the.com/age of reason
When kids stop believing you and start asking for evidence, around age seven.
means The stage of childhood (traditionally around age seven) when a child is considered capable of distinguishing right from wrong and reasoning things out for themselves.
from Rooted in Catholic theology, where 'age of reason' marks the point a child can be held morally responsible and make First Communion — but the phrase got a second life from Thomas Paine's 1794 book 'The Age of Reason,' and more broadly from the Enlightenment's own self-description as an 'age of reason,' when faith was meant to answer to logic. The childhood sense and the Enlightenment sense share the same hinge: the moment evidence and argument start to matter more than simply being told.
- origin
- catholic church age for moral accountability, roughly seven
- enlightenment version
- paine's 1794 book attacking organized religion itself
- irony
- the age you start reasoning is also peak gullibility
- legal echo
- many courts still treat seven as competence threshold