Thought Experiment: Can you raise a child to NOT believe in God?

[Bohm_Bawerk]

If a child grew up in a laboratory without any cultural influences whatsoever, would that child know God?

Personally, I find the thought experiment interesting, because I’ve met some people who have known there was no God even from childhood. Richard Dawkins, for instance, began speculating the non-existence of God from around the age of 7.

The Church itself has seemingly conflicting views on a topic like this. On the one hand, the Church teaches that human beings know God “a priori” - in other words, human beings acknowledge the existence of a Creator without even being told so. On the other, and correct me if I’m wrong, the Church teaches that because of the stain of Original Sin, humans have the tendency to shun God’s existence; the purpose of baptism, amongst other purposes, is to release the child from the grasps of Satan. This probably explains why there is a “prayer of exorcism” included in baptism.

What’s your opinion?

 

[You]

If a child grew up in a laboratory without any cultural influences whatsoever, would that child know God?

Personally, I find the thought experiment interesting, because I’ve met some people who have known there was no God even from childhood. Richard Dawkins, for instance, began speculating the non-existence of God from around the age of 7.

The Church itself has seemingly conflicting views on a topic like this. On the one hand, the Church teaches that human beings know God “a priori” - in other words, human beings acknowledge the existence of a Creator without even being told so. On the other, and correct me if I’m wrong, the Church teaches that because of the stain of Original Sin, humans have the tendency to shun God’s existence; the purpose of baptism, amongst other purposes, is to release the child from the grasps of Satan. This probably explains why there is a “prayer of exorcism” included in baptism.

What’s your opinion?

You cannot know there is no God. Its wishful thinking. Has anyone ever seen no God?

 

[SrTereseOSB]

Interesting question…all one has to do to answer that question, however, is to walk into a public school–any grade, any classroom.

Seriously, I believe that man has an inherent knowledge of God–that there is something outside of himself. I think if an experiment could be conducted using the criteria you stated, that human person would know that outside of himself, there is One who is greater. It is just common sense, I think.

 

[ThinkingSapien]

If a child grew up in a laboratory without any cultural influences whatsoever, would that child know God?

Good question. I think one challenge in answering it is deciding what constitutes a belief in a god. The children that I’ve interacted with have been very imaginative people and come up with all types of entities with varying personalities. How do you distinguish between the child coming up with another imaginary entity vs having tuned in on a God? Is it sufficient for the child to believe in something that knows everything? That is stronger than all the people that he or she has ever met?

Further how does one come up with a criteria that is independent of his or her personal feelings and biases?

 

[exnihilo]

I think the answer is no. Despite the attempts to make children believe what we believe there are far too many examples of children believing the opposite of their parents to say that raising a child with specific beliefs is something we can do with any promise of success.

You did specifically mention using a lab to avoid exposing the child to other beliefs. Such an experiment would be interesting. But there is another way to think about it. If we were to ignore any Christian notions of the first man we’d have to believe there was an early man who came up with the idea of God and either believed or did not believe in that idea.

If this early man was the first man who had the idea of God then he came up with the idea of God on his own. Let us assume he also believed that God existed. We know that after him came some men who did not believe in God. In this case this first man to not believe went against the existing thought. He did not have influences on both sides of the issue but only on one. So his thought was truly independent of influence for his side.

If the first man did not have the idea of God then a later man came up with the idea. This man was going against the existing thinking that there was no God. Of course one might object and say that early man simply did not have an idea of God so belief in no God was not going against existing thinking. This man, not the first, invented the very idea of God and immediately determined such a thing did not exist. But then at some later point obviously some man came along who understood the idea of God and declared such a thing did exist. This man was then certainly going against the established notion that God did not exist.

It seems to me considering early man you’d have some original person who apprehended the idea of God and either believed the idea either did or did not exist in reality. Then you’d have a subsequent man who rejected that belief, whatever it was, without any social influence because no such influence existed at the time.