Study: Supernatural Reasoning Increases With Age

Via Futurity:

As we age, we often rely more—not less—on supernatural explanations for major life events, such as death and illness, research shows. 

“As children assimilate cultural concepts into their intuitive belief systems—from God to atoms to evolution—they engage in coexistence thinking,” says Cristine Legare, assistant professor of psychology the University of Texas at Austin and the study’s lead author. “When they merge supernatural and scientific explanations, they integrate them in a variety of predictable and universal ways.” 

Legare says the findings, published in the journal Child Development, contradict the common assumption that supernatural beliefs dissipate with age and knowledge. 

“The findings show supernatural explanations for topics of core concern to humans are pervasive across cultures,” Legare notes. “If anything, in both industrialized and developing countries, supernatural explanations are frequently endorsed more often among adults than younger children.” 

The results provide evidence that reasoning about supernatural phenomena is a fundamental and enduring aspect of human thinking, Legare says. 

“The standard assumption that scientific and religious explanations compete should be re-evaluated in light of substantial psychological evidence,” Legare suggests. “The data, which spans diverse cultural contexts across the lifespan, shows supernatural reasoning is not necessarily replaced with scientific explanations following gains in knowledge, education, or technology.”

Full story here.

Faith Healing: Six Die After Church Tells Them They No Longer Need HIV Treatment

At least six HIV patients have died in Britain after their evangelical church leader told them they were cured and no longer needed treatment.

The Synagogue Church of All Nations, based in London, holds a prayer line once a month where people from across Europe come to be healed of all kinds of illnesses, Sky News reported Friday.

During the prayer line, pastors shout over the person being healed for the devil to come out of the body, while spraying water in the face.

Pastor Rachel Holmes told Sky News the church has a 100 percent success rate.

"We have many people that contract HIV. All are healed," Holmes said.

If we are to accept Holmes' miraculous claims at face value, the obvious next question would be, 'Why did those six people die?'

The church goes on to claim people who were not healed did not fully accept God would heal them.

"We must have a genuine desire if we come to God. We are not in position to question anybody's genuine desire. Only God knows if one comes with true desire. Only God can determine this," the church said.

"That is why, if anybody comes in the name of God, we pray for them. The outcome of the prayer will determine if they come genuinely or not."

The below video, from a Sky news broadcast, contains footage from the church's 'healings.'




This sort of evangelical 'healing' is an example of the many ways in which faith can impede progress, and even kill. This is only one in a long string of recent deaths related to 'faith healing.'

Each of these could have been prevented by simply taking the child to the doctor rather than relying on a supernatural intervention.

A recent study by the University of California at San Diego and a Sioux City, Iowa, group called Children's Healthcare Is a Legal Duty, concluded:

Four of every five sick children in the United States who died after their parents put their trust in faith healing could probably have survived if medical treatment had been sought, according to a study published yesterday in Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

The report, which examined 172 child deaths in faith healing families from 1975 to 1995, concluded that 140 of the deaths, or 81 percent, were due to conditions that had a survival rate exceeding 90 percent with treatment.

Eighteen other children would have had better than a 50 percent chance of living with treatment, and all but three children would have benefited from medical help, the report said.

We live in an age where medicine and technology have rendered obsolete the primitive and barbaric treatments of Biblical times. The germ theory of disease has displaced the 'need' for exorcisms, bloodletting, and trepanning. We would be fools to favor prayer over the use of antibiotic ointment in the case of a simple scratch.

And yet:

In one case cited in the report a child choked on a banana and showed signs of life for nearly an hour while her parents reacted by calling people to pray.

Michael Shermer On The Evolutionary Roots Of Political Tribalism

Science writer and historian Michael Shermer isn't afraid to make some generalizations about people and their political ideologies. We all, more or less, belong to tribes, he says, and the characteristics are fairly easy to predict:

This is why, for example, the political beliefs of members of each party are so easy to predict. Without even knowing you, I predict that if you are a liberal you read the New York Times, listen to NPR radio, watch CNN, hate George W. Bush and loathe Sarah Palin, are pro-choice, anti-gun, adhere to the separation of church and state, are in favor of universal health care, vote for measures to redistribute wealth and tax the rich in order to level the playing field and believe that global warming is real, human caused and potentially disastrous for civilization if the government doesn’t do something dramatic and soon. By contrast, I predict that if you are a conservative you read the Wall Street Journal, listen to conservative talk radio, watch Fox News, love George W. Bush and venerate Sarah Palin, are pro-life, anti-gun control, believe that America is a Christian nation that should meld church and state, are against universal health care, vote against measures to redistribute wealth and tax the rich and are skeptical of global warming and/or government schemes to dramatically alter our economy in order to save civilization.

