Belief in God Boils Down to a Gut Feeling

[Aught3]

For many people, believing in God comes down to a gut feeling that a benevolent deity is out there. A study now finds that gut feelings may be very important in determining who goes to church every Sunday and who avoids the pews.

People who are generally more intuitive in the way they think and make decisions are more likely to believe in God than those who ruminate over their choices, the researchers found. The findings suggest that basic differences in thinking style can influence religious belief.

"Some say we believe in God because our intuitions about how and why things happen lead us to see a divine purpose behind ordinary events that don't have obvious human causes," study researcher Amitai Shenhav of Harvard University said in a statement. "This led us to ask whether the strength of an individual's beliefs is influenced by how much they trust their natural intuitions versus stopping to reflect on those first instincts."

Shenhav and his colleagues investigated that question in a series of studies. In the first, 882 American adults answered online surveys about their belief in God. Next, the participants took a three-question math test with questions such as, "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 intuitive answer to that question is 10 cents, since most people's first impulse is to knock $1 off the total. But people who use "reflective" reasoning to question their first impulse are more likely to get the correct answer: 5 cents.

Sure enough, people who went with their intuition on the math test were found to be one-and-a-half times more likely to believe in God than those who got all the answers right. The results held even when taking factors such as education and income into account.

Makes sense. http://www.livescience.com/16151-god-belief-intuition.html

 

[Thomas Doubting]

so basically, people who believe in god are one and a half times more likely to be stupid?

 

[australopithecus]

Define 'stupid'.

 

[Laurens]

so basically, people who believe in god are one and a half times more likely to be stupid?

I don't think belief in God necessarily is something that stupid people do.

There are many intelligent, and highly educated people that believe in God.

Take Francis Collins - who headed the Human Genome project. I defy anyone to call such a person 'stupid'.

 

[Thomas Doubting]

Define 'stupid'.

"lacking ordinary quickness and keenness of mind"

@Laurens

But people who use "reflective" reasoning to question their first impulse are more likely to get the correct answer:

Well.. it said that religious people are 1 1/2 times more likely to give a really stupid answer to a simple math question.. and solve problems "with a gut feeling" which again sounds pretty stupid to me.. it gave me the impression that it was supposed to mean that people who believe in god are 1 1/2 times more likely to be... stupid. However I never presented that as a fact, or called anybody directly stupid or said that believers are stupid in general, it actually was a question to see if i got it right.

 

[CosmicJoghurt]

Makes sense. Then there are the people who don't follow their intuition only, and still get stupid answers. Oh, well


Cheers!

 

[Thomas Doubting]

Makes sense. Then there are the people who don't follow their intuition only, and still get stupid answers. Oh, well


Cheers!

Sign me up there..

 

[Laurens]

Well.. it said that religious people are 1 1/2 times more likely to give a really stupid answer to a simple math question.. and solve problems "with a gut feeling" which again sounds pretty stupid to me.. it gave me the impression that it was supposed to mean that people who believe in god are 1 1/2 times more likely to be... stupid. However I never presented that as a fact, or called anybody directly stupid or said that believers are stupid in general, it actually was a question to see if i got it right.

I don't necessarily think that being bad at maths makes one stupid. My maths is pretty bad - I hope that doesn't mean I'm stupid!

'Solving problems with gut feeling' isn't necessarily stupid either, some people think differently - it doesn't mean that they lack intelligence. I know a lot of people who act/think in a more intuitive 'gut feeling' way and I wouldn't consider them stupid - they're often perfectly intelligent, they just respond to a given situation differently.

 

[australopithecus]

"lacking ordinary quickness and keenness of mind"

Congratulations, you've just described everyone on Earth at some point in their lives. Making a mistake, such as the test subjects did, doesn't make you stupid. It makes you human. Religiosity doesn't make you any more or less intelligent, and atheism doesn't make anyone smarter. It can make people self important at times though.

