Rafi's beliefs

[lethargic_man]

Not sure how I have managed to raise my six-year-old such that he has doubts about the existence of God and the angels,^* but remains firm in his conviction of the existence of the Tooth Fairy^† and that his grandfather and myself can work magic.

* In that he independently came up with something very close to Pascal's Wager: "I hope God exists, because otherwise we're wasting an awful lot of time davening."

† Despite the doubtless forgotten time a year ago I told him I'd used a ferry to cross the river on a bike ride, and he replied, "But ferries don't exist!"

Comments

[liv]

According to what I know about child development, at that sort of age children believe what they see adults taking seriously, especially if there are rituals involved. Tooth fairy is believable because you do this whole thing of leaving a tooth under a pillow and then money appears, and you don't have the world knowledge to come up with any alternative explanation for how it could have got there. But davening... doesn't have any immediate, tangible results. It is something that adults take seriously, for sure, but most of us probably wouldn't do things much differently if we mostly believed God exists or mostly didn't believe God exists. Christian kids of the same age sometimes believe in Santa but not Jesus, because the whole ritual of putting out stockings and waking up to open presents is tangible, but praying and telling stories about Jesus is more abstract.

Gráinne, meanwhile, at a bit under 4 (this was earlier in the year) is/was extremely skeptical of the existence of... thieves. She looked at the posters on the train showing shady-looking criminals and encouraging passengers to call the Transport Police if we see anyone acting dodgy, and she said "I'm not afraid of that man because thieves don't really exist". And I know what she means, the stock character of a burglar from children's fantasy is not actually real, and the shady criminal on the posters is a bit made up too.