The word "God"

General Discussion
1

Hullo…

I m starting this thread to know, if i am wrong in some way.

I wonder…as we grew up, we always heard, there is God whom we have to worship everytime. He is superior than all of us. Don’t do this thing or otherwise he will punish you. A lot of these stuffs. But, when a baby was born, he was born without thinking capacity of his own.He learn it from his surrounding. If people around him will never use the word “God” or discuss anything about it, till the day he grew up…would he still believe in God? The fact that the baby has no idea what the word “God” means and he grew up,without learning anything bout it,would his mind automatically make him worship God? It says, children learn from parents,surrounding,… The same way, children learn their mother language. If we raise a child in complete science environment, giving logical reasons to his questions…not just some hocus-pocus,never mentioning the word “God”…how the result would be?

We started questioning things cause we want to…but most people don’t…cause the fear of God. They fear if they raise voice, they will be punish.

Is it just the word " God" which has such power upon anyone??

2

“God” is really just an idea that humans came up with a long long time ago. Since then there have been many many different ideas of “God”. In other words, there have been many many different religions. They are all just various fictions. But these religions have been presented as if they were true. Religions usually have an idea of “God” as an all powerful supernatural entity, that should be worshiped and obeyed.

A newborn baby who was never exposed to any religious fiction at all, would not automatically develop a specific idea of “God”. However, as the child grew and experienced life, he might or might not come up with his own fiction about a possible supernatural being that created everything, and controls things in some way. This is because we humans tend to be naturally superstitious. If you examine life carefully and honestly, as you grow older, you should eventually recognize that there is no such thing as the supernatural. But many people never realize that and continue with their belief in their supernatural “God” idea and with their particular religious fiction.

So to answer your question about the word “God”, it only has power to the extent that some people believe the fiction is real and try to impose it on themselves and others.

3

Something I used to believe in a lot as a kid and it’s still hard to let go of. It’s comforting to think there is some “god” structure in reality, but I just find it harder and harder to justify believing that.

4

I don’t think a child would believe, at least not until s/he ends up being exposed. S/he could go until preschool, around 4 maybe, hear about god from another kid, especially if it is a secular daycare or s/he might go until public school, if s/he lucky. Either way, in this society the child would be exposed. After that, s/he may end up scared from whatever was told to him/her by another child and adult. Maybe s/he’d talk to his/her parents and maybe s/he won’t, but exposure maybe cause him/her to think about god. After that, it’s anyone’s guess what happens.

5

“I don’t think a child would believe, at least not until s/he ends up being exposed. S/he could go until preschool, around 4 maybe, hear about god from another kid, especially if it is a secular daycare or s/he might go until public school”

Actual evidence is to the contrary. Children , especially under the age of 7, are uncritical little sponges. They absorb their parent’s values and beliefs uncritically, almost as if by osmosis. With me, it was arguably the most pig ignorant, superstitious, bigoted and hateful form of a pernicious religion. I refer to Irish Catholicism

Here, first grade is at age 5. I was sent to a convent school, where the nuns began to immediately instil the party line of Catholicism, in a very structured, and efficient manner, beginning with rote learning of the Catechism. It mattered not that you had no idea what a ‘virgin’ might be.You only had to know that Jesus’ mum (“Our Lady”) was one.

Lessons began like Q; “Who made the world " A: God made the world”

Religious indoctrination begins very young, and is relentless, at every stage of our socialisation, and is permanent . I have been a ‘recovering catholic’ for over 50 years. Yet today, even though I am intellectually an atheist, cynic ,skeptic, and a bunch of other humanist labels, I remain a ‘cultural Catholic’. My gut ethical/moral values remain unchanged. On some ethical questions, my immediate feeling is the same pig ignorant Irish Catholic bigotry I was taught before the age of seven. I fight it, constantly. These days reason usually wins…

Aristotle said " Give me the child until he is 7 and I will show you the man"

6

 

Why not raise a child as an experiment…in an environment where nothing is mention regarding the word “God”. Not even a single thing. Make her believe that you must expect the results, depending on your deeds. Believe in science, as it would give u logical explanations regarding everything.

Would she still believe in God after all this?

 

 

7

"Why not raise a child as an experiment…in an environment where nothing is mention regarding the word “God”.

It’s already been done, by B F Skinner, a pioneer in behaviourist psychology. From memory; he tried that approach on his son. The result was one very messed up human being .IE The son. Skinner was messed up before he decided to experiment on his own child, imo.

What did he prove? Apart from the fact that he was a callous arsehole, nothing.

The experiment you suggest is perhaps of minor academic interest. The results of a single experiment are of no value unless repeatable.

I’d be willing to bet that if repeated among say 500 subjects, the results would vary enormously. I’m unconvinced that all meaningful variables could be accurately identified and controlled.

Overall, I have ethical objections about subjecting children to the kind of thing you suggest. Of course, dogmatic believers do pretty much the same thing all the time the; teach their children to be dogmatic, anti science and anti intellectual. At the very least, they tend to produce some truly obnoxious human beings.

