does religion dulls critical thinking

• Search Search Search …
• Search Search …

Religion and Critical Thinking: How critical thinking impacts religion

The more critical thinking skills you have, the less religious beliefs you have. It has been found that those who think critically are far less religious than those who think intuitively.

While critical thinking skills weaken faith, they are not enough to destroy faith entirely. Therefore, we can encourage critical thinking without worrying about destroying anyone’s faith.

This article discusses the connection between critical thinking and religion.

Rational thinking vs. intuition

Our brains have two modes of thinking: rational thinking and intuition. This is why intelligent people believe in concepts with no proof.

Those who rely more on intuition than rationality are more likely to believe in God. Those who are more likely to stop and reason out their thoughts before they react are less likely to be religious.

Encouraging people to think more intuitively causes people to become more faithful. Conversely, putting people in a critical thinking state of mind discourages faith.

Most people today are intuitive thinkers. That is why the majority of people still believe in God. The way of thinking we have is innate, carried down. It is much more difficult to slow down and think logically rather than rely on rules of thumb and instincts that have been a significant part of our upbringing and culture.

The connection between critical/rational thinking and faith

There is a strong connection between rational thinking and the lack of faith. The tendency to think rationally causes religious doubt. Studies have shown that when people are put in a critical/rational thinking state of mind, they will answer religious survey questions more doubtfully.

Critical thinking and faith are debated between science and religion because faith, or blind acceptance, is the direct opposite of critical reflection. There can never be reconciliation between these two concepts. Science relies on evidence and proof. Faith disregards these, does not allow questions, and ignores contrary evidence and contradictions.

Research has concluded that those who demonstrate high levels of paranormal belief have poor critical thinking skills. Going further with this idea, another study found that high levels of religious orientation can predict poor critical thinking performance (Kirby, Matthew, “The Impact of Religious Schema on Critical Thinking Skills” (2008)).

Research on the brain has found that those with spiritual beliefs suppress their analytical thinking brain network to engage an empathetic thinking network. The opposite is true for non-religious people.

Does critical thinking make you lose faith?

In short, yes. As critical and analytical thinking rises, religious beliefs drop. Rational thinking makes us more prone to skepticism. The same concept applies not only to religious faith, but also belief in ESP and ghosts.

When we think rationally, we start to question basic assumptions. This includes more than just religion. Some critical thinking concepts are not skeptical or doubtful of religious beliefs. Sometimes, thinking critically can give you a better understanding of your religion.

From an analytical, rational point of view, the concept of faith is irrational and illogical. It is only by pushing aside this way of thinking that we can believe in supernatural concepts. Non-believers believe that our knowledge of the world and universe should not be told to us by religion. It is science’s job to inform us about the physical structure of our world and existence.

The majority of believers have been brought up in their religion. It is part of their culture. Analytical thinking causes us to override our intuition and what our upbringing tells us to believe. Our faith and beliefs can change drastically in different situations, even if we don’t understand why.

Critical and rational thinking is not the only thing that causes people to disregard their religious beliefs. Discovering contrary evidence and becoming more informed about religions also causes people to disregard faith.

Becoming informed about religion

It has been found that atheists constitute the majority of those who are best informed about religion. This means that the more you learn about religion, the less faith you’ll have.

Atheists and agnostics (those who neither believe nor disbelieve in God) are more likely to be informed about religion than firm believers. Atheists and agnostics answered more questions correctly on a survey about religion than believers in religion. They are also more knowledgeable about topics other than religion compared to Christians in the United States.

A US Religious Knowledge survey found that atheists and agnostics know more about the Bible than both Protestants and Catholics. This shows that it is not just critical/rational thinking that causes people to disregard faith. Becoming more knowledgeable about religion increases skepticism.

The fact that atheists and agnostics are more educated on religious matters than faithful believers indicates that people believe in religion for social reasons, not because they truly understand what they are taught to believe. It also shows that atheists are an effect of religious knowledge, not a lack of religious knowledge.

Faith vs. Proof

For those who do have faith, lack of proof does not matter. Most religious people do not reflect on their faith from an intellectual point of view. Most believers live with their faith without thinking twice about it.

Despite the studies and research that has been done on religion and the brain patterns of those who believe, nothing can disprove the existence of God. While findings have shown that a certain type of person is more or less likely to believe, these findings could never prove or disprove religious truths.

Overall, critical thinking negatively impacts faith. That is because faith teaches us that we should blindly accept religious concepts without question, while critical thinking teaches us to slow down and think rationally and logically.

The amount of religious believers has been steadily declining for centuries and has reached an all-time low. The most likely reason for this is the increase in education available to the common person and critical thinking skills among the public.

Declining religious rates signify that we are becoming a more modern, mature, sophisticated, and educated society. People today believe that being religious doesn’t make you ethical or righteous. These moral concepts are innate in our minds. They are not taught by religion exclusively. Therefore, we can teach critical thinking skills without worrying about declining rates of religious believers.

You may also like

5 Critical Thinking Exercises for a Healthy and Alert Brain

Critical thinking is the ability to translate complex circumstances into meaningful insights. It has become an essential skill that every individual should […]

Can Critical Thinking Be Taught?

Have you ever wondered if critical thinking can be taught? Critical thinking is certainly teachable, as has been proven by many years […]

Critical Thinking Concepts: Enhancing Decision-Making Skills

Critical thinking, a fundamental component of intelligent behavior and decision-making, is the process by which individuals actively and skillfully conceptualize, apply, analyze, […]

Critical Thinking Skills in the Workplace

Critical thinking refers to the analysis and evaluation of different points to form a decision or judgment. Whether a person’s position in […]

Study of the Day: Even the Religious Lose Faith When They Think Critically

New research in Science shows that, unlike intuitive thinking, activating the analytical cognitive system promotes religious skepticism.

PROBLEM : Previous research has uncovered a link between faith and intuitive thinking, a way of processing information that relies on mental shortcuts to yield fast and efficient responses. Can the opposite cognitive approach, analytical thinking, elicit the opposite religious response? That is, can critical thinking diminish a person's faith?

