Geographical Religion

The following article will present a thought experiment so put on your imaginary thinking caps and switch your objective rationality to logic mode. And please, stay on the ride until the it has come to a complete stop.

For this experiment, a couple decides to adopt 10 children from all over the world. All born on the same day, but with different hair, eye, and skin color as well as different genders. This odd version of the Brady Bunch does everything together. They eat, sleep, play, and learn together as one big happy family. The children know they’re adopted, but they don’t know their country of origin. To some extent they are mostly kept from outside influences. The children are home-schooled and have private instructors teach them all the important things about Mathematics, Language, Art, Science, History, and RELIGION! However, the big difference is that they are all objectively taught each of the main religions. One week they learn Hinduism while the next week they learn about Judaism and so on. They’re even taught about the unusual religions like Scientology, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Mormonism. But the instructors are careful to avoid influencing personal opinions or beliefs. They also mention the full history of each religion’s origins and not just the whitewashed good parts.

After many years the children have grown up and reached the age of young adults. They also have the mental capacity to reasonably make informed and independent decisions. Before they move out of their parent’s house, they are asked if they would choose to believe in a particular religion. What do you think will happen? What do you hypothesis would be the conclusion of this scientific thought experiment?

I assert that it would be extremely implausible for the child adopted from Indonesia to choose the Muslim religion or that the child adopted from Italy to confidently adhere to a Roman Catholic faith. It might be that some children earnestly pray to some general unknown deity in hopes of true spiritual guidance, but I’m certain they wouldn’t receive a distinct answer to join the specific xyz religion. Moroni’s promise in the Book of Mormon only works when one prays with a preconceived confirmation bias that the Mormon church is already the only true and living church. But remember, the children were taught all religions objectively without any personal bias so I’m afraid the treasure hunting, rock in a hat translating, polygamist pedophile, con-man Joseph Smith would fall flat on his face. I do think it would be highly plausible that many of the children would intelligently recognize all the religious contradictions and choose to opt out of any specific belief.

So why is it that children all around the world conveniently happen to be born in the seemingly correct religion of their parents? Children are extremely impressionable and will believe anything they’re taught. The only reason kids abandon the Santa Claus myth is because it’s not perpetuated into adulthood. There is no verifiable evidence for the magical Santa, and there is also zero indisputable evidence for any particular god. And yet, many continue to believe.

Whether you have children or not, please take a few minutes to watch this great video of Richard Dawkins explaining the problem with religion and teaching it to the young and naive next generation.

The Problem With Religion (Richard Dawkins)