Perhaps I misunderstand, your question . Your sentence “Believe in science, as it would give u logical explanations regarding everything.” suggests an ignorance about the nature of science with perhaps an anti science bias. IE I do not know, nor have ever read of any scientist who claims science can explain everything. I think it can be said that science explains a great deal less than it explains, and even then only partially.–Nor is their any rational reason why science should even aspire to such a situation.

I’m an atheist, and tend to accept scientific explanations, on the basis of “as a far as we can tell at the moment”. I do not have a nervous breakdown, nor does the world ,end when I admit “I don’t know”. As I’ve gotten older, the more I learn, the more ignorant I become.

I am unable to accept what I see as the fatuous claims of superior/ absolute revealed truths, about anything.

8

Atleast giving logical reasons is much better than giving reasons which makes no sense. It just makes it easy to understand. Maybe we are behind a lot…but still we achieved a lot. The way human world is progressing is quite unbelievable. If there are some questions unanswered, it would be interesting to find answer for those. For a long time, the theory of Bigbang was doubted, but recent discovery of gravitational waves had changed everything.

Now,considering the raising of a child as i comment earlier. A child’s mind is the parents mind, atleast for some beginning years. In all those years, if the child was given moral teachings as well as science, what bad could it be?? Only difference is, in most catholics school, children were taught moral lessons but also the importance of God and how h/she created this beautiful world. They never mentions science. Ask…who creates the world? Simple answer…God. The same way if we raised a children…the answer would be different. It would be… a more logical reason. A reason which can be proved. At first, give a vague idea of how evolution works. These would leave some interesting questions in the child’s mind. Just like we had some questions when we first heard the line," Man evolve from monkeys". It is not quite right, but it raised curiousity at that time. Instead of just putting in just a word “God”…why not give a more logical reasoning? Mass experiment can be also made. Moral + Science teaching is overall good combination.

I am just saying it cause once i explained my cousin about evolution, formation of earth. He was just 10 years old…but he issued so much interest on the topic, he started asking questions. He even asked me to give books regarding that. I was happy to see him such interest. After 1 year, i visited him. Everything was changed. I asked him about it…he replied his parents were infuriated when he told the same to them. He told me, not believing in the way how god created the world, would be a sin! We shouldn’t question about his creation.

Why it happens?? The reason is from the beginning he has that fear of God. He was quite impressed by evolution and everything, but his fear of God overtook them. So, a child who knows nothing about God from the beginning would never fear also.

Overall, i know in real life, it’s very hard to implement such an experiment. The only thing i am glad to know that the word “God” can be the root cause of fear, belief…anything.

9

I am just 18 years old…so maybe i am wrong in some instances. But, the fact that children face such fears…really bothers me a lot. I clearly approve of your cultural catholism. Atleast, it doesn’t force them to believe.

10
Actual evidence is to the contrary. Children , especially under the age of 7, are uncritical little sponges. They absorb their parent’s values and beliefs uncritically, almost as if by osmosis.

If they are raised by secular parents, the child wouldn’t absorb religion under the age of 7 unless they were exposed at daycare. That’s what I’m saying. If they absorbed anything from their secular parents, it wouldn’t be a belief in god.

11

Great question. I first heard the idea that if there was no god, man would invent one, on a Jethro Tull album cover. But very few people ever ask why that is. Those who do often stop after seeing that the god invention is a way to control people. But still, why? Science minded people understand that we control people with laws because if we don’t, a few will disrupt society for the rest of us. So, we’re pretty quickly at the real question, what is good? And back to the answer that people just give and don’t think about, “whatever god says is good, is good.”

Answering your question, I don’t think it matters what happens to current religions or how logical we become, if we don’t solve our moral problems using logic, then someone will look to the cosmos and make up a higher mind. We came into consciousness after we already developed some of our social skills. We already figured out the Golden Rule before we could write it down. Once we could start thinking about the future, we had already forgotten our past. That past could be conceptualized as a higher mind. We now know it was a mindless evolution but undoing culture is not something you can do overnight.

Your experiment question is slightly different. I don’t believe that if we wiped out all memory of religion, that the Abrahamic God would be rediscovered. Even if we wiped out memories and left the Bible laying around, people would pick it up and interpret it differently than they do now. In a sense, history has done this experiment for us. There is no instance where a god was discovered in one culture that matched another culture unless there was some communication between those two cultures.

** Great story about your 10 year old cousin. I know too many stories of people who didn’t learn about evolution until they were 18 or more. It can be extremely jarring and emotionally difficult to find out you have been lied to all your life. You did that kid a great service, although it probably was not easy for him, better now than later.

12

I would have to agree about the children being uncritical sponges that absorb things. That’s how I was as a kid, which lead to me believing a lot of very “interesting” things with no actual evidence but someone’s say so. Then again I did also tell my parents that “because I said so” isn’t a reason for doing something.

13

PatrickD, I suppose that you do not realize that you just passed on some TOTAL BULLSHIT with the following story, when you said: “It’s already been done, by B F Skinner, a pioneer in behaviourist psychology. From memory; he tried that approach on his son. The result was one very messed up human being .IE The son. Skinner was messed up before he decided to experiment on his own child, imo… What did he prove? Apart from the fact that he was a callous arsehole, nothing.”