• The Very Real Power of Your Good Intentions
• Why 'Titanic' and Other Tragic Movies Make Us Happy
• Want Happiness? Just Change Your Personality

METHODOLOGY : Researchers Will Gervais and Ara Norenzayan devised a series of experiments to test if analytic thinking may be a source of religious disbelief. In the first trial, the subjects answered questions designed to measure their cognitive state and completed three surveys to measure the strength of their faith. Then, to test for causation, the authors also conducted experiments where they first primed the participants into thinking more methodically with images of Rodin's The Thinker or a word-scrabble game with words like "think," "ponder," or "rational."

RESULTS : Regardless of their religious background, the subjects who were more likely to adopt an analytical stance tended to report less religiosity. Moreover, those who were prodded to think this way reported significantly reduced religious conviction compared with people who didn't receive the same cues.

CONCLUSION : Analytical thinking decreases religious belief and may undermine the intuitive support for faith, at least temporarily.

SOURCE : The full study, "Analytic Thinking Promotes Religious Disbelief," is published in the journal Science .

Faith, Reason, and Critical Thinking

It is not unusual to hear discussions of the relationship between faith and reason, or science and religion, cast in terms of the blind acceptance of unquestionable propositions (religion) versus careful, skeptical, and critical rational reflection (science). Indeed, one of the hallmarks of religious faith, at least as commonly depicted in a great deal of our daily public discourse, is that it rests on claims that are “incontestable”—that is, impervious to skeptical scrutiny, empirical or logical analysis, or rational dispute. In contrast, scientific or secular knowledge claims are presumed to rest on “evidence” and the sure foundation of rational and/or empirical demonstration. As Suzanna Sherry (1996) has written, for example, someone operating under the epistemology of faith is “able to ignore contradictions, contrary evidence, and logical implications. Indeed, one test of faith is its capacity to resist the blandishments of rationality; the stronger the rational arguments against a belief, the more faith is needed to adhere to it” (p. 482). In contrast, “secular science and liberal politics, both committed to the primacy of reason, necessarily deny that any truth is incontestable” (p. 479).

Contrary to the naïve assumption that faith and reason must necessarily have a mutually allergic relationship, religious belief can often be strengthened and supported by critical, rational reflection. Indeed, as people of faith, we should always be willing to think critically about all of our beliefs. This does not mean we should approach intellectual questions about doctrines and beliefs with an attitude of scholarly aloofness or dismissive skepticism, nor does it mean that we should adopt a disparaging or fault-finding stance towards religious teachings. Good critical thinkers are not, as is sometimes uncritically assumed, relentless skeptics who—in Nietzsche’s (1967) memorable phrase—“worship the question mark itself as God” (p. 156). Being careful and reflective is not in any way incompatible with also being deeply optimistic and full of hope. Rather, thinking critically means that we look at our assumptions and contrast them with alternatives.

When we think critically, then, we question our basic assumptions in the light of competing or alternative assumptions. This does not necessarily mean we doubt or dismiss our assumptions—that is (again) the flawed fixation of the skeptic. Rather, it means we take them seriously by examining their origins and implications. For example, we might ask, “What does our belief system require of us that a contrasting belief system does not, and why?” Or, we might ask, “If this idea or belief is true, then where does it take me, both logically and practically, if I run with it all the way to its farthest implications?” Such questions are not full of skeptical and paralyzing doubt, but can rather reflect the attempt to more deeply understand (and live) our beliefs. It can also reflect a sincere desire to winnow out the chaff of sloppy thinking or incomplete understanding of our religious faith and spiritual commitments.

When we think critically in this way, we can better understand how our faith (and its assumptions about the world) differs from other perspectives and other beliefs, and what those differences might mean for us. Critical thinking can help us identify, and perhaps even reject, ideas that undermine the core assumptions of our faith. Conversely, it can help us be more open to ideas that do not contradict the core assumptions of our faith, but which at first glance may seem to do so. In short, by learning to think critically, coupled with the guiding influence of spiritual sensitivity, we can become more discerning and thoughtful religious believers. Remember, even Christ, the Son of God, amidst unimaginable suffering and agony upon the cross at Calvary, was willing to ask His Father a deep and troubling question:

And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matt. 27:46).

Now, I assume it is possible that in that moment of utter extremity the Son of God, the Creator of the Universe, and the Savior of all mankind chose to abandon His faith and give in to the temptations of radical skepticism… but I doubt it. There is more than a little irony in Sherry’s claim that for the secularist committed to the primacy of reason no truth claim is incontestable, especially given that such a claim is itself an incontestable truth claim (see, Beckwith, 2015 for a more detailed discussion of this issue).

Beckwith, F. J. (2015). Taking rites seriously: Law, politics, and the reasonableness of faith. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Nietzsche, F. (1967). The genealogy of morals (W. Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale, Trans.). New York, NY: Random House.

Sherry, S. (1996). Enlightening the religious clauses. Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues, 7 (1), 473-495.

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

• Publications
• Account settings

Preview improvements coming to the PMC website in October 2024. Learn More or Try it out now .

• Advanced Search
• Journal List
• Front Psychol

The Negative Relationship between Reasoning and Religiosity Is Underpinned by a Bias for Intuitive Responses Specifically When Intuition and Logic Are in Conflict

Associated data.

It is well established that religiosity correlates inversely with intelligence. A prominent hypothesis states that this correlation reflects behavioral biases toward intuitive problem solving, which causes errors when intuition conflicts with reasoning. We tested predictions of this hypothesis by analyzing data from two large-scale Internet-cohort studies (combined N = 63,235). We report that atheists surpass religious individuals in terms of reasoning but not working-memory performance. The religiosity effect is robust across sociodemographic factors including age, education and country of origin. It varies significantly across religions and this co-occurs with substantial cross-group differences in religious dogmatism. Critically, the religiosity effect is strongest for tasks that explicitly manipulate conflict; more specifically, atheists outperform the most dogmatic religious group by a substantial margin (0.6 standard deviations) during a color-word conflict task but not during a challenging matrix-reasoning task. These results support the hypothesis that behavioral biases rather than impaired general intelligence underlie the religiosity effect.