My grasp of mathematics is horrendous, perhaps I do believe in God after all :roll:

 

[Thomas Doubting]

Well i just took one of the definitions from a dictionary, it obviously is an accepted description of the term "stupid", otherwise i would have used another term.
I count myself in there as well, i am sure i lack the quickness and reasoning once in a while. However.. through many studies and polls it is shown that religious indoctrination and social pressure in religious environments do have a great impact on the logical and critical thinking of a good share of humans, instead of reality checking "input", they resort to the wishful or intuitive thinking "too often", just like in this example, and it makes sense to me, if you "want" to believe all the irrational claims about god and the "magical" version of history you have to supress logic and reasoning when confronted with things which contradict your belief.. and it also makes sense to me that by doing so from early on you grow a neural foundation in your brain to support such way of thinking more often, as shown in neurotheological studies, which is why i will always stand behind my statement, that religion stupifies humanity.
Hope that makes at least a bit sense.

 

[australopithecus]

My point boils down to this: employing intuitive rather than reflective thinking and being wrong doesn't equal stupid. Putting your dick in a blender is stupid, getting a maths question wrong isn't.

 

[Thomas Doubting]

Drinking poison because of some old books, burning witches and fighting holy wars to accelerate armageddon etc sure is.. stupid to say the least.
I never heard about people doing that because they don't believe in god, which could mean that they are less likely to do so.
Also it really depends on how you define stupid.. if somebody doesn't get 1+1 right i say he is stupid, that of course is an extremely simple task, but the one used isn't so much more difficult imho.
It only takes a tiny little bit of thinking to get to the right answer, if one refuses to think or they are unable to do so, one is stupid in my book.

 

[Laurens]

Drinking poison because of some old books, burning witches and fighting holy wars to accelerate armageddon etc sure is.. stupid to say the least.
I never heard about people doing that because they don't believe in god, which could mean that they are less likely to do so.
Also it really depends on how you define stupid.. if somebody doesn't get 1+1 right i say he is stupid, that of course is an extremely simple task, but the one used isn't so much more difficult imho.
It only takes a tiny little bit of thinking to get to the right answer, if one refuses to think or they are unable to do so, one is stupid in my book.

Who is saying religious people can't get 1+1 right?

 

[Thomas Doubting]

No clue, if you think i did, i'd say you have to read my post again.

 

[Squawk]

How do we control for lack of critical thought amongst the religious? Clearly when it comes to religious claims the religious have a blind spot when it comes to critical thought (how else can they cling to religion), but why should that spill over into other areas of life? Francis Collins has been mentioned in this thread as a man who can clearly think critically whilst holding an idiotic proposition as true in his mind.

It could simply be that a mind prone to accepting religious indoctrination is already tuned to accepting claims without critique. I don't know how we control for acceptance of non-relgious claims accepted uncritically and blame religion for the acceptance. Perhaps the religious people were naturally more prone to that type of (lack of) reason.

 

[Laurens]

No clue, if you think i did, i'd say you have to read my post again.

Well you were defending your charge that religion often makes people stupid (1 1/2 of the time I believe you said). And In giving your definition of stupid you said:

if somebody doesn't get 1+1 right i say he is stupid, that of course is an extremely simple task, but the one used isn't so much more difficult imho.

The article doesn't say religious people couldn't get 1+1 right, it says that in a question designed to separate intuitive thinkers from logical thinkers those who answered with the intuitive 10 cents were more likely to be religious.

The task used is a lot different to 1+1, because the way you would intuitively answer the question is different from the actual answer (which is why they used it I assume) I can see why people would get this question wrong, I honestly don't think it is quite the same as getting the most elementary arithmetic question you could think of wrong. The question is deliberately worded in a way that would trick some people.

