Why People Believe in God...Maybe
I came across an interesting article today that described a study that tried to determine if there was some inner biological reason why people believe in god. You can read the whole article here, but what it boiled down to was that people who used intuitive reasoning as the basis for their decisions were far more likely to believe in a higher power than those who question their instincts and rationalize their decisions. This makes sense, and to me it's not a surprising result of the study, but there was one part that stood out to me, quoted below:
"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."
Is it me, or is a more simple way of expressing these results that people who used intuition - and therefore are more likely to believe in God - are less intelligent? "...one-and-a-half times more likely to believe in God than those who got all the answers right." Sounds like getting all wrong answers = not smart = believing in God.
Those of you who know me know whether or not I agree with that simplified statement, but I'm not bringing this up with regard to my own beliefs. I'm curious what you think about the study and my interpretation of the results of that test.