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Religious people find it harder to understand the world – study
Arcana
Posts: 37,521 Forum Member
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People with religious beliefs have a poorer grasp of the physical world than their non-believing counterparts, a new study claims.
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The study, published in Applied Cognitive Psychology, concluded that believers were less scientifically knowledgeable – evinced by their propensity to agree with statements such as “flowers are able to think” and “stones feel the cold”. They were also more likely to struggle with solving physical tasks.
Researchers claim their results show that supernatural beliefs correlated with “low systemizing, poor intuitive physics skills, poor mechanical ability, poor mental rotation, low school grades in mathematics and physics, poor common knowledge about physical and biological phenomena, intuitive and analytical thinking styles, and in particular, with assigning mentality to non-mental phenomena.”
Study authors Marjaana Lindeman and Annika Svedholm-Häkkinen suggest that, when people don’t understand the physical world, they tend to apply human characteristics to the wider universe, “resulting in belief in demons, gods, and other supernatural phenomena”.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2016/10/26/religious-people-find-it-harder-to-understand-the-world--study/
If true, interesting possible implications for the future of religious belief.
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There are lots of studies that find relationships between intelligence levels and religious belief in one way or another. I think its more likely that if someone has lower levels of insight, intelligence or problem solving skills they are more likely to be attracted to the idea of external forces making decisions in life and therefore they're more likely to respond to religious or supernatural belief systems.
Care to enlighten us what that might be, or is it a secret.
So say you, how
Does Poor Understanding of Physical World Predict Religious and Paranormal
Beliefs?
Consciously - idea first then find the emoji to encapsulate it.
Subconsciously I guess the availability or not of a relevant emoji forms part of the causality of the decision to start the thread or not.
He may have been a sceptical one. He may have even lied to keep the peace with the locals. Unless you actually knew him (you didn't) you can't really make such a bold claim.
love it
in a roundabout way, trying to tell us people who believe in gods are as thick as two short planks.
Or you could put it another way, Gods are used to fill the gaps to explain things where there is no science education.
Not news.
As a child he was, but he grew out of it. He was agnostic.
Knowledge and intelligence aren't necessarily the same. If your beliefs tell you not to doubt and question things, then you're left not applying your intelligence. It doesn't matter how intelligent you are if you don't use it.
Wasn't part of the reason of the loss of his faith down to the death of his nine year-old daughter?
And the non religous would say he was a hoaxer, charlatan. Magician etc.
Evidence cannot prove faith.
Faith is knowing something not seen, but is true.
There is no way any of this stuff can actually be "proven" in a scientific sense.
Of course those who follow it's teachings think of it as Truth.
"'I refuse to prove that I exist,' says God, 'for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.'" - Douglas Adams
"The Way to see by Faith is to shut the Eye of Reason." - Benjamin Franklin
The problem(?) is, from our point of view, everything God can allegedly do should one day be possible for us with enough understanding of science and technology, so for all intense purposes, if there was such a being, it could just as easily be an alien, or an a person (human) from the future.
Whilst true, Science is more credible a source (to the open minded) than Religion. One proposes cause and effect, the other proposes a mythical being in the sky. Which one seems more plausible?