Introduction

The relationship between religiosity and intelligence has been an important topic amongst scientists and the public for some time (Harris, 2004 ; Dennett, 2006 ; Hitchens, 2007 ; Dawkins, 2008 ). Early evidence from the twentieth century suggested that religiosity and intelligence negatively correlated amongst college students (Howells, 1928 ; Sinclair, 1928 ). Subsequently, Argyle ( 1958 ) concluded that intelligent students are less likely to be religious. More recently, scientists have shown a striking paucity of religious belief (Ecklund et al., 2016 ), particularly within the elites of the National Academy of Sciences (Larson and Witham, 1998 ) and the Royal Society (Stirrat and Cornwell, 2013 ).

Psychometric population studies have now firmly established that religiosity influences cognitive style (Shenhav et al., 2012 ), and that religiosity and intelligence negatively correlate (Verhage, 1964 ; Pargament et al., 1998 ; Nyborg, 2009 ; Gervais and Norenzayan, 2012 ; Pennycook et al., 2013 , 2014 ; Razmyar and Reeve, 2013 ; Zuckerman et al., 2013 ). Furthermore, it has been reported that IQ and disbelief in God correlate at r = 0.60 across 137 countries (Lynn et al., 2009 ).

The cognitive sciences are establishing a mechanistic understanding of the religiosity effect. For example, it has been seen that religious background modulates visual attention (Colzato et al., 2008 ). Lesion studies have demonstrated that ventro-medial prefrontal cortex lesion patients have elevated scores of religious fundamentalism (Asp et al., 2012 ). Experimental studies have demsontrated that increases in religious fundamentalism relate to increases in memory recall accuracy and higher rates of false-positives in a memory task (Galen et al., 2009 ). Religious fundamentalism has also shown modest positive correlations with life satisfaction (Carlucci et al., 2015 ) and negative correlations with cognitive flexibility (Zhong et al., 2017 ) and openness (Saroglou, 2002 ; Carlucci et al., 2011 , 2015 ).

Dual-process models (Evans, 2008 ) assert that cognition is composed of intuitive and logical information processing. Individual differences in cognitive style have been related to the propensity to engage logical processes during problem solving (Stanovich and West, 1998 ). Meanwhile, recent experimental evidence has demonstrated a link between religiosity and cognitive style (Gervais and Norenzayan, 2012 ; Pennycook et al., 2014 ). From this, a prominent hypothesis has emerged which suggests that the religiosity effect is underpinned by cognitive-behavioral biases that cause poorer detection of situations in which intuition and logic are in conflict (Pennycook et al., 2014 ). Put simply, religious individuals are less likely to engage logical processes and be less efficient at detecting reasoning conflicts; therefore, they are more likely to take intuitive answers at face value and this impairs performance on intelligence tests. More broadly, from the perspective of this “dual-process” hypothesis, religious cognition is facilitated and hallmarked by intuitive decision making (Norenzayan and Gervais, 2013 ; Morgan, 2014 ; Oviedo, 2015 ).

It can be predicted from this hypothesis that the religiosity effect should be particularly disadvantageous for handling problems with counterintuitive answers; however, as a cognitive-behavioral bias, rather than reduced cognitive capacity per se , it follows that religiosity may not affect all tasks that involve reasoning. Reasoning tasks without intuitively obvious but logically correct answers may engage religious individual's latent ability to resolve complicated problems.

Here, we apply a novel combination of analyses to data from two Internet-cohort studies with detailed sociodemographic questionnaires and performance data from multiple cognitive tasks. Critically, these cohorts are large enough for the religiosity effect to be reliably examined in relation to, and while factoring out, a range of potentially confounding sociodemographic factors.

In study 1, we test four predictions of the dual-process hypothesis. (1) The religiosity effect should be greatest for reasoning latent variables as resolved via factor analysis. (2) The religiosity effect should be greatest for reasoning tasks designed to involve conflict resolution. (3) The religiosity effect should be in addition to, and not dependent on, other sociodemographic variables. (4) The pattern of the religiosity effect across tasks should differ qualitatively from those observed for other sociodemographic factors relating to latent reasoning ability.

In study 2, we replicate the findings of study 1 and test the further predictions that religious dogmatism mediates the religiosity-reasoning relationship at the levels of individuals (5) and religious groups (6). Finally, we test whether conversion to, or apostasy from, a religious group predicts cognitive performance (7).

Materials and methods

The cognitive tasks were all designed/adapted and programmed in Adobe Flex 3 for the Internet. The tasks were based on classical paradigms from the cognitive neuroscience literature to measure planning, reasoning, attention, and working memory abilities. The entire battery of tasks took ~30 min to complete, with each task calculating one outcome measure (Full descriptions of all task designs are reported in Supplementary Materials 2 ). The tasks were presented in fixed sequence on a custom Internet server. A detailed demographic assessment was conducted after completion of the task battery and this also was programmed using Adobe Flex. The server for study 1 was programmed in ASP. The server for study 2 was programmed in Ruby on Rails. The data for study 1 were collected via the Internet between September and December 2010. The experiment URL was originally advertised in a New Scientist feature, on the Discovery Channel website, in the Daily Telegraph , and on social networking websites including Facebook and Twitter (for further details please refer to Hampshire et al., 2012a ). Study 2 was run in a similar manner, but with a slightly different sub-set of tasks. Data were collected in the first 4 months of 2013 with advertisement through a press release associated with another article that was published with data from the first study. Ethical approval for the study protocol was awarded by the Cambridge Psychology Research Ethics Committes (2010.62) and the University of Western Ontario Health Sciences Research Ethics Board (103472) for study 1 and 2 respectively. All subjects gave informed consent in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki prior to being able to access the cognitive and demographic assessment stages.

