# Can you force a child to believe in God? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 11, 2011, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-force-a-child-to-believe-in-god/599322 "2011-10-11T17:10:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Larry\_Borgia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/larry_borgia/32/156_2.png) [@Larry\_Borgia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Borgia)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2011, 1:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-force-a-child-to-believe-in-god/599322/21 "2011-10-12T01:44:30Z")
Skinner: Oh oh. Two independent thought alarms in one day. The students are overstimulated. Willie! Remove all the colored chalk from the classrooms. Willie: I warned ya! Didn’t I warn ya?! That colored chalk was forged by Lucifer himself! ---
**Author:** ![Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/f04885/32.png) [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2011, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-force-a-child-to-believe-in-god/599322/22 "2011-10-12T01:49:34Z")
> [@Lobohan](#): > > I presume you could beat or torture someone until the beliefs have the patina of credibility. > > Most parents don’t force their children however, they just tell them things that are not true and the children, being children, trust that their parents know what they’re talking about. If they follow what is said in the Bible it is true, if not it is false. Doesn’t matter who tells them. ---
**Author:** ![Lobohan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobohan/32/79_2.png) [@Lobohan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobohan)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2011, 1:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-force-a-child-to-believe-in-god/599322/23 "2011-10-12T01:54:46Z")
> [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](#): > > If they follow what is said in the Bible it is true Not at all. There are many, many things in the bible that are not true. And the supernatural elements have no evidence at all to support them. > [@](#): > > , if not it is false. Doesn’t matter who tells them. Even you are repeating things that you don’t know are true. You want them to be true, I’m sure, you may even believe they are true. But you have no knowledge at all about their veracity, yet you state them as facts. And a few decades down the line, you’re very likely to misinform your own children. ---
**Author:** ![ModernPrimate](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85e7bf/32.png) [@ModernPrimate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ModernPrimate)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2011, 2:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-force-a-child-to-believe-in-god/599322/24 "2011-10-12T02:26:11Z")
As far as my parents are aware, I’ve been a faithful god-fearing catholic my whole life lolz. 😛 Once ever I said to my sister something like: “you don’t really believe in it do you?” in a kind of low and semi-joking way to let her kind of know I don’t, but possibly to give her a kind of doubt that I don’t, just in case she’s actually devout about it. She didn’t really respond and we never spoke of it again. She’s intelligent, I doubt she believes in it. ---
**Author:** ![Shmendrik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ee7513/32.png) [@Shmendrik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shmendrik)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2011, 2:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-force-a-child-to-believe-in-god/599322/25 "2011-10-12T02:31:17Z")
> [@panache45](#): > > I believe atheism is the default. Nobody pops out of the womb with any beliefs, especially abstract concepts like a Supreme Being. At no point would a young child look at the world around him and conclude that there’s some intelligence behind everything he sees. The idea would have to be planted in his mind by others . . . especially if he is raised by people with a religious agenda. Judging by the popularity of religion and quasi-religious beliefs worldwide I would believe the opposite. ---
**Author:** ![ModernPrimate](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85e7bf/32.png) [@ModernPrimate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ModernPrimate)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2011, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-force-a-child-to-believe-in-god/599322/26 "2011-10-12T02:40:51Z")
> [@Shmendrik](#): > > Judging by the popularity of religion and quasi-religious beliefs worldwide I would believe the opposite. Yeah I’ve read that even in indigenous tribes in areas that the modern world has barely touched, time after time one of the things that keeps popping up is spirits and gods and ghosts. I find it very strange. I certainly don’t find the need to believe in such things. As far as I know, humans are the only animals that have these hallucinations and bizarre superstitions. So doesn’t this give credence to the idea that sometimes bigger brains and what people call “intelligence” is bad? And gets things wrong? And man are humans getting other things wrong also. I’ve sometimes wondered if it is that a part of my brain didn’t develop properly, and it doesn’t “take over” and get me to believe in such things. This may be seem a perverse line of thinking, but I think it’s plausible. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2011, 3:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-force-a-child-to-believe-in-god/599322/27 "2011-10-12T03:02:55Z")
