Analytic Thinking Can Decrease Religious Belief

Originally posted by SeekerofTruth101
Your link and the BC article is nothing more than a sleight of hand insidious play on the Creation vs Evolution theories. Man has to come from somewhere. Either you believe we are of intelligent design or came from darwin's apes.

Either you have blind faith to some religious dogma, or then you analyze the evidence for common descent, and realize that it makes sense, you know, stuff like hipbones and finger bones in whales.. sort of make sense in the context of common descend, not so much with magical creation by Allah..

Fortunately, billions around the world have more faith in our common Creator than there are those like you whom will call apes your ancestors and blindly believe scientific theories ( crystal ball gazing) as truths.

Funny how you mention blind faith, when that defines religion. Scientific theories on the other hand are all backed up by evidence. A person can of course just place blind faith on scientific theories, but it's not required since you can study the evidence for yourself. Not so with religion.. (this is the analytical part, maybe you should try what they propose in the article, e.g. do some analytical thinking, and then think about this again too..I mean e.g. the whale hipbones..)

Sooner or later, you will find out the truth, on your own free will at your own time, not mine. To debate over this cunning con attempt BS article is only a waste of time. There are far more better and insightful ATS thread on topic that goes right back to the inception days of ATS than this if one wishes to comprehend both sides of the issue honestly and sincerly.

Looks like you made up your mind about the article already, even though there's no way you have even read it, since it's going to be published only tomorrow..

Anyway, this is not evolution/creation thread. We've got enough of those already..

Originally posted by rhinoceros
We've got enough of those already..

This is why I usually avoid threads that have to do with biology or theology, unless it's obfuscated with technical jargon to turn away the trolls.

There really should be a new law to rank alongside Godwin's that says the longer a debate about the philosophy of science continues, the higher the probability that it will turn into evolutionism vs. creationism.

You guys really think it takes more critical and analytical thinking to blindly believe a certain religion because you were told to as a kid, than to research all the religions and come to a decision on your own? Remember the study is on religion, NOT belief in god. The study is obviously apparent, and is like saying the sky is blue. Of course the more you analyze stuff like great flood, talking snakes, heaven and hell, etc etc, the more you realize its unrealistic. That doesn't mean god is unrealistic, just man's ridiculous descriptions of him. Most rational creationists already know this and don't take the bible and other religious doctrine literally.

At the end of the day, everyone 'believes' in something whether it is in God, or in science.

The very definition of 'Religion' is 'details of belief as taught or discussed' and since the 'belief' in science and/or God is actually the same thing (i.e. a religion)... Both sides are actually arguing about the same thing rendering each sides arguments as null.

This comes to mind...

So many people seem to like this article.

The irony with this comes into play in that, regardless of personal experiences and experiences of other people, many who see this article will declare that those who believe in the supernatural or are relatively open to anything outside the realm of mainstream science to be lacking in analytical thinking skills.

reply to post by SeekerofTruth101

Your link and the BC article is nothing more than a sleight of hand insidious play on the Creation vs Evolution theories. Man has to come from somewhere. Either you believe we are of intelligent design or came from darwin's apes.

So...you don't believe in evidence? Do you believe in gravity? Or that chemical's exist?

Or do you think it is perfectly reasonable to believe that fire is actually an elemental spirit, or that we live of the back of a turtle shell?

Science is not about belief it is about facts. Things that can be backed up and observed, either by physical evidence (such as fossils) or by repeatable experiment. Science rarely gets stuff wrong especially in the modern day, we do however expand on our science. That is one of the most amazing things about it, we find something and then years later we go "Wait! There is more" this is a common trend when studying the seemingly infinite complexity of the universe.



This is part 1 of a 7 part interview which I like to call "Richard Dawkins would rather be banging his head against the wall."

that's odd, analytic thinking increases my belief in God.