Some might beg to differ. Certainly there are those of us who are moderate, who fit somewhere in the middle of these two ideological descriptions. Some of us may even find ourselves migrating from one side of the spectrum to the other over the course of our lifetime. But I'm willing to bet that, for the most part, Shermer is correct. We do tend to like to seek out information that supports our beliefs, while rejecting information which calls our beliefs into question. We all are guilty of drinking the kool-aid, to various degrees.

Shermer's predictions bring up two questions: 1) Why are we so prone to such tribalism? and 2) Why are these tribal affinities remain so predictable -- and so strong -- despite our unlimited access to information and our capacity for critical thought?

Shermer describes how this tribalism has evolutionary roots, and was crucial to our survival. He takes us back to our hominid ancestors who lived in small bands on the African Savanna:

There, in those long-gone millennia, were formed the family ties and social bonds that enabled our survival among predators who were faster, stronger, and deadlier than us: unwavering loyalty to your fellow tribesmen was a signal that they could count on you when needed. Undying friendship with those in your group meant that they would reciprocate when the chips were down. Within-group amity was insurance against the between-group enmity that characterized our ancestral past. As Ben Franklin admonished his fellow revolutionaries, we must all hang together or we will surely hang separately.

In this historical trajectory our group psychology evolved and along with it a propensity for xenophobia — in-group good, out-group bad. Thus it is that members of the other political party are not just wrong — they are evil and dangerous. Stray too far from the dogma of your own party and you risk being perceived as an outsider, an Other we may not be able to trust. Consistency in your beliefs is a signal to your fellow group members that you are not a wishy-washy, Namby Pamby, flip-flopper, and that I can count on you when needed.

Surely, now that we have evolved the capacity for rational thought, and live in such a racially and ideologically diverse society, we have overcome this tribal mentality, right?

Research in cognitive psychology shows, for example, that once we commit to a belief we employ the confirmation bias, in which we look for and find confirming evidence in support of it and ignore or rationalize away any disconfirming evidence.

Shermer describes a study conducted during the 2004 Bush-Kerry Presidential election. Drew Westen, a psychologist at Emory University scanned the brains of 30 men, half of which were characterized as "strong" Republicans, and half which were characterized as "strong" Democrats. These men's brains were scanned as they watched videos of both Bush and Kerry making statements which contradicted previous statements.

Not surprisingly, in their assessments Republican subjects were as critical of Kerry as Democratic subjects were of Bush, yet both let their own preferred candidate off the evaluative hook. The brain scans showed that the part of the brain most associated with reasoning — the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex — was quiet. Most active were the orbital frontal cortex that is involved in the processing of emotions, the anterior cingulate that is associated with conflict resolution, and the ventral striatum that is related to rewards. Roughly translated: we have an emotional reaction to conflicting data, rationalize away the parts that do not fit our preconceived beliefs about a candidate and then receive the positive reinforcement of a neurochemical hit, probably dopamine.

In other words, reasoning with facts about the issues is quite secondary to the emotional power of first siding with your party and then employing your reason, intelligence and education in the service of your political commitment.

Studies like these tend to show us what we already assume about human nature -- we have seen it enough in our own experiences. But understanding the science behind such instincts reminds us that, no matter how evolved we think we are, we are still, in many ways, quite primal.

The Man Who Lost His Religion To The Amazonian Pirahã Tribe

Everett with a Paraha tribesman

Many people don't understand what life would be like without religion. Those who do not subscribe to religion are often perceived as 'missing out,' or living an 'empty life.'

Most people cannot imagine what life without religion would be like simply because they have always had religion, or have always had religion around them. Their parents had religion, their grandparents had religion, and so on.

