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[scriver]

The most interesting part was the one about the picture of the Thinker. I wonder if putting such a statue in the doorway to schools would affect the pupils' learning rate.

[GalenEvil]

@alway: I could read your entire post perfectly well, but then again I answered the 5 things making 5 things question in the OP immediately with the correct answer immediately, so I don't think that it will work entirely well for those of us that are highly analytical. Though, it was a little easier to breeze through your second sentence than the first, so maybe you are onto something.

@EveryZig: That second quote is one of my favorites from the entire series used it in a term paper once, in context, and then managed to explain it in a way that made even more sense. Got an F on the paper though because of a heavily biased teacher

I guess this study proves that my parent's shouldn't have raised me to be as analytically minded as I am

[Leafsnail]

See here.  I've seen quite a few people somewhere along that path.

For this reason, Abraham is rightly exalted. It was truly an act of heroic faith.
...
Achieving this level of faith is the essential goal of all Christians, and for that matter, it is for Muslims and Jews as well.

What the fuck.

No, this is horrible.  I sincerely hope that this guy is wrong and it is not the "essential goal" of all people who follow Abrahamic religions to have so much "faith" that they'd kill their children if a voice in their head told them to.  That is definitely not "heroic" in any way, and to imply actively assert that it is is horribly irresponsible considering that people DO in fact kill their children in this way sometimes.

I guess I should point out that I considered the possibility it's a parody but discarded it when I found there was no funny or parodic element to it when read in that way.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

On the other hand, western culture has over-idealised analytic thinking for some time. Humans are quite perceptive and naturals at spotting correlations, even if they lack analytical rigor: lots of useful observation can be passed on via faith/superstition/tradition. It just pays to check those against new evidence from time to time.

Humans are indeed skilled at spotting correlation. In fact, we are too good at seeing correlation and have this nasty tendency to make connections where none exist. We are also notoriously bad at discovering causation without the use of analytical thought. I might remind you of how many years and how many crazy hypotheses it took us to arrive at the Germ Theory of Disease.

Could you pass down useful traditions through use of faith and superstition? Maybe. But that doesn't actually ever happen, because the only things this happens to are things we didn't know enough about in the first place. Actually discovering the truth requires analytical thinking, and by that point society is just better off adopting it as a whole so that we don't stray from the truths we've uncovered.

[Funk]

if you are raised to view say the bible as fact then yes Analyticy about it can shake your Belief in it.
view it as a anagogy not as a allegorical text.

i.e. the Feeding the multitude the allegorical view has Jesus makeing more food some how, the anagogy has the act of shareing the food feed every one.

[The Fool]

I hate when people reject facts when it conflicts with their religion. No one says that evolution can't be true when paired with creationism. It just means that whatever happened took a long time to get where it is today. It's less 'glorious' then something described in a religious text, but it still works. You can have your religious cake and eat it too, but it might not be as sweet as you thought.

I personally have a bit of a chimeric belief system from a couple different religions. I'm not really sure if you can even call it a religion so much as a belief system.

[Deathworks]

Hello!

Allow me to start with saying "Sigh"...
I am an atheist myself with agnostic awareness and this study hits in with just one of my major pet peeves: false claims about points proven.

First of all, I would like to see that "belief test" which is able to prove how much faith a person has. People's responses can be influenced by many things, like prestige, so I am wondering about the influence of "The Thinker". I mean, you show that image to a person and then offer them some choice that obviously (?) runs counter to that image which may be considered prestigious, due to the balance of power between tester and participant.

Secondly, depending on the test, its results may also be influenced by the "doubt" people have. "Doubt" as such is a part of faith, the insecurity which is at the core of all our fundamental beliefs. None of us were around to watch God create the world, or witness the Big Bang, or whatever explanation we favor, so no one knows for sure, and thus, there is always "doubt" (also with atheists).

Third, as has been hinted by some posts, materialism/athesim is not way beyond religious belief. The structure and style may be different, as well as some standard elements, but in the very end, as mentioned under secondly, its about things we can't verify ourselves.

Going hand-in-hand with this last point, analytical thinking is actually not the exclusive providence of atheism. You can very much use analytical thinking together with religious belief, although you need to work a little harder to get over those chains binding analytical thinking to materialism. Likewise, in the end, atheism is an intuitive belief itself - it is absolutely impossible to proof the existance or non-existance of God(s) without first defining a world which in itself already contains an assumption about the (non-)existance of deities.

Thus, I have lots of doubts about the usefulness and veracity of this "test".

Yours,
Deathworks

[cerapa]

Secondly, depending on the test, its results may also be influenced by the "doubt" people have. "Doubt" as such is a part of faith, the insecurity which is at the core of all our fundamental beliefs. None of us were around to watch God create the world, or witness the Big Bang, or whatever explanation we favor, so no one knows for sure, and thus, there is always "doubt" (also with atheists).

Isnt that the point of the results? That thinking analytically decreases peoples faith and increases their doubt in their beliefs.

But I must agree on your first point. The people being tested might have simply tried to guess what the "right answer" would be, rather than having a sudden shift in their beliefs.

[Bauglir]

Indeed, I'm often irritated by people interpreting studies on thinking in this way. Essentially, the claim seems to be that the test was definitely testing what they designed it to, which in situations like this is generally far from exact. It'd be as if somebody dropped a tennis ball and a bowling ball, and deduced thus that black objects are subject to greater gravitational force than bright green objects.

[ChairmanPoo]

But I must agree on your first point. The people being tested might have simply tried to guess what the "right answer" would be, rather than having a sudden shift in their beliefs.

Or it might be a statistical fluke, as I said earlier. High standard deviation and yet "it is the difference in the averages that tells the real story"? Come on, that just reads wrong. I think the authors were subject to confirmation bias.

Besides, the whole thing with the statues sounds silly. It wouldn't surprise me if this was another hoax like the one from a couple of years ago, in which "Internet explorer users had a lower average IQ than those using Firefox or Safari".

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Wait, wasn't that just a couple of months ago?

[DeKaFu]

Besides, the whole thing with the statues sounds silly. It wouldn't surprise me if this was another hoax like the one from a couple of years ago, in which "Internet explorer users had a lower average IQ than those using Firefox or Safari".

If so, it's a hoax that managed to get printed as a four-page article in Science. (spoilers: it's not).

[Leafsnail]

It depends on the sample size really.  Even with such a large standard deviation it would be very much statistically significant if they had like 1000 people doing the tests.

[SirAaronIII]

Wait, how do you test belief in God and angels? Do you just straight-up ask them?

[ChairmanPoo]

It depends on many things, really. A bigger sample would give more credence to the number not being random. But even then, the interpretation would still be suspect. For instance: arithmetic mean is highly influenced by standard deviation. That they zeroed on it makes me suspicious. Maybe they did because the other data is not that good?

If so, it's a hoax that managed to get printed as a four-page article in Science. (spoilers: it's not).

Wouldn't be the first time an otherwise good journal publishes a lousy article.