 

[Thomas Doubting]

Well you were defending your charge that religion often makes people stupid (1 1/2 of the time I believe you said). And In giving your definition of stupid you said:

Laurens, please try to not interpret too much into what i say.. i never said that religious people can't get 1+1 right, or that they are all stupid etc. I really don't understand why i get so drastically misunderstood sometimes.. i said, actually asked if, that can be interpreted so that religious people are 1 1/2 times more likely to be stupid (actually act stupid, as Einstein said we are all stupid, i think some people just hide it a bit better than others most of the time)

And i don't know about you, but when it comes to math, all it takes to know if my answer is correct is to well.. verify my answer..
If you say the bat is 1 $ more expensive than the ball, assuming that the bat costs 1$ would mean that the ball costs 10 cents, If you go from there you see that the difference between the two is 90 cents so you need to get to a result where the sum is still 1.10$ but the bat costs 1$ more.
Much easier would be to deduct 1 dollar from the 1.10$ and then divide the rest by 2.
But no matter how you do the math, all it takes is a bit of thinking to see if your answer is correct and like i said, for me it is stupid if somebody refuses to give their intuitive thoughts some logical scrutiny.
What i actually want to say is that just following your gut feeling without giving the resulting thoughts any further critical thought is stupid.. at least.. could even be dangerous at times.

How do we control for lack of critical thought amongst the religious? Clearly when it comes to religious claims the religious have a blind spot when it comes to critical thought (how else can they cling to religion), but why should that spill over into other areas of life? Francis Collins has been mentioned in this thread as a man who can clearly think critically whilst holding an idiotic proposition as true in his mind.

It could simply be that a mind prone to accepting religious indoctrination is already tuned to accepting claims without critique. I don't know how we control for acceptance of non-relgious claims accepted uncritically and blame religion for the acceptance. Perhaps the religious people were naturally more prone to that type of (lack of) reason.

I am afraid you are right.
Why it should spill over into other areas of life? Sure depends on how much one trains their brain.. the problem with the brain is that it grows connections whether they support good or bad thinking.
If you use to fool yourself into rejecting reality and often resort to wishful and intuitive thinking, your brain will grow a foundation to support that, the younger the person who does that is, the more their brain grows a neural web with connections to avoid logical thinking, to avoid a critical/reality check.. but i spammed enough about that in other threads and wasted enough time, don't expect walls of text and studies about that here.. i am far from being an expert, but i often read and thought about such things, i hold religions for something really dangerous and something that is still damaging humanity in several ways, especially when it comes to stupifying.
If you really want to know more about the neural connections and how they affect daily situations and belief systems, look a bit into neuropsychology and neurotheology and if you want to know more about intuitive thinking and some of the resulting problems for adults, i would recommend this little article

 

[Laurens]

Well you were defending your charge that religion often makes people stupid (1 1/2 of the time I believe you said). And In giving your definition of stupid you said:

Laurens, please try to not interpret too much into what i say.. i never said that religious people can't get 1+1 right, or that they are all stupid etc. I really don't understand why i get so drastically misunderstood sometimes.. i said, actually asked if, that can be interpreted so that religious people are 1 1/2 times more likely to be stupid (actually act stupid, as Einstein said we are all stupid, i think some people just hide it a bit better than others most of the time)

And i don't know about you, but when it comes to math, all it takes to know if my answer is correct is to well.. verify my answer..
If you say the bat is 1 $ more expensive than the ball, assuming that the bat costs 1$ would mean that the ball costs 10 cents, If you go from there you see that the difference between the two is 90 cents so you need to get to a result where the sum is still 1.10$ but the bat costs 1$ more.
Much easier would be to deduct 1 dollar from the 1.10$ and then divide the rest by 2.
But no matter how you do the math, all it takes is a bit of thinking to see if your answer is correct and like i said, for me it is stupid if somebody refuses to give their intuitive thoughts some logical scrutiny.
What i actually want to say is that just following your gut feeling without giving the resulting thoughts any further critical thought is stupid.. at least.. could even be dangerous at times.

Well the reason I interpreted it that way is because you're talking about religious people and in the same paragraph you say that in your opinion someone who can't add 1+1 is stupid. It's very easy to interpret what you said in that way.

Well my maths is pretty bad, I struggle with certain multiplication and division questions and such. I would not wish to be called stupid for this. It not like I refuse to give my thoughts logical scrutiny or anything, its that I genuinely have a hard time dealing with numbers.

