FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Identity

There's No Such Thing as a 'Born Believer' Says Study

Research from the universities of Oxford and Coventry find religious beliefs are about nurture, not nature.
Image via Wiki Commons

Why are some people religious? Why are others atheists? Is it because the religious people have an overriding dependence on feelings and fear and wishful thinking? And are atheists just cold, heartless sociopaths?

Well, as often in science, the answer is a little counterintuitive. Because new research from the universities of Oxford and Coventry suggests religious belief has more to do with nurture than nature. They found that in the same way that we learn to speak a language from a young age, we also adopt a belief system, and brain wiring probably has little to do with it.

Advertisement

The study—by academics from Coventry University's Centre for Advances in Behavioural Science and neuroscientists and philosophers at Oxford University—focused on pilgrims taking part in the Camino de Santiago in northern Spain. If you’ve seen the Martin Sheen film The Way, you’d know thousands of religious pilgrims make their way along the coast to St James’ shrine in Galicia every year.

Eighty-nine people between the ages of 16 and 67 were quizzed at pilgrim hostels along the way about the strength of their beliefs and the length of time they’d spend on the pilgrimage. Then they then were asked to complete a probability task, which tested their commitment to gut feelings over logic.

As suggested in the intro, researchers found no correlation between religious belief and intuition-based judgment.

In a second part of the experiment, researchers tried to artificially turn on the part of the brain that inhibits superstitious thought. This is the right inferior frontal gyrus, which has been shown to be more active in people justifying atheism.

To do this, a low-level electric current was passed through participants’ heads, stimulating the brain. And while turning on the right inferior frontal gyrus demonstrably inhibited their emotional thinking, most participants still clung to their religious beliefs, again suggesting that superstition isnt innate.

As leading author Miguel Farias told Science Daily , “Religious belief is most likely rooted in culture rather than in some primitive gut intuition… We don't think people are 'born believers' in the same way we inevitably learn a language at an early age. The available sociological and historical data show that what we believe in is mainly based on social and educational factors, and not on cognitive styles, such as intuitive/analytical thinking.”