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Analytic Thinking Can Decrease Religious Belief
Freshly Exhumed writes "A new University of British Columbia study finds that analytic thinking can decrease religious belief, even in devout believers. The study, which will appear in tomorrow's issue of Science (abstract), finds that thinking analytically increases disbelief among believers and skeptics alike, shedding important new light on the psychology of religious belief."
will burn in hell.
Not analytic thinking, just thinking should work
Trolling is a art,
Although I'd agree with you, I think it's necessary to point out that these aren't the normative beliefs of Christianity. As those assertions go, they're over-represented among Christians in the U.S., so it skews our sample set; but that doesn't mean that it's the definitive rebuttal of Christian belief.
Just sayin'...
mmm... yeah... You see, we're putting the cover sheets on all TPS reports now before they go out...
I guess it works on global warmers then.
Well, if it works as suggested then it will cause those who believe in global warming purely because someone told them it was happening to go and look at the evidence and decide for themselves, in which case they'll keep their opinion intact but will have come to it by a more scientific approach. Win-win.
A new study finds that intelligence can decrease stupidity! Maybe the two teams could join forces.
Knowledge is power; knowledge shared is power lost.
This hints at the key problem, which is (or ought to be) as much a quandary for religion itself as for scientific studies of it. Almost all of the questions in Gervais and Norenzayan's study related to religion as a literalist folk tradition — an aspect of lifestyle. This is how it manifests in most cultures, but that barely touches on religion as articulated by its leading intellectuals: for Christianity, say, philosophers such as Thomas Aquinas, David Hume, Immanuel Kant and George Berkeley. The idea that the beliefs of those individuals would have vanished had they been more analytical is, if nothing else, amusing. Gervais and Norenzayan’s findings should help to combat religion as an indolent obstacle to better explanations of the natural world. But it can’t really engage with the rich tradition of religious thought.
Easy. Accept that the accounts in religious texts were written by people and subject to their scope of knowledge. If there was a group of people 6000 years ago who had only covered an area of a few hundred square miles in their lives, and that few hundred square miles flooded, they would write that the world flooded. Believing that the entire Earth did not flood in no way invalidates the text.
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
I think it's generally caused by indoctrination when they're very young, and it's very hard to break. I think societal pressure also adds to it a lot, but that's been decreasing.
If you're right, perhaps you could persuade the people who disagree with you by talking to them and using reason. But if you start the discussion by insulting them or the number of brain cells they have, do you really expect to get anywhere?
Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
you just described every teabagger and right wing nut-job out there.
It's quite possible for atheists to hate the religion, even if they don't hate the God. The religion is very much a real thing, with an army of believers to give it power. I used to be indifferent to religion myself, until I read of how Christians were opposing vaccination against HPV* on the grounds that it could encourage people to sin. The more I learned, the more the hate grew. But hate is not a bad thing, it can be a powerful force for reform and a drive to fight that which should be fought. *Still in the early trial stage back then
If we take the original meaning of religion, which was from a Latin root that means "binding" and could be taken as "things that bind society together"* then theologians and sociologists have actually been quite good at asking some very hard questions about this, challenging religious and non-religious hierarchies.
If we take notions of "God", again theologians have been pretty good at analysing out what is mere superstition, animism and so on, from the largely unanswerable question about why or how anything at all exists. Theologians like Hans Kung and Don Cupitt, along with any number of Episcopalians, Unitarians, Quakers, Reform Jews and other progressive groups, have tried to deal constructively with the apparent human need to believe in something and share cultural practices. This hasn't always been totally successful, but a quick fact check on whether you'd prefer to live in an area where the main religion is one of the groups I've mentioned versus one where it was, say, strongly pro-Pope Catholics, Islamists or the Bible Belt might provide a clue as to whether they're on the right track or not. The simple facts of Apple-worship, programming wars, and pseudo-religions like Libertarianism, Marxism and "Free market economics" show that atheists can show quite strong religious tendencies.
So the real question is what this study means by "decrease religious belief". After all, when Phlogiston was discredited, you could argue that this resulted in a decrease in belief in the reliability of chemists. Do they really mean "decrease acceptance of bullshit?" I'd go with that.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Even orthodox Jews don't take all the stories in the bible as literal. They study them as lessons to learn. Devout religious belief is about much more than taking the religion's documents literally.
