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Religious beliefs are not linked to intuition or rational thinking, according to new research by the universities of Coventry and Oxford. Previous studies have suggested people who hold strong religious beliefs are more intuitive and less analytical, and when they think more analytically their religious beliefs decrease.
But new research, by academics from Coventry University's Centre for Advances in Behavioural Science and neuroscientists and philosophers at Oxford University, suggests that is not the case, and that people are not 'born believers'. The study -- which included tests on pilgrims taking part in the famous Camino de Santiago and a brain stimulation experiment -- found no link between intuitive/analytical thinking, or cognitive inhibition (an ability to suppress unwanted thoughts and actions), and supernatural beliefs.
Instead, the academics conclude that other factors, such as upbringing and socio-cultural processes, are more likely to play a greater role in religious beliefs.
[Abstract]: Supernatural Belief Is Not Modulated by Intuitive Thinking Style or Cognitive Inhibition
Would you agree with this conclusion or do you believe that there is something else that influences people's religious beliefs ?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 09 2017, @08:32PM (16 children)
Nice try. I will agree that belief in Science (capital S) causes problems since people don't do the hard work of understanding. However, if you're not on board with scientific facts then prepare to be mocked and ignored.
There is no scientific proof about the existence of God and plenty of scientists hold spiritual beliefs. Richard Dawkins is a massive douche with a superiority complex who draws rather tenuous conclusions, but unfortunately many do treat him as a priest speaking the gospel truth.
PS: " found no link between intuitive/analytical thinking, or cognitive inhibition (an ability to suppress unwanted thoughts and actions), and supernatural beliefs." It is pretty amusing that the study is basically saying the opposite of what you are so angry about.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 09 2017, @08:35PM (15 children)
How many atheists actually assert that they know for a fact that god does not exist? Even Richard Dawkins does not do that. GP's entire post seems like one huge straw man.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 09 2017, @08:43PM (11 children)
That is *literally* what atheism is. Otherwise it's agnosticism.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 09 2017, @08:45PM
You know that those two things aren't mutually exclusive, right? You can be an agnostic atheist or an agnostic theist.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 09 2017, @09:01PM
As "Rummy" Rumsfeld said about the WMDs in the Holely Land: "Absence of God is not a God of Absence". Careful what you worship, puny human! Oh, and avoid Republican Presidencies, they never turn out well.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Arik on Thursday November 09 2017, @09:24PM
No, actually, that is not even close enough for the special olympics, sorry.
"Otherwise it's agnosticism."
Nope, wrong again.
You don't have the slightest clue what you're even talking about.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 4, Informative) by fyngyrz on Thursday November 09 2017, @09:41PM (7 children)
Time for a little bit of etymology:
A - a root that means "without."
Theism - a word that means "belief in a god or gods."
Atheism - "without belief in a god or gods": a+theism
Gnostic - a word that means "knowledge."
Agnostic: "without knowledge: a+gnostic
They're two completely different balls of wax.
An atheist does not hold a belief in a god or gods. They may, or may not, assert that they know there are no gods. If you want to know which way they roll, ask them. But please stop assuming everyone is of the same stripe. It's just not so.
Knowledge is not belief, because belief is a matter of faith, and knowledge is a matter of objective reality as best one can achieve it.
Apples and Oranges. Or if you prefer, figs. Jesus of the bible was kind of a little bitch to a fig tree [biblegateway.com], though.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by maxwell demon on Friday November 10 2017, @03:56AM (6 children)
Wrong.
Knowledge is justified belief. Faith is unjustified belief. Both justified and unjustified belief are belief.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Saturday November 25 2017, @11:45PM (5 children)
You can believe that the earth is flat; but it isn't, and it doesn't matter in the least how firmly held your belief that it is flat might be.
You can know the earth is not flat. And you will be correct. But your belief in this is utterly irrelevant. This is objective reality. Knowledge is that collection of careful observations of objective reality; belief is that collection of baseless opinion on anything and everything except objective reality. Belief is a matter of faith. Faith is a matter of intentional self-deception.
Knowledge is subject to alteration as, or if, the facts change. Because knowledge is derived from objective reality.
Belief is not based on facts, only upon imagination, and so remains immune to facts, and argument based upon facts.
