Religious children have harder time between fact and fiction

This really doesn't matter, but I thought I'd share since y'all sparked a memory:I remeber being a young child who still believed in Santa Claus and my parents had set out milk and cookies the night before. I had woken up on Christmas morning and noticed that the milk was gone and there were some crubs left over from the cookies.I asked my parents about it and they insisted that they didn't touch them, so it must have been Santa Clause that got into the goods. I was really bothered by the facts that, for one, somebody had been in our house the night before, and two, my parents knew about it and didn't care at all. The evidence was there for all of us to see and they didn't seem bothered by it in the least. That really left me kinda scared and uneasy about the whole thing.Turns out they were just fucking with me, but yeah, that's kind of a fucked up thing to do to a kid. I went through 12 years of Catholic education that included Bible study every year. The thing about the Catholics, though, is that they seem to be open to including new and updated information as we get it (like say theistic evolution), rather than digging their heals in on everything and indoctrinating children with all these anti-science mentalities (read: Creationism).It'd be interesting to see the same study contrasting Catholic and Evangelical children. I bet that the Catholic children would do better than the Evangelical ones.

How does all that result in Catholic children being less able to distinguish fact from fiction than Evangelical ones?Or was that just some good old fashioned knee-jerk hatin' on the Catholics?

Better at not indoctrinating children so that they cannot distinguish between fact and fiction:

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Clearly we have seen evidence of that, but I have also seen religious people who had lots of Bible study in childhood and yet they grow up with an ability to discern fact from fiction. I guess maybe it depends on how deeply one is 'indoctrinated'.

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I went through 12 years of Catholic education that included Bible study every year. The thing about the Catholics, though, is that they seem to be open to including new and updated information as we get it (like say theistic evolution), rather than digging their heals in on everything and indoctrinating children with all these anti-science mentalities (read: Creationism).

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It'd be interesting to see the same study contrasting Catholic and Evangelical children. I bet that the Catholic children would do better than the Evangelical ones.

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Catholic doctrine is that the bread and wine become the actual body and blood of Jesus and they are not merely symbolic.

They distinguish between the substance, i.e. its essence, and the species, i.e. its outward appearance.The accident of the bread remains the same (it still looks like bread), but its essence has change (it has become something else).

You're talking about things on the physical level. The doctrine is that transubstansiation takes place on a metaphysical level.That the substance is distinct from species. All those things you're talking about pertain to the species and not the substance.But I don't really care to get into some stupid ontological discussion about something that boils down to magic. Transubstantiation was arrived at through a logical deduction. In the Bible, Jesus took the bread and said "This is my body".From the premise that the bread is the body, and that we cannot perceive any change, it was deduced that the change must take place on a non-physical level, i.e. the substance rather than the species changes.

I'm not claiming anything.Catholic doctrine does NOT claim that the bread physically becomes the body, no. The "substance" of the bread changes into the body, but the bread still physically looks like bread. No, its certainly a matter of belief. There's no evidence. Species is Latin for "form". It has nothing to do with animal species.These lines from wiki explain it fairly well:

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"Substance" here means what something is in itself, its essence. A hat's shape is not the hat itself, nor is its colour, size, softness to the touch, nor anything else about it perceptible to the senses. The hat itself (the "substance") has the shape, the color, the size, the softness and the other appearances, but is distinct from them. While the appearances, which are also referred to, though not in the Church's official teaching, by the philosophical term 'accidents', are perceptible to the senses, the substance is not.

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The idea is that a hat is not the material its made of, or the shape, or whatever forms, aka species, it has. The hat has those things but those things are not the hat. What the hat actually is, its substance, is not something that you can perceive. You can only perceive its forms, or species.Well shit, now we're into that stupid ontological discussion... When I do occasionally go to church, I don't talk to the kids. You're probably wrong A logical deduction does not lead to veracity. The conclusion can only be as good as the premises. No doubt you disagree with the premises, but that doesn't make the pathway to the conclusion illogical. And being deduction just means that you start with the premises and work through logic to get to the conclusion. So there's really nothing wrong with it being a logical deduction, even if you know that the conclusion is wrong.