Also the people answering the survey might have been rushed to finish (I know I would have been, I hate surveys!) and not that bothered to answer correctly as it's of little consequence - under different conditions, say a college exam the person might put more thought into it. Just because a person didn't apply critical thinking to this question doesn't mean that they wouldn't under different, more important circumstances. I don't think there is enough justification to call people stupid based on the results of the survey. Half of them were probably like 'yeah whatever 10 cents'.

I have no problem with the notion that religious people are intuitive thinkers - that makes sense to me. I do think it's a bit much to be saying that someone is stupid for failing to answer this question correctly however.

 

[Thomas Doubting]

Well the reason I interpreted it that way is because you're talking about religious people and in the same paragraph you say that in your opinion someone who can't add 1+1 is stupid. It's very easy to interpret what you said in that way.

Well my maths is pretty bad, I struggle with certain multiplication and division questions and such. I would not wish to be called stupid for this. It not like I refuse to give my thoughts logical scrutiny or anything, its that I genuinely have a hard time dealing with numbers.

Also the people answering the survey might have been rushed to finish (I know I would have been, I hate surveys!) and not that bothered to answer correctly as it's of little consequence - under different conditions, say a college exam the person might put more thought into it. Just because a person didn't apply critical thinking to this question doesn't mean that they wouldn't under different, more important circumstances. I don't think there is enough justification to call people stupid based on the results of the survey. Half of them were probably like 'yeah whatever 10 cents'.

I have no problem with the notion that religious people are intuitive thinkers - that makes sense to me. I do think it's a bit much to be saying that someone is stupid for failing to answer this question correctly however.

My math is pretty bad too, not because i don't understand it, but because i am too lazy to crunch formulas.. and i do find that to be stupid, i have no problem with being stupid, it is part of humanity, i do however have a problem with acting stupid too often and with people who do that.
I find it stupid to not be critical about what you think or believe.. If you don't think about the results you get in math, that is pretty stupid and like i said, i think it is really easy to realize that your answer is wrong in that very simple example, i used the easiest example in math just as a comparison, if an adult can't get 1+1 right, that would be dangerously stupid, the other example is not THAT much more difficult, well maybe you can't get the correct answer within a short time, but i refuse to believe that you can't, within just a few seconds, realize that your 10c answer is wrong, even with most basic mathematics, by subtracting the result you got for the ball from the result you got for the bat and realizing that the difference is not 1$ but 90c. For me that clearly shows that the persons were not willing or able to think about it properly and as sorry as i am, i find that stupid.

Now lets go a step further.
If you reject evolution and other facts, it most likely means you are not willing to think about it properly and analyse the provided facts or even look for them, because of your pre-set beliefs or because of intuitive thinking or whatever.. just like thinking that the big bang was mentioned in some incoherent moronic verses in a book which says that the earth is flat etc.. and then refuse to realize that it's bullshit and reject anything that would disprove your claim, which in my opinion is stupid.
In those cases i can clearly ignore your argument that they didn't have enough time to think about it but instead simply didn't think about it properly which is.. stupid.

I try to be honest enough to admit when i don't know something and try to be reasonable enough to think about what people tell me and about my answers, be it math or whatever. No answer is sometimes better than a stupid answer.
Even more stupid (imo) is to fool oneself to think that you know something that you just believe and reject any refutation no matter how demonstrably wrong you are.
If somebody does that with something as crucial as belief in God, the "magical history of the universe" etc, with living your life according to "divine" teachings no matter how cruel or idiotic they are... like taking a sharp stone and mutilating the genitals of your children, even though your neighbor's son or daughter died because of that few months ago due to a horrible infection.. (also applicable to the modern world), what makes you think some or many of them won't do the same when it comes to other things, maybe even very important things which you should rather think about properly? Like voting for example, instead of critically thinking about the candidates, you go by gut feeling. "oh look that guy has a nice smile, looks honest to me" or "well the other candidate is not a catholic" and set your X based on such reasoning..
Sounds utterly stupid to me, and trust me, there are people who think like that, i did hear such reasons quite a few times now, or much worse than that.
I already showed you how Mr. Bush "reasoned" when it came to the Iraq war and other things.