The Heaven's Gate people believed that the UFO was coming to pick them up. They had enormous faith in this; so much so that they terminated their lives on that basis. But they didn't know that was the case, and of course, it wasn't.
Belief and knowledge are not similar, nor are they two sides of the same coin. The former is not based upon objective reality; the latter, is.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday November 26 2017, @07:24AM (4 children)
You can believe that the earth is not flat without knowing it. If someone says the Earth is round, and you believe it because you believe (possibly quite wrongly) that the person who said it always says the truth, then your believe of the Earth not being flat is not knowledge, despite agreeing with the facts.
And no, how firmly you believe something doesn't matter; I didn't claim that. What matters is how justified your belief is. And yes, careful observation is a very good source of justification.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Sunday November 26 2017, @12:48PM (3 children)
Certainly you can. This is not knowledge. It is belief; faith. And it's irrelevant to the facts, because they weren't used to establish the POV.
Belief doesn't have to be wrong – it's just in no way assured to be right. It's mental dice-throwing.
Knowledge only comes from careful observation of, and interrelating of, objective facts. It is critical to understand what facts you have, and what suppositions are being thrust upon you. For instance, "I read it in a book" is a fact. What it said in the book, outside of most math, requires more support than characters and/or pictures on a page.
Belief arises consequent to exercise of imagination. Sans objective proof(s), It's a pathological means to establish a worldview. The basis for theistic religion is uniformly of this nature. Junkthought.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday November 26 2017, @07:03PM (2 children)
Your problem is that you always mean "faith" when you write "belief".
I think we don't disagree on the facts, we disagree on the proper meaning of the word "belief".
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Sunday November 26 2017, @10:28PM (1 child)
The usual problem is that someone doesn't understand that faith and imagination comprise the ultimate platform upon which all self-deception is built.
Doubt and retrenchment comprise the ultimate platform upon which all knowledge is built.
This is why faith leads to religion and theism, and skeptical fact seeking leads to science and technology.
Faith is bad. Belief is at best, lazy, and at worst, outright wrong. If a person can't answer the question "where's your data", they really have nothing worthy of the term "answers"... just vague handwaving. The big hammer for building a solid word view is doubt.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday November 27 2017, @06:36AM
I agree to everything but one sentence in this comment:
Which reinforces my diagnosis that out disagreement is really only about the meaning of the word "believe". Belief just means that you are of the opinion that something is true, independent on how you have come to that opinion. You may have come to that opinion by analysing the available data, then it is knowledge. You may have come to that opinion by blindly accepting something an authority told you is true, then it is faith. But in both cases, it is belief.
Note also that both knowledge and faith are prone to be wrong, and both may be right. Your knowledge may be based on false data. And your faith may come from blindly believing someone who actually has knowledge. The difference is that knowledge has a much better chance to be right than faith.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Thursday November 09 2017, @08:59PM
Come now, that is impossible and beyond belief! How could you make a man out of just one huge straw?
(Score: 2) by etherscythe on Friday November 10 2017, @06:21PM (1 child)
Richard Dawkins is relatively intelligent about his arguments, and couches his argument in terms of scientific knowledge because he is a biologist. He gets pretty close to speaking in absolutes, though; by his implications, 'not only is religion archaic and stupid, but you should consider yourself stupid for even considering it, you horrible drain on society and progress.'
There are, in fact, many outspoken atheists that "know" that there is no god out there, with just as little justification as those who wave their hands and say "I don't need proof, God's spirit reached out and touched me!" Rationality is not required to hold an opinion, even one contrary to another which is known to be often held irrationally. Some of them even advertise the fact, although they are downers and I suspect few people like to be their friends because there is no upside.
"Fake News: anything reported outside of my own personally chosen echo chamber"
(Score: 2) by turgid on Saturday November 11 2017, @05:26PM
I've been an atheist since the age of 9 when I had that "Aha!" moment. Over the years I've considered carefully many of the arguments, including God-in-the-gaps but the older I get the less agnostic I get and the more Strong Atheist I become. This is due to experience and because I am capable of understanding more nuanced argument. I'm afraid that the older I get the more that the pro-God arguments are obviously sophistry to me. Dawkins is great. He really nails things down. The Greatest Show on Earth is a magnificent popular science book.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].