Age at which people become Christians

TheismIsUntenable
TheismIsUntenable:
1% between ages 0-4
85% between ages 4-15
10% between ages 15-30
4% at 30+

Very telling indeed. So prior to the development of critical thinking skills and long before any collegiate level studies.

https://home.snu.edu/~hculbert/ages.htm
(Edited by TheismIsUntenable)
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Zanjan
Zanjan: Just this morning, I heard a guy say he became a Christian at 5 years old - apparently, somebody forgot to tell him the difference between God and a religion.

Kids can recognize God *of their own accord* by the time they're 5 years old, even if their parents are atheists. They're also better at loving God and demurring to authority than adults. Since they haven't acquired any baggage yet, they're able to accept God's Divine Messengers without hesitation.

All parents are fully aware how vulnerable their children are.
(Edited by Zanjan)
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Zanjan
Zanjan: Age 15 is actually the age of discretion - that is, when an individual can make informed choices independently. This means the youth must be presented with a variety of items from which to choose.

Pilot or plumber? Christianity or Atheism? Which of these is not like the other? We learned to "group" at a very young age. How many kids were given a plate of at least 5 *religions* from which to choose?

Consider how long it takes to actually know enough about a religion to make an informed choice with due attention and care. One would have to start studying very young to be enabled to make a truly free choice by age 15.

I think the last figure (4% at 30+) is true for any religion. In my experience, there is a window for choosing a major lifestyle change, which closes by age 35.
(Edited by Zanjan)
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calybonos
calybonos: I become a Christian every time I notice a cop following me.

...and an Atheist when one pulls me over.
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TheismIsUntenable
TheismIsUntenable: Children are better at not taking things from authority than adults?
I challenge you to cite a single study in favor of your contention.

No, we all know this is rubbish.

Brain continues to develop until age 25, this would be the most appropriate age for analyzing the religious claims.

Unfortunately, most people's views are tainted with superstition long before 25 and fall prey to confirmation bias.
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Zanjan
Zanjan: I have no idea what you're talking about.....I said that children recognize and obey authority better.

Who said you can't leave a religion when you find out its not the right one for you? You speak as if it's an immutable situation. People have also been known to dump folk traditions and superstitions of their own accord.
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Zanjan
Zanjan: Your stats are a bit off, TIU - 100% of Christian offspring become Christian? Seriously, this isn't the truth.

I think it would be interesting to know the stats on how many of the above believers remained in the church they signed up with, or even in it at all - that would be a more reliable indicator of success. However, I'm pretty sure that information would be impossible to retrieve.
(Edited by Zanjan)
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TheismIsUntenable
TheismIsUntenable: No, you said the following:

"They're also better at loving God and demurring to authority than adults"

Demur:
raise doubts or objections or show reluctance.

Substitution:

"They're also better at loving God and raising doubts or objections or show reluctance.to authority than adults"

I'm guessing you simply misused the term.

It's very difficult to overcome religious inculcation, everyone who has accomplished this has testified as much.

I agree, it would be very interesting to have statistics on the percentage of people who change faith.

When you're just starting out in this world and the one thing you think you know is that god exists, then all of the subsequent beliefs are built upon that foundation. It's a very wicked thing to do to a child.
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Zanjan
Zanjan: Well, thanks for bringing that glitch to my attention...........friggin autocorrection. Sometimes I catch it, sometimes not. I'd orginally typed "defer, as in deference - "deferring"


defer2
[dih-fur]
verb (used without object), deferred, deferring.
1. to yield respectfully in judgment or opinion (usually followed by to):
We all defer to him in these matters.
verb (used with object), deferred, deferring.
2. to submit for decision

Synonyms
1. accede, submit, acquiesce, capitulate.


(Edited by Zanjan)
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Zanjan
Zanjan: "It's very difficult to overcome religious inculcation, everyone who has accomplished this has testified as much."

