If you asked a child the quote below what would they say?

[Wootah]

[Replying to JehovahsWitness in post #36]

I'll ask again:

If I went up to a child and said

'Who created the heavens?

'Who created the earth?

'Who created all the people and angels?'

'Who exists before anything else exists?'

If you asked a child the quote below what would they say?


(This is taken from this thread: viewtopic.php?p=1134599#p1134599)

[JehovahsWitness]

[Replying to JehovahsWitness in post #9]

Would you say God?

I'd probably say JEHOVAH or Jehovah God.

[Purple Knight]

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.

They 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

[TRANSPONDER]

All I'm seeing is the simplistic and unsophisticated reasoning of a child (supposedly; I've found them more smart and willing to listen than might be supposed) and (rather like the Santa analogy) this is forgivable in children. It is not excusable in adults. If this was put forward as a valid apologetic for why Goddunnit is Obvious and 'we don't know - yet' is not acceptable and an answer down to the last particle and backed up with real time observable proof, or Santa remains the prime hypothesis, then it just shows what a flawed type of thinking we are having to deal with, and yet one that is convinced they are doing it tight.

[Wootah]

[Replying to TRANSPONDER in post #13]

The delight of this thread may not be obvious to you. Clearly the simplistic words describe God but the non trinitarian faith holders refuse to say it.

Refer to here: Jesus is God - Colossians 1:15-16

[TRANSPONDER]

[Replying to TRANSPONDER in post #13]

The delight of this thread may not be obvious to you. Clearly the simplistic words describe God but the non trinitarian faith holders refuse to say it.

Refer to here: Jesus is God - Colossians 1:15-16

The thread is hardly a delight but a despair. The mental poverty of this sort of apologetic is depressing. I get the 'delight' of a childlike wonder,like a belief in fairies or Santa, but it becomes embarrassing to find it in grown ups.

[Wootah]

[Replying to TRANSPONDER in post #13]

The delight of this thread may not be obvious to you. Clearly the simplistic words describe God but the non trinitarian faith holders refuse to say it.

Refer to here: Jesus is God - Colossians 1:15-16

The thread is hardly a delight but a despair. The mental poverty of this sort of apologetic is depressing. I get the 'delight' of a childlike wonder,like a belief in fairies or Santa, but it becomes embarrassing to find it in grown ups.

Oh well. Now it's two birds with one stone.

[TRANSPONDER]

[Replying to TRANSPONDER in post #13]

The delight of this thread may not be obvious to you. Clearly the simplistic words describe God but the non trinitarian faith holders refuse to say it.

Refer to here: Jesus is God - Colossians 1:15-16

The thread is hardly a delight but a despair. The mental poverty of this sort of apologetic is depressing. I get the 'delight' of a childlike wonder,like a belief in fairies or Santa, but it becomes embarrassing to find it in grown ups.

Oh well. Now it's two birds with one stone.

To clarify the allusion so as to reverse a claim of a win which is actually a loss. It may be two birds, but rather than you (or JW) felling two atheist apologetics with one stone, we are freeing two potentially adult birds from a nest where (religious) convention was telling them they had to stay, like baby birds that could not fly.

It's a funny thing, but I recently posted the Venomfang video where he mocked naturalists/atheists 'They are like children in a sandbox...look at the the pretty sand, see how it flows...not very intelligent, if you ask me'. And yet when the childlike limiting of the mind to the 'sandbox' of religion when there is a world of knowledge out there, ignoring that and playing with their sandbox toys is supposed to be delightful.

You don't see a self - contradiction, a double standard, a special pleading and a hypocrisy here? Perhaps not, but (hopefully) others will.

[boatsnguitars]

My children wouldn't have.

But, I must say, the OP really does highlight how childish - literally - religion is. If someone asked a child what time was, they'd probably say a clock.
Ask a child what they will grow up to be: an astronaut or sports star (which are some of the rarest things to be).

This is the classic problem with religion: They think that dreaming something makes it true - not possible, mind you, but Capital T True - to the point that they'll threaten your life if you don't believe them.

It's the same lie the GOP uses about wealth: You have to believe you will be a Billionaire! So vote against taxing Billionaires! It might be you some day!"

This kind of unrealistic, fantastical thinking is a serious problem - yet Jesus wants us to be simpletons like children. Of course he does! A child hands over money because they don't understand its value! They also trust the priest that they have been a naughty boy and need a spanking - "pull down those britches, boy!"

[Wootah]

My children wouldn't have.

But, I must say, the OP really does highlight how childish - literally - religion is. If someone asked a child what time was, they'd probably say a clock.
Ask a child what they will grow up to be: an astronaut or sports star (which are some of the rarest things to be).

This is the classic problem with religion: They think that dreaming something makes it true - not possible, mind you, but Capital T True - to the point that they'll threaten your life if you don't believe them.

It's the same lie the GOP uses about wealth: You have to believe you will be a Billionaire! So vote against taxing Billionaires! It might be you some day!"

This kind of unrealistic, fantastical thinking is a serious problem - yet Jesus wants us to be simpletons like children. Of course he does! A child hands over money because they don't understand its value! They also trust the priest that they have been a naughty boy and need a spanking - "pull down those britches, boy!"

How would I differentiate your post from childish nonsense?

* Lack of awareness of finance
* Lack of awwareness of self
* Lack of awareness of the Bible as a work of art and deep intellectual thought

The Bible is simple for a child at one end and deeply intellectual at the other. It seems lost to those in the middle perhaps?

[boatsnguitars]

My children wouldn't have.

But, I must say, the OP really does highlight how childish - literally - religion is. If someone asked a child what time was, they'd probably say a clock.
Ask a child what they will grow up to be: an astronaut or sports star (which are some of the rarest things to be).

This is the classic problem with religion: They think that dreaming something makes it true - not possible, mind you, but Capital T True - to the point that they'll threaten your life if you don't believe them.

It's the same lie the GOP uses about wealth: You have to believe you will be a Billionaire! So vote against taxing Billionaires! It might be you some day!"

This kind of unrealistic, fantastical thinking is a serious problem - yet Jesus wants us to be simpletons like children. Of course he does! A child hands over money because they don't understand its value! They also trust the priest that they have been a naughty boy and need a spanking - "pull down those britches, boy!"

How would I differentiate your post from childish nonsense?

* Lack of awareness of finance
* Lack of awwareness of self
* Lack of awareness of the Bible as a work of art and deep intellectual thought

The Bible is simple for a child at one end and deeply intellectual at the other. It seems lost to those in the middle perhaps?

“And do you think that unto such as you
A maggot-minded, starved, fanatic crew
God gave a secret, and denied it me?
Well, well—what matters it? Believe that, too!”
― Omar Khayyâm