Summary: "Although supernatural beliefs often paint a peculiar picture about the physical world, the possibility that the beliefs might be based on inadequate understanding of the non-social world has not received research attention. In this study (N = 258), we therefore examined how physical-world skills and knowledge predict religious and paranormal beliefs. The results showed that supernatural beliefs correlated with all variables that were included, namely, 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. Regression analyses indicated that the strongest predictors of the beliefs were overall physical capability (a factor representing most physical skills, interests, and knowledge) and intuitive thinking style." http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/acp.3248/full
I think you could have suspected that to say the least :) It's very hard to be as realistic as possible. People have all kind of delusions (not only religion). We have a world we create in our head and live according to laws of that world and not of reality.
The thing that annoys me most about science communication and science in general is when people abuse it to make lazy claims.
Here is the methodology:
"Two hundred fifty eight Finnish participants (63.6% women) took part in the online study. Their mean age was 31.81 years (SD = 9.89, range 18–65). Of the participants, 38.1% were working, 44.4% were students, and 17.5% were employed in activities other than those mentioned earlier; 1.2% had grammar school education, 44.2% had vocational or upper secondary school education, and 54.5% had polytechnic or university education. Religious affiliations were none (61%), Christian (37%), or other (2%)."
Tell me if you think you can make the claim that "religious people understand the world less" from that. The title should be 'Christian Finns understand the world less compared to non-christian Finns" and even that is being lazy.
If I did a behavioural study with male and female rats and mice of various ages I would be laughed out of the room. So why so much leeway with these studies when there are so many confounding variables?
>Tell me if you think you can make the claim that "religious people understand the world less" from that.
You just quoted the demographics of the study... the argument cannot be made from just the demographics. Here is the actual claim.[1]
>The title should be 'Christian Finns understand the world less compared to non-christian Finns"
Why? Are the Finnish so different from the rest of the world that we can't accept these results? Are the Finns so far removed from the rest of humanity that we can't use them as a sample?
"The online data were collected in two stages. In the first stage, the participants were recruited via several open internet discussion forums and several student mailing lists. In this stage, data about religious and paranormal beliefs, systemizing, mechanical abilities, and core ontological confusions were collected. The rest of the data were collected 1.5 years later. The recruitment message was sent by email to all individuals who had participated in the first stage and who had given their email address for participating in further studies (N= 1537). Of them, 237 could not be contacted because of outdated email address, and 887 did not take part in the present study."
So this is a self-selecting study: the initial group of 1537 (which was self-selected) was whittled down (largely through self-selection) to the final 258 on whom the results are based. Further to that, the authors gave no information on which of the "several open internet discussion forums and several student mailing lists" they recruited or how they did that recruitment. And they made no comparison between the demographic makeup of their sample and the general Finnish population. (Probably because it would've counted against the validity of the study since, y'know, Finland isn't 63% female or 44% students.)
Basically, even Harvard graduates have problems and misunderstandings with basic concepts like the seasons.
While there's a lot of possible reasons for this, the one that I think is relevant here is that if you don't ask the questions, and already believe you know the answers, you are likely to not learn the appropriate facts, but rather continue to believe your mistaken views.
This could be taken to an extreme in religion, because really the answer to everything is God. So what need would there be for actual answers or understanding?
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[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 20.4 ms ] threadPaywalled
Here is the methodology:
"Two hundred fifty eight Finnish participants (63.6% women) took part in the online study. Their mean age was 31.81 years (SD = 9.89, range 18–65). Of the participants, 38.1% were working, 44.4% were students, and 17.5% were employed in activities other than those mentioned earlier; 1.2% had grammar school education, 44.2% had vocational or upper secondary school education, and 54.5% had polytechnic or university education. Religious affiliations were none (61%), Christian (37%), or other (2%)."
Tell me if you think you can make the claim that "religious people understand the world less" from that. The title should be 'Christian Finns understand the world less compared to non-christian Finns" and even that is being lazy.
If I did a behavioural study with male and female rats and mice of various ages I would be laughed out of the room. So why so much leeway with these studies when there are so many confounding variables?
You just quoted the demographics of the study... the argument cannot be made from just the demographics. Here is the actual claim.[1]
>The title should be 'Christian Finns understand the world less compared to non-christian Finns"
Why? Are the Finnish so different from the rest of the world that we can't accept these results? Are the Finns so far removed from the rest of humanity that we can't use them as a sample?
[1] http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/wol1/doi/10.1002/acp.3248/ful...
"The online data were collected in two stages. In the first stage, the participants were recruited via several open internet discussion forums and several student mailing lists. In this stage, data about religious and paranormal beliefs, systemizing, mechanical abilities, and core ontological confusions were collected. The rest of the data were collected 1.5 years later. The recruitment message was sent by email to all individuals who had participated in the first stage and who had given their email address for participating in further studies (N= 1537). Of them, 237 could not be contacted because of outdated email address, and 887 did not take part in the present study."
So this is a self-selecting study: the initial group of 1537 (which was self-selected) was whittled down (largely through self-selection) to the final 258 on whom the results are based. Further to that, the authors gave no information on which of the "several open internet discussion forums and several student mailing lists" they recruited or how they did that recruitment. And they made no comparison between the demographic makeup of their sample and the general Finnish population. (Probably because it would've counted against the validity of the study since, y'know, Finland isn't 63% female or 44% students.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrXaQu_qGeo
Basically, even Harvard graduates have problems and misunderstandings with basic concepts like the seasons.
While there's a lot of possible reasons for this, the one that I think is relevant here is that if you don't ask the questions, and already believe you know the answers, you are likely to not learn the appropriate facts, but rather continue to believe your mistaken views.
This could be taken to an extreme in religion, because really the answer to everything is God. So what need would there be for actual answers or understanding?