1st Edition

Natural-Theological Understanding from Childhood to Adulthood

By Olivera Petrovich Copyright 2019
    174 Pages
    by Routledge

    174 Pages
    by Routledge

    It is commonly assumed that young children only begin to think about God as a result of some educational or cultural influence, perhaps provided by their parents. Natural-Theological Understanding from Childhood to Adulthood  asks if there is anything about God that children can know independently of any specific cultural input; does their knowledge of God simply come from their everyday encounters with the surrounding world?

    Whilst children’s theoretical reasoning in biology, physics and psychology has received considerable attention in recent developmental research, the same could not be said about their religious or theological understanding. Olivera Petrovich explores children’s religious concepts, from a natural-theological perspective. Using supporting evidence from a series of studies with children and adults living in as diverse cultures as the UK and Japan, Petrovich explains how young children begin to construct their everyday scientific and metaphysical theories by relying on their own already advanced causal understanding. The unique contribution that this volume makes to the developmental psychology of religion is its contention that religion or theology constitutes one of the core domains of human cognition rather than being a by-product of other core domains and specific cultural inputs.

    Natural-Theological Understanding from Childhood to Adulthood is essential reading for students and researchers in cognitive-developmental psychology, religious studies, education and cognitive anthropology.

    Preface

    Acknowledgements

    Chapter One

    Introduction

    Chapter Two

    Causal understanding: Physical and metaphysical

    Chapter Three

    Children’s theories: Scientific and non-scientific

    Chapter Four

    Early ontological knowledge: The world and its contents

    Chapter Five

    In the beginning: Cosmological reasoning in children and adults

    Chapter Six

    The natural-theological concept of God: A unique causal agent

    Chapter Seven

    Theology as a core cognitive domain

    Chapter Eight

    Innateness of religion within the limits of science alone

    Chapter Nine

    Conclusions, exclusions and some implications

    References

    Appendix

    Author Index

    Subject Index

     

    Biography

    Olivera Petrovich is Research Fellow at the University of Oxford in the Department of Experimental Psychology. Her research deals with the origin and development of natural religious understanding across different cultures.

     

     

    A common objection to teaching about religious faith by parents and schools is that this implants ideas that children would otherwise lack. In this fascinating book, Olivera Petrovich explores the validity of this objection. Drawing on data with children and adults from different religious cultures and traditions, Petrovich shows that children’s questions about the physical world lead them to postulate causal agents which transcend the empirical domain. In other words, they behave much as natural theologians have always done. Petrovich’s work has major implications for how we should teach about theology in schools and elsewhere. Professor Michael J Reiss, UCL Institute of Education