Statistical analyses were conducted in Matlab (R2015b, www.mathworks.com ), unless otherwise stated. Data from both studies were preprocessed using the following steps. Participants with ages below 15 or above 90 and subjects with nonsensical responses to any questionnaire question were excluded case-wise (see Hampshire et al., 2012a for details). The cognitive data were standardized task-wise by subtracting the population mean to center scores around zero and division by the population standard deviation to ensure unit deviation. A wide filter of scores >5 SDs from the mean on any task were excluded case-wise to remove any machine errors. Sociodemographic confounds including Age, Level of Education and Country of Origin were controlled for by modeling them as main effects in a Generalized Linear Model and extracting the resulting residuals using the SPSS V22 (Supplementary Materials 1 ).

Study 1 included 44,780 individuals; 12,576 reported themselves to be religious (Mean age = 31.38, SD = 12.02), 14,018 agnostic (Mean age = 30.12, SD = 10.99) and 18,186 atheist (Mean age = 29.98, SD = 11.26). Study 2 included 18,455 individuals; 10,876 reported themselves to be religious (Mean age = 34.02, SD = 14.26), 2,612 agnostic (Mean age = 30.44, SD = 12.31) and 4,967 atheist (Mean age = 29.73, SD = 11.86). When analyzing the religious sub-groups, 3 groups were excluded due to low sample sizes (Religious Group 6 = 93, Religious Group 7 = 51, Religious Group 8 = 10). Sociodemographic variables are reported in detail in the Supplementary Materials (Supplementary Tables 1 – 3 , N.B. We have previously demonstrated that gender does not have a significant effect on cognitive performance in Owen et al., 2010 ; Hampshire et al., 2012a ).

Latent variables were estimated separately from the studies 1 and 2 performance data in a data-driven manner using principal component analysis (PCA). Following the Kaiser convention there were 3 significant components (Eigenvalue, EV ≥ 1) in both cases. In Study 1, the first three unrotated components explained ~45% of the population variance in performance (C1 = 27.733%, EV = 3.328, C2 = 9.359%, EV = 1.123, C3 = 8.355%, EV = 1.002). In study 2, the first three unrotated explained ~41% of the total variance (C1 = 24.469%, EV = 3.181, C2 = 8.812%, EV = 1.146, C3 = 7.934%, EV = 1.031) (Figure ​ (Figure1B). 1B ). When orthogonal rotation was applied using the varimax algorithm (Rotated variance explained: Study 1, C1 = 17.154, C2 = 16.245, C3 = 12.047; Study 2, C1 = 14.904, C2 = 13.170, C3 = 13.140), the resultant task-component loadings were simple and interpretable (Figure ​ (Figure1C, 1C , Supplementary Tables 7 , 8 ). They were also qualitatively similar across the two studies, despite differences in the exact composition of the batteries. For example, the Colour Word Remapping (CWR), a variant of the Stroop task) and Grammatical Reasoning loaded onto a Verbal Reasoning component, the Deductive Reasoning and Spatial Rotations tasks loaded onto a more general Reasoning component and the Paired Associate Learning (PAL), Spatial Span and Self-Ordered Search tasks loaded onto a Working Memory component. Notably, the Grammatical Reasoning and CWR tasks loaded more heavily onto the Reasoning component in study 1 and more heavily on the Verbal Reasoning component in study 2, which likely reflects differences in the exact compositions of the two testing batteries. A quantitative comparison of the 10 task-component loadings that were common across studies 1 and 2 showed extremely high correlation (Verbal Reasoning: r = 0.983, p < 0.001; Reasoning: r = 0.978, p < 0.001; Working Memory: r = 0.923, p < 0.001). It was suggested during the review process that an alternative dimensionality reduction technique, Principal Axis Factoring (PAF), be applied to the data instead of PCA. A comparison of PCA and PAF was conducted using the data from Study 1 (In both cases we followed the Kaiser convention and applied varimax rotation). This analysis demonstrated that PCA provided a much more interpretable latent structure (Supplementary Figure 1 ) and explained substantially more of the total variance (~45 and ~28%, respectively). From this comparison PCA was deemed as a more appropriate method for the present analysis.

(A) Age distributions plotted for each group in study 1 (Ai) and for study 2 (Aii,Aiii) . Yellow lines indicate the 25, 50, and 75th percentiles within each groups distributions (bottom-to-top). PCA produced 3-component solutions (eigenvalues >1) for both study's. Bi,Bii ) Scree plots with those components extracted for calculating individual factor scores highlighted in orange. Ci,Cii ) Absolute loadings calculated (Verbal Reasoning = red, Reasoning = blue, Working Memory = orange) using a Varimax rotation plotted for each task (ranked by Verbal Reasoning loading).

It is important to note that analyzing data with extremely large numbers of samples affords very high statistical power, which means that effects of negligible scale can have very low p -values; therefore, in studies of this type a better gauge of significance is effect size. Here, we conform to Cohen's notion of effect sizes, whereby an effect of ~0.2 standard deviations (SDs) is small, ~0.5 SDs is medium and ~0.8 SDs is large. All other statistical values from our analyses are reported in the Supplementary Tables and generally are p < 0.001 unless otherwise indicated.

There were negligibly scaled but statistically significant differences across the groups in terms of age (Figure ​ (Figure1A), 1A ), education level, and country of origin (Supplementary Tables 4 – 6 ); therefore, these variables were factored out of the performance data prior to the analyses reported below.

Determining the scale of the reasoning effect for different latent variables

Component scores were estimated for each individual by regressing task scores onto the rotated component matrix. An “Overall Mean” score was also estimated for each individual by averaging across the three component scores. In order to test prediction (1), these composite scores were analyzed in separate one-way ANOVAs with Religious Class (Religious, Agnostic, Atheist) as the between subject factor for both studies (Supplementary Table 9 ).

Confirming prediction (1), an analysis of effect size demonstrated that the religiosity effects was largest for reasoning latent variables. In study 1, the religious group was outperformed by the agnostic and atheist groups (Figure ​ (Figure2A, 2A , Supplementary Tables 9 – 12 ) in terms of Reasoning (Agnostic vs. Religious = 0.17 SDs, Atheist vs. Religious = 0.24 SDs), Verbal Reasoning (Agnostic vs. Religious = 0.13 SDs, Atheist vs. Religious = 0.15 SDs) and Overall Mean (Agnostic vs. Religious = 0.10 SDs, Atheist vs. Religious = 0.14 SDs) composite scores. The differences in Working Memory scores were of negligible scale (Agnostic vs. Religious = 0.001 SDs, Atheist vs. Religious = 0.015).

