Empirical Investigation of Stages of Evolution in Belief in God in Children and Juveniles

The present research aims at an empirical investigation of the stages of evolution in belief in God in children and juveniles based on Nowdhari’s theoretical research (2012) and was conducted through a cross-sectional method. The components of belief in God in this research are as follows: knowing God, knowing the meaning system, faith emotion and faith commitment. The research data were gathered through clinical method and a semi-constructed individual interview with 198 seven to seventeen years old students (males and females) in Qom selected through random classification, and were scored by five experts. The data were investigated through Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). The findings showed that as one’s age increases, his level of belief in God also increases. Besides, based on the obtained results, the course of evolution in belief in God in children and juveniles has the following stages: undifferentiated sense of faith, learned conceptual faith, first-level abstract faith, complete abstract faith.