Do You Believe?

 Photo Credit: Trey Ratcliff via Compfight

It's been over a year since I posted my experiences with the "Alpha Course". Both Harry and I attended primarily to see what the motivators of Christianity were - such a large part of our society is driven by this religion, so it made sense to try and make sense of it all.


So it was serendipitous to find a recent Science article, co-published by one of our own UBC grad students, Will Gervais (with his advisor, social psychologist Ara Norenzayan). The published paper is called  Analytic Thinking Promotes Religious Disbelief.


Their experiment was to find out that if religiosity and analytical thinking were related. It turns out, they are. From the study: 

 "All they have shown, and all that can be shown, is that when you're thinking more critically you reject statements that otherwise you would endorse," Kahneman says. "It tells you that there are some religious beliefs people hold that if they were thinking more critically, they themselves would not endorse."

I still am held wondering why, in the world of technology and engineering that I come from, so many of my colleagues were deeply religious. It's as though they would "turn off" the analytical part of their brain (the part that earned them an income, and could explain how a cellular phones and rocket ships worked) when it came to religion. The study couldn't answer this one.


My theory (wait for it - it'll piss you off) - You're paid to be analytical - your working life depends on it. When you're not being paid, you let down your guard, and you set lower analytical expectations (probably unconsciously).


I expect I'll get some comments on this one....