Intuitive thinking may effect belief in God

Truthmatters

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Intuitive thinking may influence belief in God


Harvard University researchers explore link between thinking styles and faith

WASHINGTON — Intuition may lead people toward a belief in the divine and help explain why some people have more faith in God than others, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.

In a series of studies, researchers at Harvard University found that people with a more intuitive thinking style tend to have stronger beliefs in God than those with a more reflective style. Intuitive thinking means going with one's first instinct and reaching decisions quickly based on automatic cognitive processes. Reflective thinking involves the questioning of first instinct and consideration of other possibilities, thus allowing for counterintuitive decisions.

"We wanted to explain variations in belief in God in terms of more basic cognitive processes," researcher Amitai Shenhav said. "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. 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."
 
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there is a reason the republican party courts these people.
 
Ill listen to your viewpoints on beliefs in God when you actually believe in God. Let me know when that happens.

Before then, it would be like listening to someone who doesnt learn basic math try to explain the reality of calculus.
 
You know what intuition is?

It's your unconscious telling you something that it figured out before your coonscience mind has.

The unconscious mind is OFTEN right before the rational mind is.

Why?

Well for one thing the unconscious mind (aka the subconscious) isn't plagued by the fear that it may be wrong.

It takes everything you see hear smell feel or taste at face value.
 
In that case, how do you explain the fact that the Democrat Party had such a flawed ability to judge both economics and human nature, that they caused the mortgage meltdown?

Well, I would explain the Democratic Party causing the mortgage meltdown pretty much the same way I would explain how Ronald Reagan caused the OPEC oil embargo.

Regarding the OP, I think this is a statistical anomaly arising from another category that overlaps the category of "intuitive thinkers" as the quoted words define it. Belief in God would (naturally enough) be made more likely if a person has had religious/spiritual experiences than otherwise. There is, I'm pretty sure, overlap between the tendency for intuitive thinking and propensity for religious experience, so that intuitive thinkers are more likely to have religious experiences, while reflective thinkers are more likely to block that brain function along with other forms of spontaneity, making it less likely to occur.

It's also very important to distinguish between reflective thinking in the sense this article is using that phrase, and logical, disciplined, or scientifically rigorous thinking, which is not a basic personality trait but a learned skill. Someone who is good at rigorous scientific thinking may be either an intuitive or a reflective thinker, as those terms are used here. In fact, the best scientists, those most likely to achieve significant discoveries, all seem to be intuitive thinkers.
 
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You know what intuition is?

It's your unconscious telling you something that it figured out before your coonscience mind has.

The unconscious mind is OFTEN right before the rational mind is.

Why?

Well for one thing the unconscious mind (aka the subconscious) isn't plagued by the fear that it may be wrong.

It takes everything you see hear smell feel or taste at face value.

Interesting twist.
 
I think the study maybe flawed.

Would not the definition of "God" be needed to give a basis for the cases? For instance, there are other definitions of god that could lead a reflexive to think that god actually do exist while an intuitive thinker would assume that the definition, or the example, is flawed due to some more intuitive criteria that is needed to be satisfied.

For instance, if the definition of god meant "your creator" the reflexive thinker could deduce that the people that are responsible for his being are his parents and therefore his parents are god. The intuitive thinker, if presented with this example, will argue for a more detailed definition, feeling something is amiss from what was stated versus the example.

In other words, there are cases were a reflexive thinker will believe in a god and an intuitive thinker would question the definition(and possibly the existance) of a generally defined god. By leaving out this definition, we are assuming a predefined personal definition of god that may not be reflected in the study.
 
Facts should determine our path and not myth

Fact and myth are not exclusive categories, nor is there any necessary conflict between them.
so you're saying that a fact can be a myth or a myth can be a fact?
logic would dictate that since both are facts ,there would be no myths.
to extrapolate further, that would mean everything that was alleged to have happend whether it did or not would be fact.:eusa_whistle:
 
I wonder how people feel about the saying

"Good Intuition/Insight is the mark of a great scientist"

Facts are important, but Intuition helps us USE the facts to create a working models of the world around us.
 

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