> [@ModernPrimate](#): > > Yeah I’ve read that even in indigenous tribes in areas that the modern world has barely touched, time after time one of the things that keeps popping up is spirits and gods and ghosts. I find it very strange. I certainly don’t find the need to believe in such things. Think of it this way: We were able to come up with bullshit and fiction from day one of our ability to communicate. It took another ~10000 years to discover the scientific method and another 1000 years to get any sizeable percentage of the population to be taught to think along those lines. The human brain is, by default, wired to find patterns, regardless of whether they exist or not, and to fill in what it doesn’t know with any sort of fiction that seems to match what it sees. If you do something that you know is bad and the next day there’s an earthquake, then you “know” that the Earth knows what you did, cares about, and is warning/punishing you. To spare your children, you pass this information on. Figuring that 90% of humans will do something like this at least once in their lives (and many several times), within one or two generations, you’ll have a whole mythology worked out. ---
**Author:** ![lew\_cody](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e274bd/32.png) [@lew\_cody](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lew_cody)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2011, 6:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-force-a-child-to-believe-in-god/599322/28 "2011-10-12T06:02:10Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > This confused me. The colon made me think that what came after it (the part I’ve bolded) _was_ the apologist’s first statement; and I didn’t think it was at all offensive. > > Upon clicking the link: yeah, the self-proclaimed apologist does come across as nutty. “March yourself right up to your room, young man, and don’t come down until you believe in God!” Oops, you’re right. Punctuation can sometimes send as much of a message as the words themselves, and I will try to be more careful in the future. 🆒 ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2011, 6:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-force-a-child-to-believe-in-god/599322/29 "2011-10-12T06:30:57Z")
> [@Shmendrik](#): > > Judging by the popularity of religion and quasi-religious beliefs worldwide I would believe the opposite. But as individuals, we still arrive from the womb \*tabula rasa. \*It’s only later that we encounter other people’s beliefs . . . especially people who have control and authority over us. It’s not the same issue as the universality of religious beliefs. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2011, 7:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-force-a-child-to-believe-in-god/599322/30 "2011-10-12T07:45:09Z")
> [@panache45](#): > > I believe atheism is the default. Nobody pops out of the womb with any beliefs, especially abstract concepts like a Supreme Being. At no point would a young child look at the world around him and conclude that there’s some intelligence behind everything he sees. The idea would have to be planted in his mind by others . . . especially if he is raised by people with a religious agenda. I disagree (and I’m paraphrasing, badly, some other recent doper post here)… We pop out of the womb programmed to uncritically accept the authority and guidance of seemingly omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent entities called parents, because that’s expedient to our survival. Only when we get to the point where we are physically and mentally able to interact with the world on our own behalves, do we start to realise that they aren’t triple-O after all. ---
**Author:** ![Zoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a4c791/32.png) [@Zoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zoe)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2011, 8:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-force-a-child-to-believe-in-god/599322/31 "2011-10-12T08:38:15Z")
> [@](#): > > **Lobahan** : Even you are repeating things that you don’t know are true. You want them to be true, I’m sure, you may even believe they are true. But you have no knowledge at all about their veracity, yet you state them as facts. There are times when you do exactly that too. I respect your right to believe as you do and find nothing offensive about it. But you do seem blind to the idea that you may be mistaken in stating things as factual. This is an example: > [@](#): > > …they just tell them things that are not true… You have no way of _knowing_ they are true or not true just as the believer has no way of knowing. The other statements you have made in this thread seem very reasonable. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2011, 1:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-force-a-child-to-believe-in-god/599322/32 "2011-10-12T13:55:59Z")
> [@ModernPrimate](#): > > As far as I know, humans are the only animals that have these hallucinations and bizarre superstitions. Not true. Some apes have stirrings of them (Chimp rain dance, treatment of dead chimps, etc), our pre-human ancestors likely had them based on some of the material evidence, and our not-quite-human Neanderthal siblings had them in spades. ---