Here's one of the experiments from the article (not open access):

In study 5, we used a still more subtle experimental manipulation that did not even require participants to perform an initial task to activate analytic thinking. We relied on cognitive disfluency, which is known to trigger analytic thinking strategies (18, 19). For example, in previous research, merely presenting information in a difficult-to-read font improves performance on multiple standard tasks used to evaluate analytic thinking in dual-process research, including syllogistic reasoning and the analytic thinking task used in study 1 (18, 19). We capitalized on these established findings by having participants rate their religious beliefs on a questionnaire presented in fonts pre-rated by a separate group of participants (20) as either typical (N = 91; sample) or difficult-to-read (N = 91; sample). As hypothesized, analytic thinking activated via disfluency significantly increased religious disbelief [t(177) = 2.06, P = 0.04, Cohen’s d = 0.31; Table 2]. As in study 4, individual differences in pre-experiment religious belief did not moderate the effect of analytic thinking on religious belief (F < 0.05, P = 0.96) (20). Additional alternative explanations focusing on experimental artifacts introduced by the disfluent font did not receive empirical support (20).

It's quite trippy idea, that something like this can affect religious belief at least momentarily. The human mind sure is amazing..

What amazes me is that its an issue.
Science has no effective foundation outside of the religious big band and abiogenesis. Magic in reality.

Aside from that every Christian should admit that the bible is a book of amazing story, in fact its not unchristian to question it.

Dawkins is a brick wall far more evangelical and religious as an atheists than most Christians.
Christianity is a faith of revelation within the Holy Spirit. It is revealed through Jesus and the Spirit.

The human body is like a telephone network. Its all good in theory but the truth is how does the body communicate a message, where does the receiver and communicator get the common language from.
Analytical thinking decreases scientific theory

reply to post by circlemaker

Heh, I was very devout but ended up converting myself away while trying to learn more about my religion. Funny how that works.

Same thing happened to me.. i was trying to learn more about christianity when i realized it was all a load of crap. i started thinking reasonably and then i decided the bible is most certainly not true..

Thank god for science.
or rather, thank science for science

Originally posted by rhinoceros

Originally posted by someguy0083
I'm a bit confused. Europe is considered to be predominantly atheist which according to this study should mean that Europe should be the smartest and should create billions of innovative creations.

Which part of the article said something like that?

Yet the US is largely considered more innovative than europe. Considering that the US created most of what the "civilized world" uses.

CITATION NEEDED. I think, out of any country, the UK has contributed the most to the civilized world. Nowadays, USA is the top player (soon it will be China) due to "brain import", large population, etc.

What Britain added to the world:

Using speculative trading to drive up food prices(caused the deaths of millions of people in India so London could get fat; the British are now using the same trick with oil, to ensure that Britain has access to cheap American oil while American's freeze).

Concentration Camps.

Britain was the first nation to develop concentration camps during their wars with the Boers( a peaceful people that didn't even have a standing army until the British invaded).

The only thing the UK contributed to on a global scale is widespread raping, looting/pillaging and in many cases outright genocide.

Originally posted by someguy0083
reply to post by rhinoceros

 

I'm a bit confused. Europe is considered to be predominantly atheist which according to this study should mean that Europe should be the smartest and should create billions of innovative creations. Yet the US is largely considered more innovative than europe. Considering that the US created most of what the "civilized world" uses.

But the US is considered to be religious.

So why isn't europe pumping out all of its inventions?

How does America have so many Nobel laureates, but has one of the worst education programs known to science? The H1B genius visa.
Even though our high school system graduates generations of near-illiterate students, the big thinkers of the world are rewarded in the American system.
We cannot continue to depend on foreign scientists. One thing is for sure, they are not going to come from Indiana were their senate passed a bill on teaching creationsim in public schools = epic fail.

reply to post by rhinoceros


strange how someone who thinks analytically would allow innocent people to be slaughtered in libya

Thank "Dog" for analytical thinkers!

Originally posted by Openeye
reply to post by SeekerofTruth101

 

Your link and the BC article is nothing more than a sleight of hand insidious play on the Creation vs Evolution theories. Man has to come from somewhere. Either you believe we are of intelligent design or came from darwin's apes.

So...you don't believe in evidence? Do you believe in gravity? Or that chemical's exist?

