Journal ArticleDOI
Religious testimony in a secular society: Belief in unobservable entities among Chinese parents and their children.
Yixin Kelly Cui,Jennifer M. Clegg,Eleanor Fang Yan,Telli Davoodi,Paul L. Harris,Kathleen H. Corriveau +5 more
TLDR
The results indicate that children's religious beliefs are related to the beliefs of their parents, even when those beliefs go against the majority view.Abstract:
When learning about the existence of unobservable scientific phenomena such as germs or religious phenomena such as God, children are receptive to the testimony of other people. Research in Western cultures has shown that by 5 to 6 years of age, children-like adults-are confident about the existence of both scientific and religious phenomena. We examined the beliefs of secular and Christian children growing up in China as well as the beliefs of their parents. All participants-secular and Christian children, as well as their parents-were confident about the existence of the scientific phenomena. No such consensus emerged for religious phenomena. Whereas secular children and their parents were skeptical, Christian children and their parents were confident about the existence of the religious phenomena. Moreover, a similar pattern was found for Christian children in preschools and for Christian children with more extensive exposure to the secular state curriculum. Indeed, for religious phenomena, a positive association was found between the beliefs of Christian children and their parents, highlighting the potential influence of parental input in a predominantly secular society. Overall, the results indicate that children's religious beliefs are related to the beliefs of their parents, even when those beliefs go against the majority view. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).read more
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Journal ArticleDOI
Beliefs of children and adults in religious and scientific phenomena.
TL;DR: Within the domains of both science and religion, beliefs in unobservable phenomena - such as bacteria or the soul - are common, and when individuals are invited to indicate the basis for their beliefs within each domain, a surprisingly similar pattern of justification is apparent.
Journal ArticleDOI
Epistemic justifications for belief in the unobservable: The impact of minority status.
Telli Davoodi,Yixin Kelly Cui,Jennifer M. Clegg,Fang E. Yan,Ayse Payir,Paul L. Harris,Kathleen H. Corriveau +6 more
TL;DR: The results show that under certain circumstances - notably when holding minority beliefs - tracking the source of beliefs serves as a central epistemic justification.
Journal ArticleDOI
Beliefs about Unobservable Scientific and Religious Entities are Transmitted via Subtle Linguistic Cues in Parental Testimony
TL;DR: The authors explored the role of parental testimony in children's developing beliefs about the ontological status of typically unobservable phenomena and found that parents and their 5- to 7-year-old children (N ǫ = 25 ) were more likely to report that the ontology status of a phenomenon was unknown to them.
Book
The Science of Children's Religious and Spiritual Development
TL;DR: In this article, the authors provide a comprehensive yet concise account of scientific research on children's religious and spiritual development and highlight the need for more research that discriminates specific positive and negative manifestations of RS for children's development.
Journal ArticleDOI
Faith and science mindsets as predictors of COVID-19 concern: A three-wave longitudinal study
TL;DR: This paper found that science mindsets increased whereas faith mindsets decreased during the early months of the pandemic and that science mindset was positive predictor of COVID-19 concern, while faith mindset was negative predictor of science mindset.
References
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Book
Redeemed by Fire: The Rise of Popular Christianity in Modern China
TL;DR: Lian et al. as mentioned in this paper traced the transformation of Protestant Christianity in twentieth-century China from a small, beleaguered "missionary" church buffeted by antiforeignism to an indigenous popular religion energized by nationalism and millenarianism, showing that with a current membership that rivals that of the Chinese Communist Party, and the ability to galvanize China's millions into apocalyptic convulsion and messianic exuberance, the popular Christian movement channels the aspirations and the discontent of the masses and will play an important role in shaping the country's future.
Journal ArticleDOI
The development of possibility judgment within and across domains
TL;DR: Shtulman et al. as discussed by the authors found that preschool-aged children do not readily make this differentiation when reasoning about physically extraordinary events, and that the ability to differentiate possible events from impossible ones is an invaluable skill when reason about claims that transcend the perceptual evidence at hand.
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Judgments About Fact and Fiction by Children From Religious and Nonreligious Backgrounds
TL;DR: It is suggested that exposure to religious ideas has a powerful impact on children's differentiation between reality and fiction, not just for religious stories but also for fantastical stories.