How God Changes Your Brain - Andrew Newberg, M. D_ [46]
Does this imply that adolescents as a group are less religious than adults? Yes. We know, for example, that religious interests rapidly decline during adolescence21 and that many teens will reject their parents’ values as they attempt to redefine their spiritual beliefs.22 Indeed, for many people religiosity continues to decline through the rest of life,23 a trend that has continued since 1970.24
For the entire group, 20 percent drew faces and people, but only half of these people associated themselves with a denominational faith. The other half were agnostic. In fact, only one atheist drew a face, and even she said that she sometimes believes in God. Once again we see a gradual decline in anthropomorphic representations, even among those who are disinclined to believe. In Hanisch's study, 80 percent of the sixteen-year-old atheists continued to draw faces and people, but we found much lower representations among atheist college students. One reason for this discrepancy is obvious. Hanisch's children were raised in an antireligious culture that would not tolerate acceptance. American children are exposed to an extraordinary variety of mostly positive religious beliefs, and we know that variety stimulates neurological activity. Thus, American children are unconsciously encouraged to envision many possibilities of both God and godlessness.
Of the college students who drew faces and people, many said their pictures represented the images they had as children. One Catholic-turned-Wiccan even drew a baby, saying, “When I was younger, I viewed God as a child, like me—we were toys.” We also noted a high propensity of anthropomorphic representations from religious Catholics, but we'll need to collect more data to see if this observation holds up.
Drawing by an agnostic nineteen-year-old female college student who saw God as a natural loving energy that was both male and female and that permeated the universe.
Sixty-three percent of the entire group of students used a wide range of nature-based and abstract drawings: fields, trees, flowers, animals, suns, stars, planets, spirals, and other abstract forms. Some were particularly creative. For example, one person used musical notes to describe her uplifting feelings when she practiced yoga and meditation. A “questing” Catholic drew three overlapping faces—a man, woman, and a cat—to reflect the “multifaceted nature of God,” and a self-proclaimed deist drew a clock to symbolize the timelessness of a spiritual universe. Again, this supports our argument that neurological development correlates with evolving abstract conceptualizations of God.
We also had a high percentage (17 percent) of blank pages. Unlike the members of our church study, most of these students were nonreligious or agnostic. Many simply said that if God doesn't exist, you can't draw a picture of God. Only a few people left the page blank to symbolize a mystical presence.
We asked our participants to write a brief description of their drawing, and most of the comments made by these “freethinking” students were positive. Many were neutral, but as the person moved closer to disbelief or atheism, negative comments increased. Those who expressed the strongest degrees of disbelief often used sarcasm in their drawings and commentaries. For example, one atheist said that God was Morgan Freeman, from the movie Bruce Almighty. Another drew a picture of the McDonald's golden arches and wrote “Over One Billion Served.” Then he crossed out “Served” and wrote in “Saved.” Such cynicism might be expected, since considerable research shows that older adolescents enter a period where they question and doubt religious beliefs.25 Couple that with the usual irreverent tone of teenagers, and it is easy to see why such sarcasm might arise.
When we asked them about their initial reactions to drawing a picture of God, most expressed