My faith frees me. Frees me to make the, decisions that others might not like. Frees me to do the right thing, even though it may not poll well. Frees me to enjoy life and not worry about what comes next.

I am not saying that Saddam's dictatorship should have been ignored, but i'll gladly interpret his reasoning for you again.

My gut feeling frees me. Frees me to do whatever i think is right no matter how demonstrably wrong it is. Frees me even to think whatever i do is right even though people who i should work for would disagree. Frees me to not give a fuck and just use my gut feeling to justify all my actions.

This study showed that religious people are 1 1/2 time more likely to use their "gut feeling" instead of logic and reasoning, what through my (maybe perverted) logic came down to thinking that religious people are 1 1/2 times more likely to be/act stupid, or even dangerous.
But instead of stating that as a fact i put it as a question to see if i am the only one who thinks like that and to see what others think, which should prove the critical analysis of my (apparently provocative) thoughts.
But I never called all religious people stupid and sure didn't claim them to not be able to think critically, would be great if you wouldn't read between the lines when there is no need to do so.

 

[Laurens]

My math is pretty bad too, not because i don't understand it, but because i am too lazy to crunch formulas.. and i do find that to be stupid, i have no problem with being stupid, it is part of humanity, i do however have a problem with acting stupid too often and with people who do that.
I find it stupid to not be critical about what you think or believe.. If you don't think about the results you get in math, that is pretty stupid and like i said, i think it is really easy to realize that your answer is wrong in that very simple example, i used the easiest example in math just as a comparison, if an adult can't get 1+1 right, that would be dangerously stupid, the other example is not THAT much more difficult, well maybe you can't get the correct answer within a short time, but i refuse to believe that you can't, within just a few seconds, realize that your 10c answer is wrong, even with most basic mathematics, by subtracting the result you got for the ball from the result you got for the bat and realizing that the difference is not 1$ but 90c. For me that clearly shows that the persons were not willing or able to think about it properly and as sorry as i am, i find that stupid.

Being bad at maths is not an indication of low intelligence. You could be an incredibly intelligent and lack skills in one specific area. As I understand it Einstein was dyslexic - was he an idiot because his spelling was bad? I don't think you can judge someone's intelligence based upon how they answer maths questions alone - someone could be a brain surgeon, but terrible at maths... Your charge that inability to answer this question makes you stupid is completely unfounded.

Secondly as I stated, getting the baseball/bat question wrong is not the same as getting 1+1 wrong. The test was specifically designed to separate intuitive thinkers from rational thinkers, the question was meant to trip certain people up. Thinking intuitively is not the same as being a stupid person.

As I also mentioned - which you ignored, is the fact that people probably aren't going to spend ages fretting about this question in a simple online survey. I could see myself giving a stupidly wrong answer in a survey that had no consequence whatsoever. If this was a college exam or something, people might have been inclined to think longer about their answer and realise their mistake. In the context of an online survey, its easy to see how someone would put down the first answer they think of and move on without checking it - even people who would be more careful in other situations.

I simply don't understand how you are deriving that all these people are stupid based upon this alone. The article doesn't mention this, it's something you have conjured up from it.

Now lets go a step further.
If you reject evolution and other facts, it most likely means you are not willing to think about it properly and analyse the provided facts or even look for them, because of your pre-set beliefs or because of intuitive thinking or whatever.. just like thinking that the big bang was mentioned in some incoherent moronic verses in a book which says that the earth is flat etc.. and then refuse to realize that it's bullshit and reject anything that would disprove your claim, which in my opinion is stupid.
In those cases i can clearly ignore your argument that they didn't have enough time to think about it but instead simply didn't think about it properly which is.. stupid.

Not all religious people are creationists, I'd say that creationists are in fact a minority among the religious (a minority with a very loud voice).