Daniel Everett was a Christian missionary and evangelist whose expertise in language led him on a mission trip where he lived among the Pirahã, a tribe of Amazon natives.

Everett's experience with the Pirahã eventually led to his rejection of Christianity, and religion in general.

Here is a wonderful clip of Everett speaking about the Pirahã, who, due to their isolation, never developed religious beliefs. This story of the Pirahã dovetails nicely with a recent University of Texas study which concluded that our brains are not predisposed to supernatural concepts. Theses concepts are gained through exposure.



Read more about Everett in the New Yorker and at The Age.

Belief in Evolution vs. National Wealth: Why Does The US Not Fit The Trend?

via Calamities of Nature:

The United States is an odd bird, clearly. This graph reminded me of a post on PZ Myers' Pharyngula blog in which he discussed an international poll showing the US as being near dead last in acceptance of evolution (just above Turkey, another country with a distinct fundamentalism/modernism issues).

What, pray tell, could cause the US to remain such an outlier?

Well, first there is religiosity:

The total effect of fundamentalist religious beliefs on attitude toward evolution (using a standardized metric) was nearly twice as much in the United States as in the nine European countries (path coefficients of -0.42 and -0.24, respectively), which indicates that individuals who hold a strong belief in a personal God and who pray frequently were significantly less likely to view evolution as probably or definitely true than adults with less conservative religious views.

And then there's this:

Second, the evolution issue has been politicized and incorporated into the current partisan division in the United States in a manner never seen in Europe or Japan. In the second half of the 20th century, the conservative wing of the Republican Party has adopted creationism as a part of a platform designed to consolidate their support in southern and Midwestern states—the "red" states. In the 1990s, the state Republican platforms in seven states included explicit demands for the teaching of "creation science". There is no major political party in Europe or Japan that uses opposition to evolution as a part of its political platform.

As Myers noted, the paper ends on a sad note:

The politicization of science in the name of religion and political partisanship is not new to the United States, but transformation of traditional geographically and economically based political parties into religiously oriented ideological coalitions marks the beginning of a new era for science policy. The broad public acceptance of the benefits of science and technology in the second half of the 20th century allowed science to develop a nonpartisan identification that largely protected it from overt partisanship. That era appears to have closed.

Nigel Barber, in Psychology Today, asks if Atheism will eventually replace religion, as research shows that atheism "blossoms amid affluence where most people feel economically secure."

He writes:

It seems that people turn to religion as a salve for the difficulties and uncertainties of their lives. In social democracies, there is less fear and uncertainty about the future because social welfare programs provide a safety net and better health care means that fewer people can expect to die young. People who are less vulnerable to the hostile forces of nature feel more in control of their lives and less in need of religion. Hence my finding of belief in God being higher in countries with a heavy load of infectious diseases.

These findings are not surprising, but his piece does not acknowledge the fact that the US, a developed country where most have access to shelter, healthcare, and education, remains extremely religious (and relatively anti-evolution). Unfortunately, in the US, there appears to be no level of affluence and comfort capable of decoupling religion and politics, despite constitutional assurances explicitly requiring it.

Backsliding Life Expectancies: New Findings, Same Old Maps

Newly released research by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington shows that women are dying earlier than they were a generation ago.  The research also shows that the United States is falling behind many more healthier nations -- Japan and Canada, for instance, are enjoying significant gains in life expectancy every year.  The maps that accompany the research, however, may not be so surprising.

Dr. Christopher Murray, IHME Director and paper co-author, stated: “Despite the fact that the US spends more per capita than any other nation on health, eight out of every 10 counties are not keeping pace in terms of health outcomes. That’s a staggering statistic.”

The IHME's research suggests that the main culprits are obesity, tobacco use, and other preventable risk factors, with people in Appalachia, the Deep South, and Northern Texas living the shortest lives.

Nationwide, women fare more poorly than men. The researchers found that women in 1,373 counties – about 40% of US counties – fell more than five years behind the nations with the best life expectancies. Men in about half as many counties – 661 total – fell that far.

Black men and women have lower life expectancies than white men and women in all counties. Life expectancy for black women ranges from 69.6 to 82.6 years, and for black men, from 59.4 to 77.2 years. In both cases, no counties are ahead of the international frontier, and some are more than 50 years behind. The researchers were not able to analyze other race categories because of low population levels in many counties.

