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% Mastery Mailing 1
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\shorttitle{Article Review IV}
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\begin{document}
\centerline{\textbf{Article Review IV: Does God Make It Real?}}
We carry our beliefs and ideas with us from childhood to adulthood, but
how do we discern what's true and what's fiction?
Adults have very established frameworks for figuring out the truth, and
these frameworks can start developing in childhood.
Judeo-Christian religion is one of these frameworks.
The study ``Does God Make It Real? Children's Belief in Religious
Stories from the Judeo-Christian Tradition'' analyzed the epistemology
of children between ages four and six based on their level of belief in
fictional stories told by researchers (some stories being religious and
others being nonreligious).
However, this research, unlike previous literature, controlled for the
content of the stories better (instead of using varying levels of
fantasy/realistic elements in the story).
Whether the story was religious or nonreligious was an independent
variable tested in this study.
The nonreligious stories were the same as the comparable biblical story
except without mentioning God (ex: Matthew and the Green Sea).
The authors also measured family religiosity (a self-report survey for
parents on how important faith was to themselves and their children) and
how familiar the stories were, also determined from the parents
\autocite{god}.
After telling the children the story, the researchers asked children
whether the characters in the story really existed, whether the miracle
from the story actually happened, and whether the miraculous event could
happen in modern times in real life.
Each of these questions was scored from 0 (no belief) to 4 (high
belief) and treated as the dependent variable.
Children were also asked to explain how the scientifically impossible
event in the story happened, which was classed into four categories:
a ``don't know,'' a religious explanation, a scientific explanation, or
a magical explanation.
Last, the children were asked questions about general principles for
what could happen in real life related to the miracles in the stories
they had heard (questions like ``could flour appear in a container all
on its own?'' or ``could a pumpkin grow out of pumpkin seeds?'')
The authors hypothesize that children told a religious story are more
likely to believe it because stories about God are epistemically
different and are less required to adhere to scientific truth.
Authority figures like parents and trusted adults also often present
religious stories as historically true events.
At this age, children are learning to distinguish real versus
fantastical events, so the lines of what's real are blurrier than for
older children.
This hypothesis was confirmed, as children did call the religious
stories real more often than the nonreligious ones, but this effect was
only significant within the 6-year-old group.
Another independent variable that was analyzed was family religiosity as
reported by parents.
Children from religious families were significantly more likely to claim
that religious events happened in real life, but were not significantly
more likely to say that the event in question could happen now.
This points to children distinguishing religious stories as a different
class of explanation from those that apply to their lived experience.
Then, researchers looked at religious education and familiarity with the
religious stories.
Level of religious education had an insignificant effect beyond
increasing children's familiarity with the stories researchers were
telling, which did in fact increase children's level of belief in the
stories.
The general principle questions also showed that children new that these
events were impossible, so they were not misunderstanding the physical
principles behind the miracles in the story and actually had a different
truth-finding method in this domain.
The other measured dependent variable is the reported explanations for
the events in the tales.
Children in the nonreligious condition were more likely to offer a
natural explanation, and children in the religious condition were more
likely to offer a religious explanation of the event.
Children also offered more religious explanations as they got older (5-
and 6-year olds had significantly more religious explanations than
4-year-olds)
Also, offering a religious explanation of the focal event correlated
with higher reality status beliefs.
Researchers believe that God may be an important ``reality status'' cue
for children, engaging a different context and shifting
reality-nonreality boundaries for participants.
This context change may be explained, however, by general principle of
increased familiarity (hearing a story repeatedly) or by a specific
religious principle where hearing a story in church confers a greater
reality status than it would otherwise have.
\iffalse
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\end{document}
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