Reasoning (blue), Working Memory (orange), Verbal Reasoning (red) and Overall Mean (gray) component scores in Standard Deviation units (Mean = 0, SD = 1) compared across the Religious, Agnostic and Atheist groups for study 1 (A) and study 2 (B) . Superimposed Cohens-d values show the magnitude of differences between the Religious and Atheist groups.

A similar pattern of results was evident for study 2 (Figure ​ (Figure2B, 2B , Supplementary Tables 9 – 12 ): Reasoning (Agnostic vs. Religious = 0.12 SDs, Atheist vs. Religious = 0.13 SDs) Verbal Reasoning (Agnostic vs. Religious = 0.21 SDs, Atheist vs. Religious = 0.19 SDs) and Overall Mean (Agnostic vs. Religious = 0.23 SDs, Atheist vs. Religious = 0.27 SDs). The effect for Working Memory was again of negligible scale (Agnostic vs. Religious = 0.02 SDs, Atheist vs. Religious = 0.09 SDs). These results confirmed that the religiosity effect is largest for latent variables that underlie the performance of reasoning tasks.

Determining whether the religiosity effect is more pronounced for reasoning tasks that explicitly manipulate conflict

To test prediction (2), i.e., that the religiosity effect relates to conflict, analyses were conducted focused on performances of individual cognitive tasks. Specifically, several of the cognitive tasks loaded heavily on the reasoning latent variables and were explicitly designed to manipulate conflict. These were, the CWR Task, which in accordance with the classic Stroop paradigm (Stroop, 1935 ), places color and word mappings in direct conflict. Unlike the traditional Stroop, meaning must be remapped to color and word on every trial, which produces a more pronounced conflict effect (Hampshire et al., 2012a ). The Grammatical Reasoning Task involves a rapid sequence of trials that require the relationship as described between two objects (i.e., the square contains the circle) to be parsed and then in half of the trials inverted, i.e., due to inclusion of the word “not” (Baddeley, 1968 ; Hampshire et al., 2012a , b ). The Interlocking Polygons task involves determining whether a line figure presented alone matches another that is presented as part of an overlapping pair, a manipulation designed to cause perceptual conflict (Hampshire et al., 2012a ).

Notably, another of the tasks, Deductive Reasoning, also loads heavily onto the reasoning component. This task involves deriving complex relational rules between the colors, numbers and shapes of patterns that are presented in a 3 * 3 matrix; however, unlike CWR and grammatical reasoning, it has no explicit conflict manipulation because there are no intuitively obvious but erroneous answers (Owen et al., 2010 ; Hampshire et al., 2012a ). Some other tasks are not designed to involve reasoning or conflict, e.g., simple working memory tasks including Digit Span where sequences of numbers must be remembered, Spatial Span where sequences of locations must be remembered, and Monkey ladder where the locations of numbers must be remembered.

The performance data were standardized for each individual task and sociodemographic confounds factored out prior to cross-group analysis. Cognitive data from both studies were examined using a two-way ANOVA with Task as the within subject factor and Religious Class (Religious, Agnostic, Atheist) as the between subject factor. There were significant main effects of Religious Class and a significant interaction of Religious Class * Task (Supplementary Table 13 ).

Examining the task data showed a consistent trend whereby atheists on average performed numerically better than religious individuals for all tasks, with the agnostics tending to place in between the other two groups. However, the scale of the effect varied substantially across tasks. In support of prediction 2, the largest cross-group effect sizes were observed for tasks that were explicitly designed to manipulate conflict (Figure ​ (Figure3A, 3A , Supplementary Table 14 ). Specifically, in study 1 the largest religious-atheist group differences were for the Grammatical Reasoning (Agnostic vs. Religious = 0.14 SDs, Atheist vs. Religious = 0.17 SDs), CWR (Agnostic vs. Religious = 0.08 SDs, Atheist vs. Religious = 0.14 SDs) and Interlocking Polygons (Agnostic vs. Religious = 0.09 SDs, Atheist vs. religious = 0.13 SDs) tasks. A similar pattern of results was observed in study 2 for the CWR (Agnostic vs. Religious = 0.28 SDs, Atheist vs. Religious = 0.23 SDs) and Interlocking Polygons (Agnostic vs. Religious = 0.18 SDs, Atheist vs. Religious = 0.23 SDs) tasks.

The non-religious groups consistently outperforms the religious group across cognitive tasks in both studies 1 and 2 (Ai,Aii) . The largest group effects are seen during cognitive tasks with conflict between intuitive and logical processes (Religious, light gray; Agnostic, gray; Atheist, dark gray). We demonstrate that these effects are specific to religiosity by comparing tasks with high and low cognitive conlfict against alternate demographic variables Age (Bi,Bii) and Computer game use (Ci,Cii) . Performance scores for all cognitive tasks are in Standard Deviation units (Mean = 0, SD = 1).

For contrast, the Deductive Reasoning task (study 1: Agnostic vs. Religious = 0.00 SDs, Atheist vs. Religious = 0.02 SDs; study 2: Agnostic vs. Religious = 0.04 SDs, Atheist vs. Religious = 0.01 SDs) and Digit Span task (study 1: Agnostic vs. Religious = 0.03 SDs, Atheist vs. Religious = 0.06 SDs; study 2: Agnostic vs. Religious = 0.08 SDs, Atheist vs. Religious = 0.02 SDs) showed some of the smallest differences in scores between religious and non-religious classes. These findings provide evidence in support of the hypothesis that the religiosity effect relates to conflict as opposed to reasoning ability or intelligence more generally (Pennycook et al., 2014 ).

Is the conflict/non-conflict effect specific to religiosity?

