Los Angeles Times: Thinking can undermine religious faith, study finds

[Bolo Boffin]

19. As much as I understand this, the LA Times article is overstating what the study shows.

I want to go find a copy of the Science article to be sure, but it could also be the study itself.

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/336/6080/493

The present studies apply a dual-process model of cognitive processing to this problem, testing the hypothesis that analytic processing promotes religious disbelief. Individual differences in the tendency to analytically override initially flawed intuitions in reasoning were associated with increased religious disbelief. Four additional experiments provided evidence of causation, as subtle manipulations known to trigger analytic processing also encouraged religious disbelief. Combined, these studies indicate that analytic processing is one factor (presumably among several) that promotes religious disbelief. Although these findings do not speak directly to conversations about the inherent rationality, value, or truth of religious beliefs, they illuminate one cognitive factor that may influence such discussions.

Basically, when you engage people's analytical processing in a way that causes cognitive strain, they will score belief statements lower than they would without this strain or priming. And that's any belief statement. People will be less sure of any belief following a round of analytical thinking. If that's all this study showed, then I don't understand why it was published. That's something we already knew.