Development of the Mind

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Different people think differently. We don't just make different decisions because we have a different set of data -- the actual process of thinking, logic, and belief is processed in very different ways.

A young child is very impressionable and can be taught to believe pretty much anything. As they get older, and presumably wiser, more skeptical of new ideas and more entrenched in their original way of thinking.

I have noticed that people who are taught to believe in fate or religion at a young age, for example, learn that conclusions can be made and trusted without supporting evidence. This apparently has a much larger effect on a person than just their religious beliefs -- I have noticed that, if they are capable of taking a religious belief on faith, they are also perfectly capable of taking any idea that is presented to them in the right fashion, on faith, regardless of any amount of contradictory evidence.

I am playing with a possible reason for this, which is that it comes down to the neural connections made during development. As the person grows older, their neurons become less adaptive and more set into the way that they were programmed.

We don't often think about "the way" that we go about thinking, and I only raise this in the context of faith based belief because it is the best way I can think of to test the theory -- it creates a natural dichotomy in the way that people think that is easily testable.

I could have posted this in the philosophy and debate section but I'd rather get scientific based responses, in the form of articles studies and real evidence than opinionated, heated debate.

Does anyone have any evidence pertaining to this theory they'd like to share?

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Re: Development of the Mind

stuh505 wrote:

Different people think differently. We don't just make different decisions because we have a different set of data -- the actual process of thinking, logic, and belief is processed in very different ways.

A young child is very impressionable and can be taught to believe pretty much anything. As they get older, and presumably wiser, more skeptical of new ideas and more entrenched in their original way of thinking.

I have noticed that people who are taught to believe in fate or religion at a young age, for example, learn that conclusions can be made and trusted without supporting evidence. This apparently has a much larger effect on a person than just their religious beliefs -- I have noticed that, if they are capable of taking a religious belief on faith, they are also perfectly capable of taking any idea that is presented to them in the right fashion, on faith, regardless of any amount of contradictory evidence.

I am playing with a possible reason for this, which is that it comes down to the neural connections made during development. As the person grows older, their neurons become less adaptive and more set into the way that they were programmed.

We don't often think about "the way" that we go about thinking, and I only raise this in the context of faith based belief because it is the best way I can think of to test the theory -- it creates a natural dichotomy in the way that people think that is easily testable.

I could have posted this in the philosophy and debate section but I'd rather get scientific based responses, in the form of articles studies and real evidence than opinionated, heated debate.

Does anyone have any evidence pertaining to this theory they'd like to share?

Young children generally do not have the capacity to evaluate evidence on any number of subjects, so will often accept what is told to them on faith.

If a parent tells them that all Chinese are 10 feet tall, or that a car can jump over a mountain they may believe it.

It matters not whether the subject is religion.

It is the way all children are.

If you are trying to make a case for children growing up without religion learn to think and children who are raised with religion don't, then perhaps you are the one accepting an idea without evidence.

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Sadly I don't think this topic can be discussed objectively without offending some people.

Quote:

If you are trying to make a case for children growing up without religion learn to think and children who are raised with religion don't, then perhaps you are the one accepting an idea without evidence.

No, that's not what I said. Everyone thinks. What I am getting at is that the information we are told is true when we are young may not only be rewriring our brains to store that data, but also rewiring our brains to think in a different way.

Like I said already, and perhaps you missed it because you were inflamed, is that this is not something that applies just to religion -- it would apply to everything. It is just much easier to test when you have a group of people who prefer to believe in faith vs believing in logic.

When training an artificial neural network, we find it necessary to apply concepts like gradient descent or simulated annealing in order to converge to solutions. If the analog of this were true in human brains, it would explain the phenomena I describe -- essentially, it would mean that neural connections can be switched around easily when we are young, but become less adaptive as we get older. This carries with it the implication that we not only learn SLOWER as we get older (which we already know is true), but also some more heavy implications...for example, that it might be literally impossible for someone to learn advanced math if they had never been exposed to any similar concepts until an old age.

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stuh,

You missed my point, because you assumed I was upset.

I agree with you that it applies to everything. Children learn to accept information on nearly every subject on faith.

That is WHY you won't see a difference. I just put it a little sarcastically to have some fun. Don't be so offended.

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I did not assume you were upset, I merely recognized the possibility that you (or any future readers) might take offense. There is nothing in my reply to indicate having taken offense, so perhaps that is your little joke to "assume that I am taking offense" since you think I assumed you took offense, haha!

Anyway, I didn't miss your point. Your point was a reitteration of my second paragraph in my first post, and it is simply about data and knowledge acquisition -- but that is nothing new. I am interested in the way that the ability to think is wired up.

I have already listed some of the possible consequences of this theory. Another consequence would be that, if someone was raised by parents who used trickery to convince the child that there was very little order to the world (random unexplainable acts of magic, etc) then when the child grew older, it would probably lack the ability to make logical decisions, and never be able to learn that ability.

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I think kids believe that their parents would tell them the truth.

My old boss was brought up with very religious parents, which luckily he rebelled against in his adult life.I say luckily because he is a great guy, I doubt he would have turned out so well if he had taken on his parents religious beliefs, and othe beliefs, religious or not.