You're absolutely correct. I'm not talking about my personal beliefs, I'm explaining what the Church's doctrine says.

Because, I think, having a few "silly" beliefs doesn't render Catholic children unable to distinguish between fact and fiction as bad as the Creationist approach of indoctrinating children with a wholly anti-science mentality.Catholics tend to embrace new scientific discoveries while the Creationists just dig their heels in. (Like how the Pope said that he would baptize aliens and Ken Ham said we should stop looking for them because they're going to hell anyways.)I think those two different approaches form different fundamental bases that yield different effects on how to distinguish between fact and fiction.I'd bet that a Catholic upbringing might still be worse than a purely secular one, but the article in the OP just looked at "church-going" versus "not church-going". I just thought it be interesting to see how the Catholics differ from the Creationists. I think they'd do better. Yes, but I don't see this one in particular as being that big of deal. Most people don't put a lot of stock in this one.Especially in contrast with something like evolution. Its been a while, but I think we didn't really get into the speicifics of transubstantiation until high school. In grade school, I think we were taught that we believe that it really is the body, and not just a symbol, but there really wasn't that much detail on the subject given at that age.Oh and I think its worth pointing out that's typically how we were taught: "We believe this", "The Church teaches that", rather that "These are undeniable facts that you cannot doubt". No, the idea of transubstansiation was the deduction. Like, it goes:Premise 1) Jesus said the bread is his body
Premise 2) It sill looks like bread
Conclusion) The substance must be what is changing rather than the form - i.e. transubstansiation

A lot of people don't get that there is a lot of diversity within the 'real' Catholics and that it never gets down to the point of being required to believe something. Well, not anymore. Our past is, shall I say, a little more colorful.I suppose it depends on the parish, but most priests are just happy that you show up. Its a community and you gotta have participation. And if you can't bring yourself to accept some belief, its really not that big of a deal.I mean, the Church can't really think that nobody is using birth control. And if they really cared as much as people seem to think they do, as if they'd kick you out for being bad at being Catholic, then they would've died out a long time ago.As someone else mentioned earlier: Anything to stay in business!

It does, just less physical change and more magic:

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When, therefore, He Who is All Truth and All Power said of the bread: "This is my body", the bread became, through the utterance of these words, the Body of Christ; consequently, on the completion of the sentence the substance of bread was no longer present, but the Body of Christ under the outward appearance of bread. Hence the bread must have become the Body of Christ, i.e. the former must have been converted into the latter. source

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Exactly.

No, that's not the reason. And I'm saying that the Creationists are worse than the Catholics, for the reasons I've been explaining.There's a fundamental difference between "science is the enemy" and "we believe some weird stuff".I think an anti-science foundation would have greater effects on the ability to distinguish fact from fiction. I was going from memory... What I said came from reading this:

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Irrespective of whether they attended a public school or a parochial school, children were asked about church attendance.
Specifically, after presentation of the final story, children were asked, Does your family go to services? Children who said yes were categorized as churchgoers. Children who said no were categorized as non-churchgoers.

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But they do categorize them further:

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For the 32 children who attended public school, 16 children were identified as churchgoers. The remaining 16 children were identified as non-churchgoers. For the 34 children who attended parochial school, 16 children were identified as churchgoers. The remaining 18 children were identified as non-churchgoers.

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In summary, three groups of children had exposure to religion: churchgoers who attended public school; non-churchgoers who attended parochial school; and churchgoers who attended parochial school. A fourth group of children non-churchgoers attending public school had no exposure to religion in either church or school.

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I think it would be interesting to look at the difference between Catholic children and Evangelical (or Creationist) children. While I expect they both do worse than the secular kids, I think the Catholics would do better than the Evangelicals.Do you disagree? I haven't said anything remotely like that.

Nope, its really not. This isn't about any given one, its about the children. Children don't live for 400 years

I don't think it was that bad. The only criticism I'd give is that their sample size could have been bigger.And think about it: Why wouldn't kids who were taught that fictional stories were true have a harder time distinguishing between fact and fiction? I didn't see that at all. What part of the study made you think that? You're gonna have to support that accusation more if you want to convince anybody.