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/sci/ - Science & Math

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Christians more intuitive than Athiests Anonymous Thu Sep 22 14:43:28 2011 No.3781081 [Reply] [Original]

>Belief in God Boils Down to a Gut Feeling

>For many people, believing in God comes down to a gut feeling that a benevolent deity is out there. A study now finds that gut feelings may be very important in determining who goes to church every Sunday and who avoids the pews.

>People who are generally more intuitive in the way they think and make decisions are more likely to believe in God than those who ruminate over their choices, the researchers found. The findings suggest that basic differences in thinking style can influence religious belief.

>"Some say we believe in God because our intuitions about how and why things happen lead us to see a divine purpose behind ordinary events that don't have obvious human causes," study researcher Amitai Shenhav of Harvard University said in a statement. "This led us to ask whether the strength of an individual's beliefs is influenced by how much they trust their natural intuitions versus stopping to reflect on those first instincts."

http://news.yahoo.com/belief-god-boils-down-gut-feeling-104403461.html

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 22 14:45:28 2011 No.3781087 File: 26 KB, 565x546, 1315239749389.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 22 14:46:28 2011 No.3781094 >gut feeling >physics

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 22 14:47:28 2011 No.3781098 So atheists are more rational while religious people tend to think with their stomach? tell me something new.

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 22 14:47:28 2011 No.3781100 I had a bad gut feeling the other day. It was diarrhea. I pooped and the feeling subsided.

>>	fizx !d75etXAowg Thu Sep 22 14:48:28 2011 No.3781105 >>3781081 Applying the scientific method to something the scientific method is not typically applied to is a good thing, but I'm not particularly interested in it.

>>

almostphysicist Thu Sep 22 14:49:28 2011 No.3781108

>>3781081
Intuition is a shortcut which only works reliably after experience.

If you are making "intuitive" decisions regarding subjects you have no actual experience with, you're an idiot.

The same applies to whether or not a man exists in the sky. In fact, intuition should suggest otherwise for rational people, because other things we once believed in turned out to be false (santa, easter bunny, tooth fairy).

I don't think these people think more intuitively, they just do not understand when it is appropriate to trust intuition. In other words, they're idiots.

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 22 14:51:28 2011 No.3781128 People go on gut feelings all the time in casinos. Somehow, the casinos are the ones who make money, more often than not. saged because this is on /sci/

>>

Anonymous Thu Sep 22 14:57:28 2011 No.3781171

And today my good friend Mr Statistics is here to teach us about dependent and independent variables and the effects of not correctly controlling them on studies and their results.

The bottom line is:
Being a scientist or scholar correlates heavily with atheism but also tends to heavily correleate with not making decisions based on gut feelings.

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 22 15:01:28 2011 No.3781200 Yet, rational people throughout history have believed in God. There is no reason to assume that only irrational people believe in God.

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 22 15:06:28 2011 No.3781230 >>3781200 Rational people have believed in the God of the Philosophers. Except maybe for Newton. He was very much into Sovreignty. He was also a Heretic.

>>	almostphysicist Thu Sep 22 15:17:28 2011 No.3781280 >>3781200 >>3781200 Rational people are capable of making irrational decisions.

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 22 15:18:28 2011 No.3781288 >>3781280 sounds like a contradiction. Can pretty people be ugly?

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Anonymous Thu Sep 22 15:22:28 2011 No.3781320

>Yet, rational people throughout history have believed in God. There is no reason to assume that only irrational people believe in God.
That is not the point.

As a rational person you are simply more likely to be an atheist than an irrational person by several orders of magnitude. So in any given sample the rational atheists will greatly outnumber the irrational ones.

Even if more rational theists are in your sample, there will be a larger percentage of them in the atheist camp.

I will just pull some numbers out of my ass to make it understandable. You have a sample of 100 people. This sample contains 30 rational and 70 irrational people.
You start dividing them by their religious beliefs and come up with something like this:

Atheists:
10 rational
5 irrational

Theists:
20 rational
65 irrational

As you will now realize, while there are in absolutes less rational atheists than there are rational theists, atheists are still twice as likely to be rational people than not.

>>	almostphysicist Thu Sep 22 15:22:28 2011 No.3781321 >>3781288 >>3781288 A pretty girl can style her hair and make herself look ugly. An ugly girl can put on makeup and look pretty. A person who is generally right can occasionally be wrong.

>>	almostphysicist Thu Sep 22 15:27:15 2011 No.3781351 File: 76 KB, 289x276, fdasdfasdfa.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>3781320 >>3781320 >mfw you actually have to explain that to someone This is why we have religion.

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 22 15:27:28 2011 No.3781350 There is a place for the spiritual, transcendent, numinous urge in human society. A vital place. There should be no place for the cynical exploitation of this urge, or for ignoring pathological expressions of it.