One possibility was that the differences in religiosity effect sizes for reasoning tasks may have been generic, e.g., relating to test-retest reliabilities or some other factor that could lead to a general scaling of effect sizes. To rule out this possibility we examined how other demographic variables, which also correlated with the Reasoning latent variables, related to the performance of the individual tasks. These included age and frequency of computer game use. Both age and computer gaming showed similarly scaled relationships with the performance of the conflict (e.g., CWR) are non-conflict (e.g., Deductive Reasoning) tasks (Figures 3B,C ).

Is the religiosity effect contingent on other sociodemographic variables?

The analyses thus far factored out potentially confounding sociodemographic variables including age, country of origin and education level. Therefore, these variables did not underlie the religiosity effect. However, the religiosity effect might still have been contingent on those variables (e.g., being evident for older not younger adults). To examine this possibility, further analysis of the with component scores from the religious and non-religious groups were conducted across 6 age bins that covered the adult lifespan from 15 to 90 years. The stability of the Religious Class effects across ages was assessed for both studies using two-way ANOVAs with Overall Mean component score as the dependent variable, and with Religious Class (Religious, Agnostic, Atheist) and Age Group as between subject factors. There was a substantial effect of Age Group. The interaction between Age Group and Religious Class were statistically non-significant (Supplementary Table 15 , Figures 4Ai,Aii ) whereas the Religious Class main effect was robust and evident across all ages in both studies.

Religious group effects across the lifespan (Ai,Aii) , education (Bi,Bii) and Country of Origin (Ci,Cii) for both study's. These demonstrate how the religiosity effects are not contingent on other sociodemographic variables. Bars represent Overall Mean component score in Standard Deviation units (Mean = 0, SD = 1) for the religious (light gray), agnostic (gray), and Atheist (dark gray) groups.

Next, the stability of the religiosity effect was assessed across the Education factor using two-way ANOVAs with Overall Mean component score as the dependent variable and Religious Class (Religious, Agnostic, Atheist) and Level of Education as between subject factors. The interactions between the Religious class and Education factor was statistically non-significant. The main effect of Religious Class was robust and evident across all levels of education (Supplementary Table 15 , Figures 4Bi,Bii ) in both studies.

Finally, the stability of the religiosity effect was assessed across Country of Origin (i.e., country indivdiuals were born in aggregated by global region) using a two-way ANOVA with Overall Mean component score as the dependent variable and Religious Class (Religious, Agnostic, Atheist) and Country of Origin as between subject factors. The Religious Class main effect was robust and evident across all countries of origin. There was a statistically significant interaction (Supplementary Table 15 ) for both studies; however, the direction of the effect was evident for all countries of origin (Figures 4Ci,Cii ). Together, these analyses confirm that the religiosity effect is highly general, being evident across age group, education level and countries of origin.

Does religious dogmatism mediate the religiosity-reasoning effect?

Study 2 included questions designed to examine the religiosity construct in more detail. One question that was framed as a Likert scale asked the participant to rate the strength of their religious belief (e.g., 1 = Absolute Certainty, 5 = Atheist), and this was taken as a proxy measure of religious dogmatism. Component scores from study 2 were binned according to the 5-point self-assessment. Cognitive components scores were each modeled as dependent variables in separate one-way ANOVAs with Individual Dogma as the between subject factor for both studies. Statistically significant main effects of Individual Dogma were found for all cognitive components (Supplementary Tables 16 , 17 ). There was a clear pattern whereby cognitive performance increased as religious dogmatism decreased. Those with the greatest dogmatism were outperformed by those with the lowest dogmatism in Overall Mean (0.27 SDs) and Verbal Reasoning (0.19 SDs) scores (Figure ​ (Figure5A, 5A , Supplementary Table 12 ). Dogmatism showed a smaller relationship with Working Memory (0.11 SDs) and Reasoning (0.11 SDs) scores. Exemplifying the religious conflict effect, those with the greatest dogmatism were outperformed by those with the lowest dogmatism in tasks designed to manipulate conflict such as the CWR (0.20 SDs), Interlocking Polygons (0.24 SDs) and Grammatical Reasoning (0.23 SDs) (Figure ​ (Figure6A, 6A , Supplementary Table 18 ). Conversely, there were smaller differences in tasks that did not manipulate conflict; critically, this was the case for the Deductive Reasoning task (0.056 SDs).

Examining the effect of religious dogmatism at the individual and religious group level. (A) Cognitive component performance by Individual self-rated religious dogmatism. Individuals with the highest religious dogmatism (Absolute Certainty) show significantly poorer performance scores than those with the lowest religious dogmatism (Atheist) in Verbal Reasoning and Overall Mean performance. (Bi) Religious groups were ranked by their Group dogmatism score calculated by the difference in proportions of the extreme belief responses. (Bii) Distributions individual dogmatism within each religious group (1 = Absolute Certainty, 2 = Strong, 3 = Not Certain, 4 = Very Doubtful, 5 = Atheist). (Ci–Civ) Cognitive performance varies across religious groups. Groups with larger proportions of individuals with strong religious beliefs show poorer performance, particularly in the Verbal Reasoning domain. Reasoning (blue), Working Memory (orange), Verbal Reasoning (red), and Overall Mean (gray) performance scores are in Standard Deviation units (Mean = 0, SD = 1).

The interaction between task conflict and level of individual dogmatism (A) and group dogmatism (B) : The conflict task elicits pronounced group effects that is not observed in the non-conflict task. (C) Component scores compared between apostates (those from a religious family and are non-religious) and converters (those from a non-religious family and are religious). Reasoning (blue), Working Memory (orange), Verbal Reasoning (red), and Overall Mean (gray) performance scores are in Standard Deviation units (Mean = 0, SD = 1).

Examining the reasoning-religiosity relationship across religious groups

The questionnaire from study 2 also enabled religious individuals to be sub-divided according to religious groups (see Supplementary Table 1 for religious group sizes and age ranges. N.B. Those religious groups with N < 300 were dropped from our sample). We first assessed the effect of religious dogmatism on the religiosity-reasoning relationship at the group level. A “group dogmatism” score was calculated to rank the religious groups according to the difference in the proportion of low and high dogmatism individuals. Figure 5Bi reports how the distributions of individual dogmatism varied across the groups. The groups showed substantial differences in the average dogmatism scores of each religious group, with this effect spanning 0.87 SD units. This effect was reflected by correspondingly skewed cumulative distributions (Figure 5Bii ). For example, Religious Group 1 (R1) had an approximately Gaussian distribution in terms of strength of belief. R4 had a distribution that was heavily skewed toward weak belief. R1 had a distribution that was heavily skewed toward strong belief.

