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April 26th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda THURSDAY, April 26 (HealthDay News) — A new study links
analytical thinking — whether it’s a natural state or temporarily coaxed
by researchers — to less belief in religion.
Making people think in an analytical fashion didn’t have a huge impact
on how they saw the world, but the impact was still noticeable, said study
lead author Will Gervais, a graduate student in psychology at the
University of British Columbia, in Canada.
“We didn’t have participants enter as devout believers and leave as
committed atheists. Instead, we saw that analytic thinking produced
subtle, but reliable, effects on disbelief,” he said.
The researchers launched the study to gain a better understanding of
how people make choices about religion, Gervais said. “A comprehensive
understanding of religion needs to accommodate the hundreds of millions of
nonbelievers in the world. If you want to take a serious approach to
understanding religion, you need to study the factors that promote both
belief and disbelief,” he said.
In one of several experiments, Gervais and a colleague gave tests to
179 Canadian undergraduate students, all designed to detect how analytical
and religious they were.
The test that measured analytical skills asked questions that required
brainpower to figure out that the answers weren’t the immediately obvious
ones. For instance: “A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs
$1 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?” (The correct answer
is 5 cents, not 10 cents.)
The researchers found that those who were more analytical — judged by
their ability to override intuition — were more likely to be
nonbelievers.
Next, the study authors wanted to figure out if priming people to be
analytical would affect their responses to questions about religion. They
launched a series of experiments that they said revealed the power of
coaxing people to be analytical. For example, they forced participants to
think about words or consider either a neutral artwork or depictions of
Rodin’s “The Thinker.” Then they asked about religious beliefs.
One possible response on religious beliefs was: “When people pray they
are only talking to themselves.”
“Subtly triggering analytic thinking tends to promote religious
disbelief,” Gervais said.
The experiments didn’t produce layperson-friendly statistics about the
influence of being analytical. “Unfortunately, our analyses don’t yield
nice, punchy numbers,” Gervais said.
In the big picture, however, the study results “lend further support to
the idea that religious beliefs persist in part because people find them
intuitive,” he said. “But people can also analytically override their
intuitions, and this is one source of religious disbelief in the
world.”
Michael Nielsen, a department chair of psychology at Georgia Southern
University who studies religion and is familiar with the study findings,
said they offer “intriguing evidence that critical thinking in general is
associated with lower levels of belief.”
Why does the study matter? “It continues a growing body of research
showing that simply being exposed to information, words, and other stimuli
does have an effect on people’s attitudes and behavior,” Nielsen said.
“Second, and more importantly, it offers a sensible account of how people
might come to be irreligious.”
The studies are published in the April 27 issue of the journal
Science.
While the study found an association, it did not prove that analytical
thinking affects religious belief.
More information
For details about how spirituality can affect your health, visit the
Nemours Foundation.
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