Developers: We can use your help.
Duh is right. Considering that belief is the opposite of thinking, they would have to be negatively correlated.
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71 And then the Romans laid hands on Jesus to lead him away. 72 But Peter said unto them, "This is not the Jew you are looking for." 73 And then the centurion said unto them, "This is not the Jew we are looking for."
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
"you should believe what it says in this book because it's true!" is pretty weak.
"you should believe the bits in this book that I say because those parts are true!" is even weaker.
My non-scientific guess is that analytic thinking can decrease belief in anything you haven't analyzed. This doesn't just apply to religion. The same goes for politics, football teams, favorite programming languages, global warming, etc.
As for religion, I'd bet the majority/vast majority really just believe whatever makes their parents or spouse or whoever happy, or whatever makes life easier. No wonder they drop it whenever they discover something that mildly contradicts their barely conceived ideas.
I personally consider the possibility of God in light of discoveries related to quantum physics, relativity, evolution, math and statistics... I don't consider these to contradict the existence of God (since they strictly do not), but to explain how little we still know and to understand the tools God could use to work with.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
If you're against Christian teaching and you think you're an analytic thinker, I challenge you find out what's wrong about the content of the bible and find an convincing argument why people who believe in Christ are doing it in vein. If you want to show that the bible is made up, or its text is corrupt, I'm going to put you through scientific method process and axiomatic logic reasoning to establish your case.
Maybe you'll show us what you expect by working through examples with some of the religions that *you* reject.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Shouldn't the burden of proof be on you to use the Scientific Method to support your theory that the accounts of the Bible are true?
If you want to show that the bible is made up, or its text is corrupt, I'm going to put you through scientific method process and axiomatic logic reasoning to establish your case.
The burden of proof is on you. Without any evidence that your book is not just another book of ancient mythology, why should we give it any more creedence than the works of Homer?
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This is horse shit. I've worked with plenty of religious folks that are great at solving problems. Your line of thinking simply promotes the kind of discrimination and simple minded thinking that makes religious zealots so frustrating in the first place.
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
Well, if you have to ask...
I'm an atheist, and am actually a big fan of word of Jesus. The ideas were revolutionary for morality and ethics in the ancient world. Whether or not Jesus was diving, or even really existed, is unimportant in this respect.
But, having said that, I'm afraid you can find all sorts of examples in the Bible that contradict each other, especially between the Old and New Testaments (e.g. stoning gays vs. loving one another). Not to mention the conflicting geneologies of Jesus in the gospels. (And I'm sure other posters will chime in soon with more examples.) Furthermore, biblical scholars worth their salt do not believe in the literal truth of the text, since it has been translated, edited, and redacted many times over. Much has been lost, forgotten, rejected (Gnostic gospels anyone?), or just plain ignored.
Finally, my biggest complaint with Christians in general is that more often than not they themselves pick and choose which portions of the Bible are true. Just look at the anti-abortion types in the States who also want to cut back on Social Security or Medicare -- a position that is clearly not "pro-life", nor follows through with Jesus' adminitions to take care of the least fortunate. If you wish to use Jesus' teachings as the basis of your ethics, fine -- but either be consistent, or be prepared to be exposed as a hypocrite.
--- The American Way of Life is not a birthright. Hell, it's not even sustainable.
Duh is right. Considering that belief is the opposite of thinking, they would have to be negatively correlated.
Just to play the fictitious Devil's Advocate: You must therefore understand everything about every currently accepted theory, as you seem to have no need to believe anything.
We all have beliefs; some are just a little (or a lot) less plausible than others.
Help fight poverty: Punch a poor person.
The love of a mother is at least potentially falsifiable. Everything we know about the mind indicates that it is entirely comprised of patterns of neural activity in the brain. With sophisticated enough technology, it's entirely possible in principle to observe those patterns and determine whether love is being experienced.
Or you could argue that emotions have no physical basis and that my mother could be a philosophical zombie. This is entirely possible, but since it's empirically indistinguishable from "actual" love the distinction is meaningless. I don't actually care wihch is true, and I'm not even sure it's cromulent to assign a truth value to either.
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This is what Einstein had to say about those who call him religious:
And in particular about the rumor that a Jesuit priest had debated with Einstein and converted him from Atheism (also wrong as Einstein greatly disliked being called Atheist as well).