**Author:** ![Rubixcube](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Rubixcube](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rubixcube)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2011, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-force-a-child-to-believe-in-god/599322/33 "2011-10-12T16:18:36Z")
Basic spiritual beliefs in peoples that haven’t had any contact with modern sciences make sense. Imagine that you’re an early human. One day you are just sitting outside thinking, then suddenly you feel the wind. You continue to think and wonder what it is and what makes it. Of course you don’t just randomly figure out all that mumbo jumbo about wind currents and what not. Your mind draws a blank and you sigh. Wait…you realize that you just made wind, perhaps you figure that if you can make a little wind maybe a really big guy could make the big wind! Maybe you tell someone else, maybe they tell someone else. Pretty soon the whole tribe believes it, and they pass it on and it becomes a part of your culture. In the end religion is simply an explanation for currently unexplainable natural phenomena. A lot of these phenomena have become explained in the past few thousand years. A lot still have not, ultimately all of the current religions exist to explain whats left. A child will believe what they latch onto, maybe they will learn different later, but then again maybe not. I grew up in a fairly religiously neutral household. My parents and grandparents believed in god, but they didn’t go to church or pray or anything. I learned the basic concept and always just assumed he was real. But I was also interested in science and spent about as much time watching Discovery as I did _Blue’s Clues_ as a result I formed the belief that god started the process that eventually led to the big bang and the rest. I’ve since shifted over to actual atheism but that’s actually a rather recent change. I think that this is probably the best way to handle the topic with children whether you’re religious or not. Expose them to both in the most basic sense and let them develop and refine their own beliefs. In the end they will decide what they want. P.S. First Post Woo-Hoo 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Naxos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/50afbb/32.png) [@Naxos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Naxos)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2011, 4:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-force-a-child-to-believe-in-god/599322/34 "2011-10-13T04:08:05Z")
> [@lew\_cody](#): > > Serves me right for reading the Catholic Answers forums… Another socially acceptable (as of now) form of child abuse. What’s new? ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2011, 9:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-force-a-child-to-believe-in-god/599322/35 "2011-10-13T09:31:20Z")
> [@Naxos](#): > > Another socially acceptable (as of now) form of child abuse. > > What’s new? I would actually qualify reading Christian Answers forums as a form of self-abuse. ETA: as for the debate, like many others before I’d say you can force a child to behave as if he believed in a given divinity, i.e. do the rites, go to the services, say the words and do the deeds. You can threaten to punish her if she doesn’t profess her belief by word and action. But you can not make her believe if she’s outthought that shit. ---
**Author:** ![mac\_bolan00](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b3f665/32.png) [@mac\_bolan00](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mac_bolan00)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2011, 9:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-force-a-child-to-believe-in-god/599322/36 "2011-10-13T09:45:21Z")
i think it was just poorly-worded. the mother used “insufficient catholic education” to mean that as parents, they will not brook insolence which is what the child’s remark clearly is. but going further, i will agree that catholic institutions like to threaten their kids/students with punishment of that sort. ---
**Author:** ![Omar\_Little](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/omar_little/32/269_2.png) [@Omar\_Little](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omar_Little)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2011, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-force-a-child-to-believe-in-god/599322/37 "2011-10-13T15:08:34Z")
It’s called “faith” for a reason. Unlike Santa Clause, parents who share their faith in something bigger than themselves with their children are not forcing their children to believe in what they know is a fiction, they are passing on their own faith. At some point most human beings reach an age where they begin to question and have to make a determination of whether that faith is something that they have ownership of or they dismiss it. I believe that it is no different than how most people develop their own political views. The majority of people’s initial political views come from their parents. At some point, those children mature and question and develop their own beliefs…in many cases adopting views similar to their parents…in some cases changing thier beliefs. ---
**Author:** ![Mapache](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/58956e/32.png) [@Mapache](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mapache)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2011, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-force-a-child-to-believe-in-god/599322/38 "2011-10-13T15:45:36Z")
> [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](#): > > You can’t force anybody to believe in anything. “But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.” [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-force-a-child-to-believe-in-god/599322.md?page=1)