; that the *natural* child would not seek out God.

The study puts the lie to it. Children do seek out God, and it is natural for them to do so. Now Christians believe that it is because we were formed by and for God; we are happiest when we are in accordance with his commands and when we fulfill our God-given purpose on this earth. But that's a belief. This study supports it...but nobody claimed it proved the existence of God.

The reason you should believe in God is simple....because letting Christ into your heart will bring you joy, and everlasting life. That's a pretty good reason.

 

[Hollie]

Special treatment: stop with this atheist stupidity! The divinity of the inescapable problem of origin/ultimate causation is not comparable to fairy tales. Shut up! Stop being an idiot! Stop lying to yourself! It's not a game. If you were to die right now in your sins, you would go to hell for eternity.

Kool Aid, anyone?

Kool Aid? You're the one thinking that consciousness can arise from dumb rocks; you're the one batting 2% of the human population!

If you do not repent, if you do not accept Christ, you will go to hell.

Yes..... go on..... and how does that make you feel?

 

[varelse]

They do not seek out 'God'. They seek explanations that make sense to their own minds. Because they know they act based on their own motivations, they imagine similar motivations for things outside themselves which appear to act- we all do, on some level, even when we know on an intellectual level that the computer isn't failing to boot because it hates us (it's not sentient- yet), the car isn't purposefully refusing to start, and it isn't actually raining because we want to go out and 'the weather' or 'the universe' is plotting against us- yet our first thoughts are to project our own motivations outward as an explanation. This works great for our social systems- a theory of other minds makes advanced communication and civilization possible and separates us from the rest of the apes. The side effect is that we fall back on this system when our intellects fail, leading to superstition, religion, and various other quirks of human.

It's very closely tied to the subject of this video



'Theory of mind' could help explain belief in God - life - 09 March 2009 - New Scientist

This is why autistics, with a limited ability to relate to other persons by perceiving them as other minds, tend to be less religious

Autism May Diminish Belief in God | Theory of Mind | LiveScience

 

[koshergrl]

Yeah, I'm sure the video is more accurate than the oxford study.

 

[varelse]

Journal reference: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0811717106).

But thanks for making clear exactly what sort you are and that continuing to acknowledge your posts would be a waste of time.

 

[M.D. Rawlings]

So a child raised by orangutangs would eventually contemplate the existence of a supreme being?

So the atheist imagines that mindlessness came to contemplate itself? How's that abiogenesis, the latest version of that old yarn of spontaneous generation, workin' out for ya?

Life's First Spark Re-Created in the Laboratory | Wired Science | Wired.com

How Did Life Begin? RNA That Replicates Itself Indefinitely Developed For First Time

[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=U6QYDdgP9eg#[/ame]!

*snort*

You don't know the science. You don't have a clue. I'm light years ahead of you. Abiogenesis is a fantasy at best, an hypothesis that cannot be scientifically affirmed or falsified in any event. Those of us who actually understand the science know why that’s so.

Psst. The article on the replicating RNA enzyme is nothing new to me.

Once again: Prufrock's Lair: Abiogenesis: The Unholy Grail of Atheism

These RNA enzymes were synthesized. Do you have any clue what that actually means, what that entails? Do you or do you not grasp the difference between bioengineering in a pristine environment using components harvested from extant living cells as guided by an intelligence that already knows what life looks like, and chemical evolution from non-living material guided without a clue, by nothing at all but chance variation, in an environment riddled with contaminates and forces incessantly pushing against the formation of organic material?

And the organization of biological entities? Here, have some Kool Aid.

Do you understand the ramifications of the following excerpt from the article you link?

The historical origin of life can never be recreated precisely, so without a reliable time machine, one must instead address the related question of whether life could ever be created in a laboratory. This could, of course, shed light on what the beginning of life might have looked like, at least in outline. "We're not trying to play back the tape," says Lincoln of their work, "but it might tell us how you go about starting the process of understanding the emergence of life in the lab."

.

No. Of course you don’t.

 

[Lipush]

Children are born "believers" because they're born INNOCENT. They believe in the tooth fairy, Santa Claus, and all sorts of "belief" which can be reasoned for the "lack" of "understanding" of the "mature" world.

 

[varelse]

If you're going to go out of your way to claim intellectual/educational superiority to someone at the beginning of your post, you might want to learn when to use 'an'. Using it incorrectly (much like the misuse of 'whom') simply makes you look like an idiot who's trying very hard to sound more educated than you actually are.

Just sayin'.

nothing at all but chance variation

I thought you said you were familiar with the subject? Evidently not, if you think all at work is chance variation with no selective forces.

an environment riddled with contaminates and forces incessantly pushing against the formation of organic material

Definerganic material

Pattern emergence from pseudo-random (there is no such thing as truly random in this universe) non-linear systems is nothing new or exotic.

Here, have some Kool Aid.

I'll pass, Mr. Jones.

You also can't roll back the tape and watch Stonehenge being erected, but that doesn't mean you can't learn how it could have been accomplished. If you really want to go down the road of epistemology, you can't even prove that you exist, save perhaps to your own self (if you accept the cogito argument that perception of one's own thoughts proves one's own existence as a thinking/perceiving mind as a matter of self-evidence). You can never prove to me you exist, nor can I prove to you that I exist- we can only infer such things from the available information, in accordance with our own theory/model of other minds- which takes us back to the subject of this thread: application of a theory of other minds to the broader world one perceives- that is, religion and the imagining of deity (or the spirit of the wind, or the personality of a misbehaving machine) as an explanation of events through the lens of the imagined motivations of a conceived actor.

 

[M.D. Rawlings]

Two questions for some of the Christians in this thread:
1) Why should I believe anything in your book? What evidence do you have that it is a reliable and true source? Sure, it's old, but the Vedic texts (some of them, anyway) are older. Sure, you can cite your religious experience or your neighbor's, but so can a number of Sihks, Zoroastrian's (you know, the the Windows Vista to your Windows 7), Shinto, Native Americans, Asatru', and whatever the term is for the people who believe in the old gods of the Aztecs.

2)If children/people are 'naturally drawn to god', how do you explain their being drawn to different gods in different places and times? Either they are not drawn to god, but rather to a theory of mind as an explanation of observed phenomenon and events- or you must admit that their are multiple gods (or at least multiple forms or incarnations of some common deity), which would be contrary to basic Christian tenants.

First of all, stop misstating the matter. According to these studies, children tend to embrace a supernatural cause behind existence. Period. There are after all only two options with regard to ultimate origin: either the cosmos has always existed or was caused to exist by a transcendent entity, inanimateness or consciousness. The problem of origin is universally apprehended by all. LOL! There is no mystery as to why most of us hold that God must be.

Atheism is the stuff of staggering stupidity and superstition.

Admit what? Different gods. So what? The atheist thinks he's his own god. He thinks the cosmos is god or the quantum vacuum is god.

blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.

Jesus loves you. You are guilty, and you know it. Repent. The day of salvation is now!