JehovahsWitness wrote: ↑Fri Nov 03, 2023 5:59 pm
I disagree; children automatically assume something came from something ( or someone) which is why, as soon as they can formulate the question they ask "who"? Why?" and "where?"
This is at least partially correct. Children do assume that, but it's because we teach them that. Most things they interact with, from the time they have a concept of a thing, are made, and they're made by us. They're also extremely mysterious. The child cannot make that sparkly glitter wand that's filled with water, from what it can find. So if it assumes irreducible grandeur in at least some creators of some things, in a way that's more forgivable than someone in zero AD thinking that, since that child may see a house, but it may also easily grow up to be able to build one.
Without this creation bias (for example, in the woods, in a log cabin, and seeing how the log cabin is put together from things easily found) that's when you'd get more equal answers.
I really wish there was a way to test it without kidnapping babies or otherwise doing anything unethical because even though I think the OP has some loaded questions in it, I actually agree with the fundamental premise that sits underneath that, which seems to be that we're indoctrinated and choked with bias either way, so if you could get a "clean" answer, or better yet, a lot of them, it would be extremely relevant.
People certainly did come up with religion without having it before, so you'd get at least some
created answers.
JehovahsWitness wrote: ↑Fri Nov 03, 2023 5:59 pmThey ask "why" because they presume that there must be a reason (and are instinctively unsatisfied with "nobody knows" )
Why is the sky blue? You may get away with explaining HOW the sky appears blue but if your child is especially tenacious they will not be distracted by descriptions of atmosphere and air molecules and will STILL come back with WHY is it blue or WHO made it blue.
There is a natural order in the world around us and it takes years of education (and perhaps a college degree) to squash the instinctive conclusion the observable paradigm of
"cause and effect" lead'us to as little children.
I was still being taught this (I consider) intuitive but wrong paradigm of cause and effect in college. They were indeed somewhat shiftily trying to push against religion, by teaching that
vitalistic thinking (an embryo grows
so that it will become an adult) is wrong and the more rational way to think about it, is to use
naturalistic thinking and understand that the embryo does that because all the ones that didn't do that, didn't reproduce. There is no
so that; the embryo doesn't want anything and isn't trying to do anything. But I caught something else: There's still a because. There's still cause and effect. It holds for the interactions of extant things, but it doesn't hold for the explanation of why there are things at all. Even if you believe God made the universe, and people, the part where Adam is made from clay proves that even so, whoever wrote that has some idea that there must have been a preexisting substrate. If God pulled off pieces of himself, he was the creator and the substrate.
In other words,
something has always existed. The bit in the Bible about clay seems to indicate that this is just as intuitive as cause and effect. Maybe this is what gets quashed out of us as soon as we're able to move and clench our hands and start getting handed all sorts of things we can't grasp (double entendre intended) and we're indoctrinated into this race of makers.
This article seems to support your position but all it says is tendency and where it points to the study is not available. Even if there is a tendency that doesn't mean I'm wrong because my prediction in ideal conditions is roughly 60/40.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/infants ... -3l3b.html