One can say exactly the same thing for atheism, humanism, political persuasions, gender identity etc - the list goes on. This is because one is attempting to use coercion or de-programming - doesn't work. As they say, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

The problem with change doesn't lie in the beliefs, but in the behaviour. Where do you think people came from as declarants of a new religion? They came from everywhere of their own accord - they were the seekers. They'd been prepared, having already changed their behaviour; they were looking for their own people.

Every religion aims to prevent spiritual illness and encourage wakefulness and mindfulness through modeling; it's efficacy is in the healing of wounds. The deeper the wounds and greater the suffering, the more advanced the religion must be for the remedy, since heroic treatment is required.

Nevertheless, some are too far gone to ever recover. Those are the walking dead. There is no rehab in max. security prison.

It's a very wicked thing to hold a child back from his inheritance of the Kingdom of God. A parent can do this by their own actions, religious or not. By the way, it takes a whole community to bring up a child so the fault lies in society as well.
(Edited by Zanjan)
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lori100
lori100: In a book I read about unusual experiences there was a boy about 4 years old who asked his parents if he could be alone with his newborn baby brother. The parents left them alone with a tape recorder recording under the crib. When they played the tape they heard the 4 yr .old say to his brother "Can you tell me about God? I'm starting to forget"....his parents weren't religious or churchgoers...
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Zanjan
Zanjan: Interesting. Yes, kids hear the word "God" all the time, not always in the appropriate context.
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lori100
lori100: lol...I think the boy and little kids remember God and being in the spirit world...the older they get the faster the memories fade as they are more focused in the material world...
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Zanjan
Zanjan: Some people aren't going to like what I have to say on this matter but it's time they KNEW, it's time for them to become informed.

If you ask Christian kids to pray, they don't know how, they just close their eyes and wait. Their parents have taught them NOTHING! I see it in church with all of those shy children. When they're called to stand at the front of the room, they're silent and someone else does the praying for them - it's shocking.

Contrast this to children in the Baha'i Faith - they've memorized full prayers by the time they're 3 years old. EVERY child can pray on his/her own...even the children of new declarants quickly learn. They totally LOVE to pray, and clamor for the chance to do it in front of a group - it's their finest reward.

If you give the child of Baha'i parents a choice between a piece of candy and the privilege to go up and say a prayer in front of a group, they'll choose the prayer. This is the truth.
(Edited by Zanjan)
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Zanjan
Zanjan: So, my heart goes out to these little ones who are so deprived. I've lost count of the number of times I've given kids little prayer books.......I want them to have what other children do. In their moments of need, I want them to know God remembers them. I do this because I love them.

To the parents, I say to you, LET the children pray!
(Edited by Zanjan)
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Zanjan
Zanjan: Ok, that's my rant for the day.
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TheismIsUntenable
TheismIsUntenable: Zanjan,

Demur is not a common word, but your seem to have the vocabulary to use it properly. It's unfortunate that autocorrect failed us so fantastically.

"One can say exactly the same thing for atheism, humanism, political persuasions, gender identity etc - the list goes on. This is because one is attempting to use coercion or de-programming - doesn't work. As they say, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."

I am in total agreement, which is why it's very important to only teach what is proven to be so. Not to introduce ideas which are not supported by evidence and argument.

I think my path from childhood is the most appropriate because I led myself. I attended church a few times with friends who asked me to come, but my parents never forced me to go. If I had questions about it, I asked. Their responses were always very scholarly. Some people believe X, some people believe Y, I believe some of Z, etc.

This way it's not an appeal to authority, it's not a social pressure, it's just natural. Allow natural curiosity to develop and support that particular path.
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Zanjan
Zanjan: My son has inadvertently made a few enemies via autocorrect - I think he disabled the feature but I'm not that savvy. Either I'll continue to inadvertently insult people or stop typing on my tablet.

Is literary beauty supported by evidence? I would say so, by the feel inside the heart.

You "led yourself" - the master teaching the student.....how does that work?

Friends invited me to attend Sunday school - I hated it and wanted to try church but they said I was too young. Balderdash! So, I cornered the pastor and asked him questions he couldn't answer. Right.

However, as an adult, I've always accepted invitations to a House of Worship, though no one has invited me to attend Mosque yet. They've been very reclusive compared to Christians. I expect you'd need to nag them to get in the door; in my case, the female door.

