Logic Linked to Religious Disbelief, Study Implies

[rug]

Apr 26, 2012 2:00pm
By Katie Moisse

A rare and controversial study merging science and faith suggests that analytic thinking, a process that favors reason over intuition, promotes religious disbelief.

Canadian researchers used math puzzles and “priming,” a technique that plants subtle suggestions in pictures and text, to persuade more than 650 believers and non-believers to think analytically. They then used surveys to probe religious beliefs, from faith in God to the power of prayer.

“If you can get people to engage in analytic thinking, whether it’s by looking at pictures or showing them difficult-to-read text, analytic thinking promotes religious disbelief,” said Will Gervais, a PhD student in psychology at the University of British Columbia and lead author of the study published today in the journal Science. “This indicates that analytic thinking is one of many factors affecting people’s religious beliefs.”

In the first of five tests, people who solved a math problem analytically rather than arriving at the intuitive answer were more likely to report religious disbelief. For example: A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost? The intuitive answer is 10; the analytic answer is 5.

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/health/2012/04/26/logic-linked-to-religious-disbelief-study-implies/

Here's the link to the study but you have to buy it.

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/336/6080/493

[immoderate]

1. Well, DUH!

--imm

[elleng]

2. Damn right!

Been here for 50+ years. Welcome, y'all.

[sinkingfeeling]

3. They needed a study to conclude that?

[Speck Tater]

4. Religious institutions

that cater to the masses have always tried to sell ideas that are patently ludicrous. And while I am an atheist, I do believe that it is possible to be both logical and spiritual simultaneously. That has nothing whatsoever to do with "organized religion" however.

(And what is "spiritual" you might well ask. As Yogi Berra once said: "Anyone who understands Jazz knows that you can't understand it. It's too complicated. That's what's so simple about it." The same applies to spirituality. For those who get it, no definition is necessary. For those who don't get it, no definition will suffice.)

[dmallind]

5. Hardly conclusive or definitive, but implicitly sound

There have been a lot of these "if you get people thinking X way first, then ask them about Y, they are more likely to conclude Z" studies lately. I don't know how much trust I put in any of them. In this case would it not matter how well people could think analytically in the first place? How they were asked about religious belief, etc?

Now it certainly makes sense that approaching any belief with more clinically objective analysis than gut feel would make any supernatural claim less credible. I just doubt such "prime the pump" studies do the best job of demonstrating that.

[yellowcanine]

6. The study is only controversial because the conclusions go against religious dogma.

[edhopper]

7. In other News

the light during daytime is linked to the Earth facing the Sun.

[abolugi]

8. I have been accused

of being very logical.. to a fault I suppose.
If it doesn't makes sense, I cannot comprehend it & therefore I don't believe it.
Seems simple to me.

[LTX]

9. For those of the "well, duh" persuasion,

I think you may be overlooking the conclusion....

"It also challenges the notion that religious beliefs are set in stone.

'People have this impression that they’re really core, central beliefs that don’t change. But we know people’s religious beliefs can vary across situations and across their lifespan,' Gervais said.

But devout believers may be shocked to hear their faith can wax and wane with tricky tests.

'I suppose some people might find it surprising,' Gervais said, 'that really subtle experimental manipulations might be able to temporarily alter religious beliefs.'

That is more subtle, and perhaps more surprising, conclusion than one that simply finds a correlation between habitual use of analytic thinking in one's work/profession and skepticism of religious belief. It's also kind of fun that the researcher's name is Gervais.

[cbayer]

10. On the other hand, it could be interpreted that more intuitive people

tend to be more religious.

While being intuitive may not be the best trait for some tasks, it is a valuable trait for others. No question that some people are more left or right brained, and no surprise that the more left brained, the less likely to be religious or value religion.

[laconicsax]

12. Brain lateralization doesn't work that way.

The idea of being a "left-brained" or "right-brained" person has no relation to reality.

While handedness (as an example) is purely lateralized, the cognitive functions associated with intuition, creativity, reasoning, etc. are far more complex and not confined to a single hemisphere of the brain (or even the same hemispheric distribution across a population).

[cbayer]

13. While it's not definitive, some functions are primarily localized in one hemisphere or the other.

Of course it's more complex and often used metaphorically. Language, also very complex, shows hemispheric dominance. Patients with single hemisphere damage often lose some functions completely which the other hemisphere may able to assume over time.

Anyway, I was using it descriptively and not literally.

In the future, I will make sure to be more exacting. Some people are more intuitive. Hope that's ok.

[laconicsax]

14. As I understand it...

Current research has shown that the localization isn't uniform to a specific degree: To use language, there's a "language center," but the language function also involves other areas that vary geographically from person to person.

Basically, each time neuroscience identifies a localized function, further research shows that the location is just a commonly shared region rather than a specific center.

[cbayer]

15. As you said initially, it's very complex.

Certainly there are very specific locations within hemispheres. Some of so specific that neuropsychiatrists and neurosurgeons are using amazing techniques to either stimulate or ablate very small areas to achieve very specific results.

People will often gaze away from the part of their brain being used while thinking. Handedness has been associated with lateralization of language dominance. Patients with a stroke in one hemisphere may lose functions that strokes in the exact area in the other hemisphere would not cause. Depending on location, a patient may lose the ability to form language, but they can understand everything (and vice versa).

The more complex the function, the less likely it is to be specifically localized... at least so far.

[dimbear]

11. I like your math example. We used to refer to those intuitive answers as 'wrong.'

Perhaps we could add a note at the bottom of religious literature that says "check your work."