Here’s the real story: The Skinners were living in the cold climes of Minnesota when their 2nd daughter, Deborah was born. They designed a special crib for her that had a glass front and was temperature and humidity controlled. The advantage for the baby is that they could let her be in her crib, wearing only a diaper, with no need for layers of clothes and blankets. They had a portable carry version of the crib also. Anyway it was nothing more than that. It was not an experimental Skinner box as he designed for animal experiments. Deborah developed normally and was particularly healthy as a young child.

Idk if she is an atheist. She might well be. Her father was. He was also one of the premier scientists of the 20th century. imo. BF Skinner was much maligned and quite unfairly so, perhaps because those who competed with him in science were more concerned with promoting themselves and their own concepts, than with science. It is particularly distressing that flat out defamatory lies about him are still being spread this long after his death.

14

Lausten, I believe that “If there was no God, Man would invent one.” First because Man did invent one, actually lots of them. Also, we, through our evolutionary development have inherited tendencies toward superstition and also the ability to create stories that help us have a sense of understanding our world. We also seem to have a knack for believing stories that are completely UNTRUE.

15

Pol, I think it would be unethical to experiment on children in any way that could conceivably be harmful to them.

But it does not strike me as unethical for parents to choose to raise their children with limited exposure to religious ideas, and to, instead, provide their children with rational answers, explanations, and teachings. In fact, this would seem to me to be more ethical than teaching their children to take on superstitious beliefs.

16

“PatrickD, I suppose that you do not realize that you just passed on some TOTAL BULLSHIT with the following story, when you said—”

@timb

Really. Oh my bad. I deserve a good birching.

I’ve had that belief for a great many years. I guess it’s not only children who can be gullible.

“—perhaps because those who competed with him in science were more concerned with promoting themselves and their own concepts”

I think you are probably right-------in the 19070’s, there were 2 universities in this city. Both offered Psych courses. One used behaviourism ,and was sneeringly referred to as “rats’n’ stats”. The other took a Marxist approach.

The friend who told me the Skinner story went to the Marxist uni. Didn’t occur to be that he might be full of it. Thanks to you, I have begun changing my belief on that matter… In order not to be gullible again, I think I need to do some more reading.

I hold my position that such an experiment is both unethical and pointless. I remain unconvinced that it would be unlikely that all the important variables could be discovered and measured. I hope never to find out.

Wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the Soviets ran that kind of experiment. The Nazis certainly would have if they had thought of it. I think they were trying to do much the same thing with children, only replacing"god" with Adolf Hitler and The Party.

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“But it does not strike me as unethical for parents to choose to raise their children with limited exposure to religious ideas, and to, instead, provide their children with rational answers, explanations, and teachings. In fact, this would seem to me to be more ethical than teaching their children to take on superstitious beliefs.”

Over the years, I’ve known families like that.I know one right now. He’s an astrophysicist, she’s a civil servant. I’ve always been terribly envious. I was raised and educated (if you’ll pardon the expression) to be an insufferable little Catholic prig. I’ve done my best to rid myself of that pernicious collection of woo , hateful superstitions and bigotry over the last 50 years…

Of course, most Aussie kids are raised from a vague secular humanist perspective, absent any reliance on reason. En masse the average Aussie goes to Church on three kinds of occasions; hatches, matches and dispatches.

A common Aussie attitude is “'I’m here for a god time, not a long time” Hedonistic? Abso-bloody-lutely

17

"I am just 18 years old…so maybe i am wrong in some instances. "

Don’t worry, I can guarantee you that you will be stunned to see how much both you and your elders will learn over the next decade and beyond.

That you worry about the plight of children says some positive things about you. A tiny suggestion; perhaps concentrate your concerns on things about which you can actually do something–and then do it. Need not be dramatic, or a huge thing. Possibly begin with small acts of kindness and compassion.

In my experience, the world is certainly changing quickly, as it has done all of my life. As for people; not so much. I see the same cast of characters I’ve always seen. Most people seem to be neither especially good nor especially bad. There is always a sprinkling of people who seem to be very good people, and people who seem to be very bad. Very occasionally, you get saintly people and you get truly evil people. Fortunately, I think the saintly people vastly outnumber the truly evil.

18

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aTCP_ojAog

This is a less than 4 min video of a current day behaviorist who helps children with Autism, explaining how BF Skinner’s work on Verbal Behavior from 60 years ago has helped guide the effective teaching of verbal behavior to children who have autism.

19

Fascinating clip Tim, thanks.

Helps some things slip into place for me, and the way I learn. (and don’t learn)

20

Patrick D…yeah you’re right. Sometimes i become more serious regarding things which is out of my reach. What to say, just i am full of energy…hehe?.

I will follow what you said. I am not in that position that i could change anything. I will wait until i learned everything. I am pursuing my major in zoology starting this year. I will be concentrating on my studies more now.

Thnks…