Or do you think it is perfectly reasonable to believe that fire is actually an elemental spirit, or that we live of the back of a turtle shell?

Science is not about belief it is about facts. Things that can be backed up and observed, either by physical evidence (such as fossils) or by repeatable experiment. Science rarely gets stuff wrong especially in the modern day, we do however expand on our science. That is one of the most amazing things about it, we find something and then years later we go "Wait! There is more" this is a common trend when studying the seemingly infinite complexity of the universe.

This is part 1 of a 7 part interview which I like to call "Richard Dawkins would rather be banging his head against the wall."

edit on 27-4-2012 by Openeye because: (no reason given)

edit on 27-4-2012 by Openeye because: (no reason given)

I wonder why eugenics was never used. It's supported by science that persons with certain genes have a high probability of passing on to its children.Yet for some odd reason we still allow these individuals to procreate and transfer their genetic defects to their child.

I wonder why Dawkins isn't a big supporter of killing these people off

'Reason is the Devil's whore'. This famous quote comes from Martin Luther the reformer.. any theist who follows by this is definitely not an analytical thinker.. religion is not necessary.. it's time we as a species abandon it.

Religion is our first attempt at explaining things, and because it's our first, it's our worst.

I've found that I hate everything after picking everything apart. Like a radio, take it apart, okay you have a bunch of parts, but what does it do? Well, nothing, you just took it apart and it lost its value as a radio.

That's probably why I hated English too. Diagramming sentences. Putting every word on a line. After the diagonals and the long lines and short lines and branches, what do you have? Nothing. It's not even a sentence anymore, just a blob of lines with words. So what does it do? It keeps you busy looking at pieces instead of the whole thing.

The start of analysis is doubt. Perception doubt? Who is going to analyze this? Hairsplitting. Dividing by zero?

Originally posted by AnIntellectualRedneck
So many people seem to like this article.

The irony with this comes into play in that, regardless of personal experiences and experiences of other people, many who see this article will declare that those who believe in the supernatural or are relatively open to anything outside the realm of mainstream science to be lacking in analytical thinking skills.

Why does everyone think analytical thinking is somehow BETTER than intuitive thinking?

A FBI agent wrote a book called The Gift of Fear. It was about encouraging women to follow their INSTINCTS when it comes to their safety.

Intuitive thinking could very well be the way we pick up "signals" that science has not yet become advanced enough to discover. Think about all the work in nonverbal communication. Before these studies people (often women) would get a very specific message from a conversation that didn't come from the specific words. These was often called women's intuition. Now there's studies to prove women are much better at picking up nonverbal signals than men.

A spiritual belief could be a certain part of the body picking up (or connecting) with something "real".
This also fits in with the new info coming from physics.

Originally posted by TheCelestialHuman
'Reason is the Devil's whore'. This famous quote comes from Martin Luther the reformer.. any theist who follows by this is definitely not an analytical thinker.. religion is not necessary.. it's time we as a species abandon it.

Religion is our first attempt at explaining things, and because it's our first, it's our worst.

Actually science is the first attempt at explaining things and it has been wrong many, many times.

Moral (or spiritual or religious) views aren't supposed to be based solely on reason.

Think about murder. If you start to analyze it, you could very well come to the conclusion it's fine to murder mass amounts of people based on genetics. Based on "moral" beliefs, it's wrong whether or not there's a greater good.

reply to post by someguy0083


You're kidding right? Europe has been at the cutting edge of *most* (not all, granted!) modern developments since the renaissance. I'll fully admit that the US, like China, has the foremost ability to bring a product to market by copying the designs of others and manufacturing them en masse or utilising their funding capabilities to develop a product further for consumption.

It is sadly true that Europe has a woefully backward financial support infrastructure for developments and this is where the misnomer probably comes from. Generally, our innovations *are* taken to nations like the US that can/will provide financial backing.

However, innovation is 'built-in' to the developed nations of Europe and has nothing to do with the education system per se. It is part of the cultural make-up that makes us ask "what if". England and Germany are excellent examples of this state of mind. England has some of the best 'garden shed' inventors in the World let alone Europe.