ABSTRACT

I consider three aspects of children’s thinking about religious phenomena. It displays intriguing parallels with their thinking about scientific phenomena; it has an impact on their moral behavior; and it is likely to impact their religious experience. Children’s gradual conceptual progress in the domain of religion resembles their conceptual progress in the domain science. These parallels suggest the disarming possibility that older children’s apparently more advanced thinking in the domain of science might be best interpreted, not as a gain in objectivity, but rather as an acceptance of the prevailing orthodoxy regarding the scientific issue in question. Nevertheless, despite these parallels between the two domains, children resemble their parents in expressing more confidence in the existence of scientific as compared religious phenomena. An increasingly plausible explanation for that differential confidence is that children hear adults take the existence of scientific phenomena for granted but hear them express occasional doubt regarding religious phenomena. With respect to moral behavior, children who show a better understanding of God’s special cognitive and observational abilities act more generously when left alone. Finally, recent work on adults’ religious experience suggests that it would be fruitful to look for links between children’s conceptualization of the boundedness and porosity of the mind (both the human and the supernatural mind) and the frequency and nature of their religious experience.

摘要

我从三个方面考虑儿童对宗教现象的思考。它与他们对科学现象的思考有着有趣的相似之处；它会影响他们的道德行为；这很可能会影响他们的宗教体验。儿童在宗教领域的渐进性概念进步类似于他们在领域科学中的概念进步。这些相似之处表明，年龄较大的儿童在科学领域显然更先进的思维可能被最好地解释为令人不安的可能性，而不是作为客观性的收获，而是作为对有关科学问题的普遍正统观念的接受。尽管如此，尽管这两个领域之间存在这些相似之处，但与宗教现象相比，儿童在表达对科学存在的更多信心方面与他们的父母相似。对于这种不同的信心，一个越来越合理的解释是，孩子们听到成年人认为科学现象的存在是理所当然的，但听到他们偶尔会表达对宗教现象的怀疑。在道德行为方面，对上帝特殊的认知和观察能力表现出更好理解的孩子在独处时表现得更慷慨。最后，最近关于成人宗教体验的工作表明，寻找儿童对心灵（人类和超自然心灵）的有限性和多孔性的概念化与他们宗教体验的频率和性质之间的联系将是富有成效的。