Intelligent people often spend a lot of time rejecting things that disprove their claims - it's not something exclusive to religious people. Sir Fred Hoyle for example, spent his career denying the big bang theory despite ever mounting evidence in favour of it. I for one would not call him a stupid person. I think its a universal human trait to desire to cling to an idea even if evidence is mounting against it, and I think its something that happens to all of us from time to time - it's not synonymous with stupidity.

I don't deny that some people didn't think about answering that question properly. I don't deny that some people would have got it wrong even if they had half an hour to think about it. Some atheists also would have got it wrong, some religious people would have got it right.

I just want to know how you can judge those people stupid based upon the fact that they answered a maths question intuitively rather than logically. You don't have any other information about those people, other than the fact that this test indicates that they think intuitively - something which does not equal stupid by any stretch of the imagination. The fact that you are deriving information from these results that is not indicated within them, or the article demonstrates a lack of critical thinking on your part in my opinion.

I try to be honest enough to admit when i don't know something and try to be reasonable enough to think about what people tell me and about my answers, be it math or whatever. No answer is sometimes better than a stupid answer.
Even more stupid (imo) is to fool oneself to think that you know something that you just believe and reject any refutation no matter how demonstrably wrong you are.

Once more, the question was designed to separate intuitive from rational thinkers. Not a stupid test. It doesn't show how unreasonable people are, most of the people would probably realise what they did wrong if someone told them, and understand the logic behind it. Most of the people probably wouldn't fool themselves into believing that their answer was right after you showed them that it was wrong. You can't derive that these people are stupid, unreasonable, or unwilling to admit when they are wrong from these results.

That does not mean of course that some of the people who answered it wrong weren't like that - just that there is no way of deriving that information from these results.

If somebody does that with something as crucial as belief in God, the "magical history of the universe" etc, with living your life according to "divine" teachings no matter how cruel or idiotic they are... like taking a sharp stone and mutilating the genitals of your children, even though your neighbor's son or daughter died because of that few months ago due to a horrible infection.. (also applicable to the modern world), what makes you think some or many of them won't do the same when it comes to other things, maybe even very important things which you should rather think about properly? Like voting for example, instead of critically thinking about the candidates, you go by gut feeling. "oh look that guy has a nice smile, looks honest to me" or "well the other candidate is not a catholic" and set your X based on such reasoning..
Sounds utterly stupid to me, and trust me, there are people who think like that, i did hear such reasons quite a few times now, or much worse than that.
I already showed you how Mr. Bush "reasoned" when it came to the Iraq war and other things.

My faith frees me. Frees me to make the, decisions that others might not like. Frees me to do the right thing, even though it may not poll well. Frees me to enjoy life and not worry about what comes next.

I am not saying that Saddam's dictatorship should have been ignored, but i'll gladly interpret his reasoning for you again.

My gut feeling frees me. Frees me to do whatever i think is right no matter how demonstrably wrong it is. Frees me even to think whatever i do is right even though people who i should work for would disagree. Frees me to not give a fuck and just use my gut feeling to justify all my actions.

Answering a maths question that is designed to separate intuitive thinking from rational thinking wrong does not mean that person thinks intuitively about everything. Some do, some don't. My contention is with your viewing these results as an indication of stupidity - which they are not.

This study showed that religious people are 1 1/2 time more likely to use their "gut feeling" instead of logic and reasoning, what through my (maybe perverted) logic came down to thinking that religious people are 1 1/2 times more likely to be/act stupid, or even dangerous.
But instead of stating that as a fact i put it as a question to see if i am the only one who thinks like that and to see what others think, which should prove the critical analysis of my (apparently provocative) thoughts.
But I never called all religious people stupid and sure didn't claim them to not be able to think critically, would be great if you wouldn't read between the lines when there is no need to do so.

You're logic is flawed there is nothing in the results or the article that indicates religious people are 1 1/2 times more likely to be stupid. The answer to your question is no. The results indicate that religious people are 1 1/2 more likely to think intuitively, nothing more. Anything else you read into that is an inference that is not based in the evidence provided.

It might well be the case that religious people on average have lower intelligence, but that would require a whole other study - that conclusion is not supported by these results one bit.