Below are snapshots illustrating the findings.

These maps may look strikingly familiar. It is difficult to pinpoint exactly where America's health, education, class, sense of well-being, political ideologies, and religious beliefs begin and end, or exactly how they influence one another. But we can't underestimate the degree to which these things affect one another, or how intricately, and uniquely, they are woven into the realities of American life.

I can tell you that I'm getting pretty tired of seeing that same map over and over again.

Study: Born-Again Believers Have Smaller Brains

A new study from Duke University Medical Center suggests that mainline Protestants have larger brains than born-again Christians, Catholics, and the religiously unaffiliated.

The study, which examined the hippocampus region of the brain, found that Protestants who did not have a "born again" experience had significantly more gray matter than either those who reported a life-changing religious experience, Catholics, or unaffiliated older adults.

The study, funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Templeton Foundation, included at least two MRI measurements of the hippocampus region of 268 adults between 1994 and 2005.

It found an association between participants' professed religious affiliation and the physical structure of their brain. Specifically, those identified as Protestant who did not have a religious conversion or born-again experience — more common among their evangelical brethren — had a bigger hippocampus.

What does this all mean?

The hippocampus helps regulate emotion and memory, among other things, and shrinkage of it has been linked to Alzheimer's, dementia, and depression. Although the researchers believe there needs to be more research, they have speculated that perhaps the shrinkage in this case could be related to the stress of belonging to a minority group. (Atheists, if included in the religiously unaffiliated, would certainly be a minority as well.)

However, sociologists aren't so sure about this assumption. While born-again Christians are certainly a minority, they make up 40% of the population. The percentage increases as you move into the South. This is not exactly a minority in the truest sense.

If stress is indeed the reason behind the shrinkage, it would certainly dovetail with another recent study showing that those who deny evolution are more likely to experience anxiety about death (and we know that born-again Christians are more likely to deny evolution).

The research seems to present more questions than it answers: Could geography -- factoring in genetic, cultural, and environmental factors -- have something to do with the findings (the pool of participants were somewhat geographically constrained)? And most pressing, was this really a federally funded study?

Study: Belief in an Angry God Prevents Academic Cheating

A new study reveals that college students who believe in a merciful, caring god are more likely to cheat than those who believe in a wrathful god.

The results of the study was conducted by Azim F. Shariff at the University of Oregon and Ara Norenzayan at the University of British Columbia and the results were published in the Journal for the Psychology of Religion.  The findings are based on experiments designed to put students' honesty to the test.  They were given a computerized math test and were informed of a software glitch in which the answer to each question would be revealed after several seconds.  The students were instructed to press the space bar after reading each question to prevent the answer from showing up.

The experiment showed that those who believed in a forgiving god, rather than a punitive god, were significantly more likely to ignore the instructions to suppress the correct answers. 

Some of Shariff's comments on the findings:

"Taken together, our findings demonstrate, at least in some preliminary way, that religious beliefs do have an effect on moral behavior, but what matters more than whether you believe in a god is what kind of god you believe in. There is a relationship: Believing in a mean god, a punishing one, does contribute to cheating behavior. Believing in a loving, forgiving god seems to have an opposite effect." 

"According to the psychological literature, people who believe in God don't appear to act any more morally than people who don't believe in God. We wanted to look deeper at particular beliefs. One idea is the supernatural punishment hypothesis: Punishing counter-normative behavior - immoral behavior - has been an important part of living in societies. Societies don't get far without regulating moral behavior."
“The idea that gods used to be more authoritarian vengeful agents is consistent with the idea that … the initial role of religions was to foster moral behavior which made cohesive cooperative societies in a time where there were no secular laws, policing systems.  And so the idea of having moral systems and moral regulations outsourced to a punitive agent was a very effective thing in religious societies.”

Although I have not read the entire study, I'm curious as to why the researchers did not extend their study to those who lack a belief in God.  Shariff's comments on the origin and evolution of religion, and his suggestion that a punitive agent is more effective in regulating moral behavior, provoke questions about the growing number of secular societies with low crime rates.  I'm also not so sure about the experiment to begin with. The passive receipt of information via failing to actively rectify a software glitch is a little too ambiguous to indicate a clear moral failure.  But perhaps that's my lack of religion talking.