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Re: Development of the Mind

stuh505 wrote:

I have noticed that people who are taught to believe in fate or religion at a young age, for example, learn that conclusions can be made and trusted without supporting evidence. This apparently has a much larger effect on a person than just their religious beliefs -- I have noticed that, if they are capable of taking a religious belief on faith, they are also perfectly capable of taking any idea that is presented to them in the right fashion, on faith, regardless of any amount of contradictory evidence.

I am playing with a possible reason for this, which is that it comes down to the neural connections made during development. As the person grows older, their neurons become less adaptive and more set into the way that they were programmed.

It's an interesting line of reasoning, but I think I've seen too many cases which are the opposite of your conclusion. I myself was pushed towards religion from a very young age, but I was never satisified with vague answers, everything had to make 'sense' to me, it had to fit together with what I saw around me, and with all the other things I was learning.

Ultimately, I found that I gravitated toward what felt 'comfortable' to me, and what was comfortable was information which was consistent and matched physics and reality. At a young age I was dealing with simple concepts like "how does fat Santa get down a skinny chimney", and answers like "he's magic" just didn't cut it, but the same pattern of questioning and evaluation just keep getting more and more detailed as I got older.

For me, I think that pattern of questioning and 'comfort' in answers that 'fit' together must have been pre-disposed to me somehow.

I have often wondered why people choose to believe what they believe. At the philosophical level, even the choice to believe in naturalism (the foundation of science), is a belief. Yet some choose to believe in magic, and others choose not to.

The human brain develops by growing many many neural pathways up until about two years of age. After two years of age, the growth of new pathways slows dramatically.

Once the neural pathways are in place, certain pathways start to be used more often than others. The more often a pathway is used, the more often it is used later in similar situations. Personalities and behaviors don't result so much from the growth of new pathways, as they do from the disuse of other pathways (even though those pathways always remain).

Science has known that this is how brains develop for some time, and it was assumed that the initial group of pathways was a balanced blank slate, upon which environment and experience etched the primary choices. But I'm not so sure. Certainly environment and choice can overwhelm and alter predisposition in neural circuitry, but all things being equal, I think there may be a physical predisposition to particular ways of thinking.

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I don't think that being taught religious beliefs makes as much a difference as being taught anything in an authoritative manner that demands linear thinking and pat answers while discouraging creativity and questioning. It may be a combination of pruning unused pathways and failing to make the myriad cross-connections that generate novel ideas.

There is a critical window in which children must be exposed to speech in order for the brain to develop the ability to use language. "Wild children" can learn words but not syntax. There may be a similar window for developing the logical/mathematical parts of the brain.

On the other hand, there may be a genetic component as well since some children seem to have a natural bent for music, art, math, leadership, scientific curiosity, etc. that is independent of nurture.

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Re: Development of the Mind

stuh505 wrote:

I am playing with a possible reason for this, which is that it comes down to the neural connections made during development.

Yes, quite correct. Especially between birth and age six. Almost 1/4th of the total neuron connections one is destined to have develop during that period. The rest, of course, develop over time. Remember though, we continue to build synapses throughtout life and old synaptic patterns do break down over time. So, its always possible to get rid of that sort of religious dependance

And have you ever wondered, why coaches emphasise that prospective athletes (especially in sports like tennis, swimming) should begin practising at the tender age of 4. Before 6 is all they want to mean. The brain is still in the differentiation phase and their is an overproduction of synapses during this primitive stage. If a child begins to learn, say tennis, at this point in life, he will have formed "synaptic connections" related to the game and the portion of the brain that is the seat of kinesthetic intelligence ( Refer to Gardener's theory of Multiple Intelligences) proliferates to a larger extent than in an average child who receives no such formal training. That is how tennis prodigies like Hingis and Sharapova were trained. Of course, not all early-starters will go on to turn out that way. Other "environmental" factors too come into play.

Here's a link that can help you further in understanding how children learn: http://newton.nap.edu/html/howpeople1/ch4.html

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This is something interesting.

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Stuh- Whatever information we are told when we are children, is commonly believed to be processed in similar ways at various ages. In other words, whatever the information is, it itself is not responsible for or does not have the power to facilitate understanding or belief until advancing maturity and brain development can provide the readiness for belief in and/or understanding of that concept.

I think this is especially true when it comes to religion and faith, which is a very abstract concept. According to Piaget - young children are only capable of concrete thinking - thinking that is based on what they can see, feel, hear, taste, and touch until about their fifth or sixth year (this age of course varies from child to child- just as the age at which any child reaches any developmental milestone varies).

So I think your supposition is flawed. Although young children who are exposed to religious teaching might want to believe in it - to please their parents, or because they find it interesting or comforting - they really don't have the ability to understand the concept and truly know what they're saying they believe in until later. And by this time - abstract reasoning has kicked in that is more of a determining factor of what conclusion they might come to.

Of course some people are more analytical than others- and we all have a different perception of what is logical and reasonable and what isn't- based on our own individual experiences which cannot be fully known or measured as reasonable or unreasonable by anyone else. At least that's what I believe.

But I agree with Ros - I think the tendency to accept a spiritual or religious teaching is more of a personality trait than a cognitive style- so I don't think faith can be or is hardwired into a brain through teaching- although I do agree, as you said that it does color how you look at the world.

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Development of the Mind

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