Analysing the performance measures showed that the religious groups also differed significantly and that this pattern of differences reflected the observed variability in dogmatism. Specifically, the religious group with the highest mean dogmatism score was significantly outperformed by the religious group with the lowest mean dogmatism score in Verbal Reasoning (0.32 SDs), Overall Mean (0.23 SDs). Working Memory (0.11 SDs) and Reasoning (0.11 SDs) scores showed smaller effects (Figure ​ (Figure5C, 5C , Supplementary Table 12 ). Comparing the high dogmatism group to the Atheism group showed the most pronounced effects (Reasoning = 0.22 SDs, Working Memory = 0.08 SDs, Verbal Reasoning = 0.33 SDs, Overall Mean = 0.43 SDs).

Conflict detection effects were also compared across the religious groups. The high dogmatism group was outperformed by the low dogmatism group in tasks involving conflict detection such as the CWR (0.60 SDs), Grammatical Reasoning (0.29 SDs) and Interlocking Polygons (0.17 SDs) (Figure ​ (Figure6B, 6B , Supplementary Table 19 ). In contrast the high and low dogmatism groups did not differ in tasks that did not manipulate conflict, such as the Deductive Reasoning (0.01 SDs). The magnitude of these effects was greatest when comparing the high dogmatism group to the atheist group CWR (0.61 SDs), Grammatical Reasoning (0.36 SDs) and Interlocking Polygons (0.49 SDs). In contrast there was little difference between the highest dogmatism and the atheist groups for tasks without conflict, such as the Deductive Reasoning (0.08 SDs).

Does religious conversion or apostasy relate to cognitive performance?

Finally, component scores were compared between those who have grown up in a religious family and are now non-religious (apostates) and those who have grown up in a non-religious family and are now religious (converters). The apostates showed greater component scores than the converters particularly within the Overall Mean (0.25 SDs) and Verbal Reasoning (0.18 SDs) and Reasoning (0.11 SDs) domains. A small difference was seen for Working Memory (0.08 SDs) (Figure ​ (Figure6C 6C ).

We tested multiple predictions regarding the cognitive mechanism underlying the relationship between religiosity and intelligence. The results accord well with the hypothesis that the religiosity effect reflects cognitive-behavioral biases that impair conflict detection (Gervais and Norenzayan, 2012 ; Pennycook et al., 2014 ), rather than general intelligence. These biases are most disadvantageous during tasks that are designed to introduce conflict between intuitive and logical answers.

Our analyses consistently confirmed that the non-religious groups have an advantage over religious groups in their overall mean performance of cognitive tasks. The scale of these effects was small but significant (Study 1 = 0.14 SDs; Study 2 = 0.27 SDs). This result accords with the ~2–4 IQ point differences previously reported between religious and atheist groups from large scale psychometric studies (Nyborg, 2009 ; Zuckerman et al., 2013 ). A qualitative comparison of the non-religious groups could lead to the interpretation that the atheist group outperforms the agnostic group both at the level of the latent variables and individual tasks. Despite this pattern being in accordance with the religious dogmatism's relationship to performance, a meaningful interpretation of this pattern is challenging due to the small effect size and the lack of consistency at the level of individual tasks across study 1 and 2.

Notably though, finer grained analyses of the data highlighted how comparing religious vs. non-religious groups in this manner underestimates the specificity and magnitude of the religiosity effect. Analysing religious dogmatism showed substantial differences across religions (0.87 SDs). This variability in dogmatism related significantly to the religiosity effect at the individual and the group level. The atheist group outperformed the most dogmatic group by 0.43 SDs in terms of overall mean score, which would be 6.45 IQ points. Previous studies demonstrated that individuals with low religious dogmatism score highly during analytic reasoning tasks (Gervais and Norenzayan, 2012 ; Shenhav et al., 2012 ) and on IQ (Lynn et al., 2009 ). Together, these consistent findings demonstrates failure to override incorrect intuitive responses correlates with religious dogmatism. Contrasting the relationships of religious dogmatism with performance between the levels of the individual differences and religious groups revealed an interesting pattern. The small scaled effects seen with Reasoning and Working Memory scores moved in opposing directions when elevated to the religious group level. Specifically, the Reasoning effect increased from a small to a medium scaled effect while the Working effect decreased from a small to a negligible effect. This pattern suggests that the relationship between religious dogmatism and the reasoning scores is more robust than with the Working Memory scores.

Our analyses extend the prior literature by demonstrating the highly robust and generalizable nature of the religiosity effect. The effect was reproducible across the two cohorts and evident after factoring out sociodemographic variables. Furthermore, the effect was not contingent on those variables, being robustly evident for all conditions of them. Critically, interactions between the religiosity effect and age or education level were statistically non-significant.

An interesting conclusion from this study is that the basis of the religiosity effect should be conceived of as a cognitive-behavioral bias, rather than impaired general intelligence. In examining the latent data structure, the religiosity effect showed a significantly scaled relationship with the reasoning components and little effect for the working memory component. This pattern could have reflected impaired reasoning ability in religious groups. However, not all tasks that loaded onto the reasoning latent variables showed a religiosity effect. The most striking example of this was the deductive reasoning task, a type of matrix reasoning task that we designed to have by far the most complex problems in our testing battery. This task requires that multiple rules, relating to different visual features (e.g., color and shape), be integrated as higher-order relational constructs. High dogmatism individuals and religious groups performed this task at a similar level to atheists.