Study: Increased Life Expectancy = Postponement of Religious Participation

A new study, by Dr Elissaios Papyrakis at the University of East Anglia and Dr Geethanjali Selvaretnam from the University of St Andrews in the UK, seems to state the obvious: Because of longer life expectancy, more people are postponing active religious participation.

It is undeniable that death plays a major role in religious belief.  Our earliest evidence of religious belief is based on the ritual treatment of the dead.  Evidence from burial sites and associated artifacts supports early belief in the afterlife.  

Belief in the afterlife is common in all human cultures, and is somewhat of a cornerstone of religious belief.  And although religion has provided many benefits to humans throughout history, perhaps the most potent selling point of many religions has been the promises of an afterlife.  And certainly the threat of an eternity of hell has been one of religion's greatest motivators. 

If the afterlife serves as one of religion's major attractions, it seems logical to expect that, with an ever-increasing life expectancy in developed societies, making peace with one's god would lose some of its urgency.

"The findings have important policy implications for what churches want to do and how they attract members," explained Dr Papyrakis, of the School of International Development at UEA. "Many religions and societies link to some degree the cumulative amount of religious effort to benefits in the afterlife. We show that higher life expectancy discounts expected benefits in the afterlife and is therefore likely to lead to postponement of religiosity, without necessarily jeopardising benefits in the afterlife."

From the article:

Religions that largely delink salvation/damnation to the timing and amount of religious effort will particularly need to resort to such means to boost membership numbers. In most religions, the perceived probability of entering heaven or hell depends to a certain degree on the individual's lifetime behaviour. The degree of this varies across religions, being relatively high in Buddhism and Catholicism, but lower in Protestantism. In Calvinism, in particular, salvation/damnation is largely seen as predestined.

In poorer countries where life expectancy remains low, a larger share of the population, both young and old, is concerned about what happens after death, which naturally encourages religious participation.

Religion is Dead! Long Live Religion!

I ran across two articles today about the challenges religions face in an evolving modern world, with both asking, in some degree, whether or not religion as we know it will survive.

One, from the BBC, reports on a study conducted by a team of mathematicians, engineers, and physicists which concludes that religion is set for extinction in nine countries: Australia, Austria, Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Switzerland.  The study is based on census data going back as far as a century in those countries.  The study can be viewed online.

Another, from the Dallas Morning News asks, "Will Facebook kill the church?"  The question, prompted by a book by Richard Beck about social networking's effects on our need for a faith-based community, serves as a springboard for several Texas religious figures to respond.

While the news media (and the publishing industry) certainly thrives on projecting gloom and doom, the reality is that neither article serves up a death knell for religion, but rather provides more evidence of its constant evolution.  The scientific and technological advances of the past several decades have allowed the evolution to occur at a faster pace than we have seen in the history of religion.  The use of Facebook and the Internet has allowed unfettered access (in most parts of the world, anyway) to new religious (or non-religious) ideas previously available in print or via person-to-person contact.  As in the case of the above study, we have also been able to examine religion's evolution in greater detail.

While I do believe that we will see a global increase of "Religious Nones" (individuals who do not claim any religious affiliation), I do not believe that we are anywhere near a religious extinction in any country. We are, however, experiencing a growth of those who are less religious, who do not identify with any one faith, or who are more passive, and less vocal, about their religiosity.  We have also entered an era where individuals can chart their own spiritual courses.  In the way that technology has opened up new possibilities in the areas of intellectual property, art, and music, via sampling, mash-ups, and the re-purposing of existing concepts and ideas, we are seeing increasing instances of individuals crafting their own brand of faith. 

This is not a death knell.  It is, however, a stark reminder that the rigid (and often static and antiquated) dogma associated with the world's major religions, is becoming incompatible with an evolving and increasingly inter-connected population.  Humans will never stop seeking answers to the mysteries of the cosmos, nor will they stop living by codes that help them navigate the challenges in modern life.  They will, however, go about it in ways that are not aligned with any of our existing major religious institutions.