This essay examines the connection between children's religiosity and their cognitivedevelopment and what impact this has on how children understand religious conceptssuch as God and Bible stories. The problem formulation of this thesis is how doeschildren’s cognitive understanding affect their perception of christian God and Biblestories, according to religious psychological theories with cognitive development as afocal point. To try to answer this problem formulation, the working questions are focusedon children's cognitive development, their understanding of the concept of God and whatpossibilities or limitations children's cognitive understanding give to their understandingof biblical stories.This is a comparative study that compares four different theories on psychology ofreligion, to form an understanding of the view of children's cognitive religiousdevelopment. These theories are developed by Ronald Goldman, David Elkind, James WFowler and Justin L Barrett.The result of the analys on the cognitive development are organized into four differentstages to make it easier for the reader to understand. The most interesting find about thecognitive development is that all the theories agree on that around the age of 12, childrenhave the cognitive ability to understand religion and God at the same level as a grown up.This is also one of the biggest possibilities the theories give on children’s understandingof biblical stories.The discussion in the essay focuses on three points: natural theology, the concept of Godand problematic studies. Are children born religious or do they become so? Is it biologicalor sociological factors that create religiosity? Is there a difference between understandingGod and understanding God's theological significance? This essay answers manyinteresting questions, but also creates new possibilities in expanding the subject.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:umu-196688 |
| Date | January 2022 |
| Creators | Holmlund, Nina |
| Publisher | Umeå universitet, Institutionen för idé- och samhällsstudier |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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