ATHEISM ??

The study was published online Nov. 8 in the journal Scientific Reports.

Original article on Live Science.

Scientists did three experiments to examine the widely accepted idea that religion is linked to intuition, as well as the lesser-held idea that religion can be explained by reason. In one experiment, 89 pilgrims taking part in the famous Camino de Santiago, or the "Way of Saint James" pilgrimage, completed a cognitive test. They answered questions about the strength of their religious or spiritual beliefs and the length of time they had spent on the pilgrimage. The pilgrims also completed probability tasks that assessed their levels of logical thinking and intuitive, or "gut feeling," thinking.

The results showed no link between religious beliefs and intuitive thinking. Nor was there a link between supernatural beliefs and analytical thinking, the researchers found.

In the second study, 37 people from the United Kingdom had to try to solve mathematical puzzles designed to measure intuition, and rated their levels of supernatural belief. But, just like the pilgrim experiment, this test found no link between levels of intuitive thinking and religious belief, the researchers found. 

Finally, the researchers looked at the brain itself. Previous research suggested that analytical thinking may inhibit supernatural beliefs. Moreover, brain-imaging studies have indicated that the right inferior frontal gyrus (rIFG), located in the brain's frontal lobe, plays a role in this inhibition. For example, a small 2012 brain-imaging study published in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience showed that this region was more active in people who had fewer supernatural thoughts.

So, the researchers who worked on the new study attached electrodes to the scalps of 90 volunteers from the general public, activating the participants' rIFGs. This activation led to a spike in cognitive inhibition, but it didn't change the participants' levels of supernatural belief. The results suggest that there isn't a direct link between cognitive inhibition (usually caused by analytical thinking, but in this case caused by electrodes) and supernatural thoughts, the scientists said.

Given these results, it's "premature to explain belief in gods as 'intuitive,'" the researchers wrote in the study. Instead, people's spirituality or religiousness likely develops based on their upbringing, culture and education, the researchers said.

"Religious belief is most likely rooted in culture rather than in some primitive gut intuition," lead researcher Miguel Farias, a lecturer and director of studies in psychology at the University of Oxford, said in a statement.

Nature versus nurture

These results back the prevailing view of religion, said Nathan Cofnas, a doctoral student of philosophy at the University of Oxford who was not involved in the study. [Saint or Spiritual Slacker? Test Your Religious Knowledge]

"[The researchers] pose a big challenge to the view that religion manifests when people turn off their analytical thinking," Cofnas told Live Science in an email.

But this study isn't the last word, Cofnas noted. Other studies show that religiosity is highly heritable. "We know from twin studies that, at least in the American population, genes tend to have a greater influence than (shared) environment on whether someone becomes religious as an adult," he said. "So, there must be some psychological mechanism that varies among people and is associated with different levels of religiosity."

In addition, atheists are generally smarter than religious people, according to studies done in the United States. "The reason for this is not entirely clear, but it's possible that more intelligent people are more likely to reject religion after a rational investigation," Cofnas said.

It's likely true that social and educational factors play major roles in a person's religious beliefs, but core cognitive dispositions may also play a part, Cofnas said.

REPLY

Since religion is practiced by highly trained, well educated people as well as primitive tribes like the San in Africa, the Maori in New Zealand and the Aborigines of Australia, one can only conclude that it is driven by a deeper sense (intuition), probably the realisation that man in himself has no power over life.

To a modern person, it may seem somewhat primitive to believe in something that cannot be seen or heard.

This is especially difficult if one is endowed with a scientific and pragmatic type of character set.

It seems that mankind has always searched for a higher power or entity to explain so many things that are even today, inexplicable.

Many religions are believed to have evolved around the search for eternal life and failing to achieve this state in the physical body, has reverted to believing that there must be life after the natural body has passed away and turned into dust by natural putrification processes. The Egyptians tried stop this process by advanced embalming but clearly failed to reincarnate any of the Pharaohs who they revered as gods in life.

It has always been difficult to observe a loved one or friend die, especially if the passing was not due to any reason that is immediately apparent.

Any person that has attended at the deathbed of someone else will be able to confirm that nothing visible leaves the body of the person and yet life ends. Everything that is required to keep the body alive is often still intact – often in such a good condition that the body is kept alive to preserve it, in the hope that by some miracle, the life force may return or that the organs may be harvested at a later stage.  Comatose patients are sometimes kept alive for years but are often totally dependent on life support. These patients are  erroneously called brain dead because no brain function can be detected by the instrumentation currently available. Clearly the brain cannot be dead as this would obviously lead to putrification of the brain tissue.

The life that is maintained thus, is not life as we would define it per sè but rather electromechanical maintenance of the bodily functions that are required to keep the body from deteriorating.

The conclusion to be made, even by highly intelligent individuals can only be that the force that sustains life or causes a body to reveal a character must be from another source – call it energy or call it God.

It seems to be a simplistic outlook but anything to the contrary being absent, one cannot really make any other conclusions.

We can copy almost all the systems required to bring about life, we can maintain bodily functions electromechanically but are yet, unable to instill life, even in a perfectly maintained body that has been declared “brain dead”. (Keep in mind that it has happened quite often that persons who have been declared brain dead, miraculously come to life after being in a vegetative state for sometimes - years.)

To state that atheists are in general more intelligent than other people seems biased to the extreme, considering the very small sample of people that are truly atheists or totally disregard any thought that life (not only physical life but the force that enables people and animals, to a lesser extent to reveal character) has a source, be it from outer space or from lightning striking some material in a primordial pond with all the necessary ingredients to bring about primitive single cell life. Keeping in mind that the chances of our DNA developing from these cells the way it did, by some random chance is only about 1 in ten quadrillion. (1/10 000 000 000 000 000 000) or put simply, infinitely slim.

Combine this with the chance that the big-bang was as exactly the right intensity to allow agglomeration of planets, suns, galaxies and the universe as we perceive it, was (as calculated by Mr Einstein, also an atheist) about one quadrillionth. (1/1 000 000 000 000 000 000). A tiny fraction in either direction would have resulted in all the matter either returning to the original position, resulting in another big bang or if it was only a fraction more intense, would have blasted all the material away with too much velocity to agglomerate. I believe that any person with the ability to perceive the enormity of the tiny fraction that all this may have come about by chance (even our highly intelligent atheist communities) will realise that some higher power, energy, deity, call it what you want, had to be part of the equation.

Mr. Einstein (an atheist) is reported to have initially fudged the calculations that he made as he realised the enormity of his discovery and was unable to admit that the probability of these two calculations excluding a higher power was impossible.

When people challenge the existence of a higher power, they must be able to at least statistically support their statements. To date, nobody has been able to so - not even Albert himself, in fact, he proved himself wrong and tried to shy away from this realisation by changing the equation. At least he had the guts to admit that he manipulated the data because he was at the time unable to marry his beliefs with the 1/10 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 (ten undecillion) fraction that it may have been chance that it was an accidental development.