Yes, my parents answered my questions too - they believed God made mistakes so why support someone like that? I agreed, I wouldn't support a god who made mistakes either. They were referring to the evidence of 'error' with my nephews, who were born with a very debilitating fatal genetic disease.

I hope their parents didn't throw the wee prayer books I gave the boys in the garbage before they died.

(Edited by Zanjan)
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Zanjan
Zanjan: You probably don't realize that when I was young, it was impossible to buy a Quran anywhere, despite there being many Muslims in our cities. I tried to order from their community but all they had was Arabic.

One day, I went to one of the big honchos and said, "Isn't it your duty to spread the Word of God?" You've had 1,500 years to translate this to English - why do you withhold?"

Within 3 years, the first Quran became available for purchase, at one store in a city of a million people, back in the 1980's. I bet I was the one who bought the first English copy, and still have it.

Tell me, what hath God wrought?
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GeraldtheGnome
GeraldtheGnome: Grammatical errors were made on this forum.

I'm guessing, because I don't know exactly when, but I was most likely six when I was introduced to Christianity, then a few years later I became sceptical about things as well as paranoid about certain things and certain people, but I was still religious, then a few years after that I started questioning Christianity and then when I was 13 I strayed away from Christianity and gradually but recently I became less and less interested in it until I became an Agnostic Theist. I still in a way am an Agnostic Theist, I haven't believed in the certainty of any god since I was 13 and in reality when I was 11 I realized that the religious stories were made up.

Now I just realize that every god and goddess is made up. You see age makes such a difference that some of the most extreme/radical religious people are not those that became religious when they became adults but those that were were young kids when they became religious and where everything throughout their life up to the point that they became adults was so controlled that most were too far gone by the time that they were 18. It is happening now too.
1 year ago Report
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GeraldtheGnome
GeraldtheGnome: To TheismIsUntenable. On this forum no one so far as I know has ever asked you this. Were you ever a Christian when you were a kid ?
(Edited by GeraldtheGnome)
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shadowline
shadowline: Oh Gerald, you will never get an answer to that one.
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GeraldtheGnome
GeraldtheGnome: I maybe wrong about this but I think that you are right there.
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mrsmargaret48
mrsmargaret48: Really TIU, I would have expected something a bit more academically credible. "Lies, damned lies, and statistics" Benjamin Disraeli

However I was baptised as a baby and started regularly attending church at 3, and carried on after critical thinking kicked in

Zanjan God doesn't make mistakes, he wouldn't be God if he did. God is by definition omnipotent. Humans make mistakes and that critical thinking as not stopped us repeating them.

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Zanjan
Zanjan: Margaret, I didn't say that *I* believed God made mistakes - my mother said that.

There was such a profound difference between her storymind and where the world was going that my generation became known as the "Generation Gap".

You have to understand my parents were born and raised in a Christian-dominated society so, to identify as an atheist or get a divorce made one a social pariah. Hence, they put in appearances. My mother wanted me to marry a nice Jewish lad because, she said, they treated their wives like queens. (not how dad treated her)

As a young teen, I realized my parents didn't believe in God but they never came out of the closet to say so, just danced around it. Nevertheless, the truth can't be hidden.
(Edited by Zanjan)
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mrsmargaret48
mrsmargaret48: Sorry Zanjan, I apologise. I am very sorry to read about your nephews. I have had people ask me about the suffering and evil and why God allows it. God clearly isn't responsible for the sins of man (and woman) who have free will and are responsible for their actions. The question of children suffering debilitating illness (there is nothing worse in my opinion) and the natural disasters that kill thousands, I have no answer.
I've heard peoples views and read some theology but they didn't have an answer, maybe God willing one day I will know.

The truth for me is God exists but is way beyond my understanding but then that is the nature of God. The society (Eire/Ireland) I come from was until recently dominated by the Catholic Church, it as changed to some extent for the better but in other ways it as regressed and is worse now than it ever was in the past but that's Irish politics.


(Edited by mrsmargaret48)
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