Religion & Kids - Summary

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Summary

This article is named « Children exposed to religion have difficulty distinguishing fact from fiction, Study finds ». It was written by Shadee Ashtari and published in July 2014 by The Huffington Post.

It is said that, according to a new study, people of a young age who are exposed to religion have difficulties to make a difference between fact and fiction.

In order to demonstrate this thesis, researchers have reunited children from public and parochial schools and showed them three stories —religious, fantastical, realistic— to know if they could identify well which stories is fictional due to the impossible elements.

It occurred that it was more difficult for those who went to church or those who were going to a parochial school to identify supernatural elements as fictional contrary to secular children.

These religious children made an apparent relation between impossible religious events and fictional narratives and they would more rely on religion to justify their mistakes.

In spite of their exposition to religious writings, children exposed to religion had a hard time to judge fantastical characters as pretend while secular children related them to fiction.

However the previous hypotheses were refuted by saying that exposure to religious writings and miracle stories gives children the possibility to easily accept that the impossible can happen.

But to conclude this article, it is told that : « […] 28 % of the Americans believe the Bible is the actual word of God and should be taken literally, while another 47 % say the Bible is the inspired word of God. »

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