And this is what he has to say about the word God itself
And, to round it out
His beliefs had God not as willful force beyond the universe, but as the universe itself. He sees the laws of physics not as something that God has created, but something that God is, something beyond us that we can but hope to catch a glimpse of. Something without an anthropomorphic will or mind, something that does not care for us at all. (He viewed this as important as we therefore must care for each other instead of relying on God and ignoring each other) I think you will find that while many leading scientists may, as Einstein, reject organized religion, most of them will nevertheless regard the Universe with reverence, many (including Einstein) referring to such reverence in spiritual terms. Essentially, a small and petty God preoccupied with murdering those who use their free will wrong by eating the wrong kinds of food, wearing the wrong kinds of clothes, planting crops in the wrong way, was and is inconsistent with those scientists views of the absolute majesty of creation.
At any rate, Einstein was perhaps even more displeased at those who would call him an Athiest as part of their OWN Argument from Authority. What he had to say about (loud) atheism was
He repeated such sentiment many times. Though he dislikes the Dogma of religion he does not wish to challenge believers lest he replace a (perhaps childish) belief with emptiness, saying "such a belief seems to me preferable to th
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
Having considered the matter carefully, I've come to the conclusion that a person who has dedicated a large portion of their lives to the study of climate effects knows more about the subject than I do. In fact, on further reflection, I may have to admit that I am no longer an expert on everything in the way that I was during my teenage years.
- a (former) convenience store clerk
I personally consider the possibility of God in light of discoveries related to quantum physics, relativity, evolution, math and statistics... I don't consider these to contradict the existence of God (since they strictly do not), but to explain how little we still know and to understand the tools God could use to work with.
But, God is omnipotent right? He doesn't need tools.
See how just a little thought about physics causes you to reject one of the most fundamental claims about God, his omnipotence.
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Unfortunately that is not correct. Analytic thinking is geared towards determining whether something is true or not, and belief is simply "holding a premise to be true" (thanks wikipedia for the concise definitions!). That is, belief flows from critical thinking.
Lets examine this real fast: You (I am assuming) do not believe that religions have any merit. Presumably, you have some reasons or rationale for why you arrived at that conclusion. That is, you have a belief, because you had at some point (I hope) done some critical thinking, and your chain of reasoning resulted in a belief.
Likewise, I have religious views. I have belief in certain things. I, too, have reasons for my faith, and have several reasons for why I hold them to be true.
I suppose you may disagree with the definition of belief, but I think that that is a good one and if you disagree it would be easiest if you simply clarified your definitions.
There's a different between trust and faith. I trust scientists because I can go over their data and validate their conclusions. I could even (theoretically) perform the same experiments to see if I get the same data. Believing the Bible or my priest or my religious grandma requires blind faith, because there is no data to analyse, and there are no experiments to repeat.
I'm a Christian, so if you need to instantly discount anything I have to say because of that, please go to the next article.
The biggest problem I have with arguments about belief is the conflation in English of "truth" and "fact". Often times when someone says "truth" they're really meaning to say "fact", as in "actual, provable occurrence". Facts can be measured, scaled, repeated, seen, felt, sensed, etc. Truth and falsity are terms related to the judgements we apply to both facts and non-facts. It is a fact that repeated blows to the head will cause an individual to die. Truth is that beating someone to death is bad. A story can be told that contains no facts, in other words, complete fiction, but the content of the story can contain truths. Fact-fiction and true-false are orthogonal axes because they describe different aspects of our experiences. We tend to want to align "fact" with "true" and "fiction" with "false", but that's a simple way of looking at it. More thought, whether strictly analytical or otherwise, and more experience can reveal the truth as more nuanced.
DYSWIDT?
Anyway, if you bothered to read this after the first sentence, flame away. If you just skipped to this sentence without reading the middle, you just want to argue at a kindergarten level, you doody-head.
By the taping of my glasses, something geeky this way passes
This should be of no surprise to the followers of dharmic religions, when the buddhi (intellect) is active the paramatman (God within) is inactive. This is nicely illustrated by the iconography of Kali on the body of Shiva. Here Kali (representing Language and intellect) awakes and Shiva (the God-sense) sleeps.