Religious people find it harder to understand the world – study [View all]

[trotsky]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2016/10/26/religious-people-find-it-harder-to-understand-the-world--study/

...Researchers from the University of Helsinki surveyed 258 people about their beliefs, and whether they thought "there exists an all-powerful, all-knowing, loving God."

Respondents were also asked to complete tasks including matching rotated images together, and solving mechanical and physics-based problems.

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Researchers claim their results show that supernatural beliefs correlated with “low systemizing, poor intuitive physics skills, poor mechanical ability, poor mental rotation, low school grades in mathematics and physics, poor common knowledge about physical and biological phenomena, intuitive and analytical thinking styles, and in particular, with assigning mentality to non-mental phenomena.”

Study authors Marjaana Lindeman and Annika Svedholm-Häkkinen suggest that, when people don’t understand the physical world, they tend to apply human characteristics to the wider universe, “resulting in belief in demons, gods, and other supernatural phenomena”.