Conversely, the CWR and grammatical reasoning tasks consistently showed some of the strongest religiosity effects. We intentionally designed these tasks to produce a conflict between alternative rule mappings. For example, the CWR is a challenging variant of the Stroop task (Stroop, 1935 ) that introduces a conflict between written to spoken word mappings and color naming. This variability in the magnitude of the religiosity effect across different reasoning-loaded tasks is most informative when compared with other sociodemographic variables. It is not the case that the matrix-reasoning task is unreliable or insensitive. Indeed, both age and computer game playing showed significantly scaled effects with both deductive reasoning and CWR task performance, suggesting that they relate to the ability that underlies this latent variable. Taken together, these results accord closely with the hypothesis that religious dogmatism correlates with a cognitive-behavioral tendency to forgo logical problem solving when an intuitive answer is available (Pennycook et al., 2014 ). In further support of this hypothesis we observed that religious apostates outperformed religious converts within the reasoning domains and that increased religious dogmatism relates to lower scores on the conflict, but not deductive reasoning, tasks at the individual and religious group levels. Comparing the highest dogma group to atheists showed a 0.61 SDs difference for the CWR task.

Our findings have significant implications for understanding the religiosity effects impact on higher cognition. From the dual-process perspective (Evans, 2008 ; Evans and Stanovich, 2013 ), failures in reasoning arise when fast intuitive processes are not overridden by slow logical processes. Individual differences in reasoning performance are therefore relative to an individuals cognitive capacity and style. Together, our findings suggest that the religiosity effect is not dependent on working memory laden logical processes but on the tendency to respond with an intuitive answer when intuitive and logical processes are in conflict.

Several limitations should be considered. Most notably, both of our cohorts were self-selecting populations of internet users which could have introduced sampling biases. However, the questionnaire data highlighted the wide variability and range of ages, education levels and countries of origin. This variability combined with the large cohort sizes allowed for these potential confounds to be factored out of the data prior to the analysis. Based on the robustness of the religiosity effect when accounting for other sociodemographic variables, it is highly unlikely that the religiosity effect has a basis in a confounding sociodemographic variable. Furthermore, when we took the largest and most heterogeneous religious group available, we observed that additionally factoring out race did not diminish the effect of religious dogmatism. Nonetheless, the non-random sampling method may have biased the distributions of dogmatism across religious groups; furthermore, religious groups likely vary in dogmatism dependent on region or sect. Consequently, it is important not to infer too strongly that the differences in religious dogmatism across groups extrapolate to the global population. Similarly, the small-to-medium group effects observed here mean that there is very substantial overlap across populations in terms of cognitive performances. It is therefore inappropriate to generalize these effects to specific individuals.

Finally, a limitation for any observational and cross-sectional study is that cause and effect cannot be directly inferred from correlational analyses. Future work may adopt interventional approaches to examine causal relationships. Indeed, if the religiosity effect is based on learnt cognitive-behavioral biases, then this holds some hope. Humans are exceedingly capable of resolving maladaptive cognition via training therapies. In contrast, the question of whether it is possible to train core abilities remains highly controversial (Owen et al., 2010 ; Simons et al., 2016 ). An interesting future study could determine whether cognitive training can ameliorate the religiosity effect by enabling individuals to apply their latent reasoning abilities, even when there appears to be intuitive answers. A previous study by Gervais and Norenzayan ( 2012 ) provides preliminary support for this view. They examined the causal relationship between religious dogmatism and reasoning by exposing individuals to exercises in analytical thinking. In the period post exercise, reductions in religious dogmatism were evident. A timely question, is whether repeat exercise might lead to lasting benefits in conflict detection, with consequently generalized improvements in cognitive task performance.

In conclusion, religiosity is associated with poorer reasoning performance during tasks that involve cognitive conflict. These effects may reflect learnt cognitive-behavioral biases toward intuitive decision making, rather than underlying abilities to understand complex logical rules or to maintain information in working memory. The effects are consistent in two large cohorts and robust across sociodemographic variables. Future work may focus on deconstructing the religiosity and dogmatism constructs in greater detail (Evans, 2001 ; Whitehouse, 2002 , 2004 ; Friedman and Rholes, 2007 ), determining how the impact of these on real-world achievement is mediated by cognitive behavior, and testing whether cognitive training may counter biases of the religious mind toward intuitive decision-making.

Author contributions

AH programmed the servers, adapted the cognitive tasks for the Internet and facilitated the data acquisition for both studies. AH curated the hypotheses of interest. RD preprocessed and analyzed the study data, and produced all figures and tables. Both RD and AH drafted the manuscript and approved the final version of the manuscript prior to submission.

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Funding. This work was supported by a European Commision Marie Curis Career Integration grant to AH and core funding from Imperial College.

Supplementary material

The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.02191/full#supplementary-material

• Argyle M. (1958). Religious Behaviour . London: Routledge. [ Google Scholar ]
• Asp E., Ramchandran K., Tranel D. (2012). Authoritarianism, religiousfundamentalism, and the human prefrontalcortex . Neuropsychology 26 , 414–421. 10.1037/a0028526 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Baddeley A. D. (1968). A three-minute reasoning test based on grammatical transformation . Psychometr. Sci. 10 , 341–342. 10.3758/BF03331551 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Carlucci L., Tommasi M., Balsamo M., Furnham A., Saggino A. (2015). Religious fundamentalism and psychological well-being: an Italian study . J. Psychol. Theol. 43 , 22–33. [ Google Scholar ]
• Carlucci L., Tommasi M., Saggino A. (2011). Socio-demographic and five factor model variables as predictors of religious fundamentalism: an italian study . Arch. Psychol. Relig. 33 , 253–268. 10.1163/157361211X576609 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Colzato L. S., Van Den Wildenberg W. P., Hommel B. (2008). Losing the big picture: how religion can control visual attention . PLoS ONE 3 :e3679. 10.1371/journal.pone.0003679 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Dawkins R. (2008). The God Delusion, 1st Edn., Mariner Books . Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co. [ Google Scholar ]
• Dennett D. C. (2006). Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon . New York, NY: Viking. [ Google Scholar ]
• Ecklund E. H., Johnson D. R., Scheitle C. P., Matthews K. R. W., Lewis S. W. (2016). Religion among scientists in international context: a new study of scientists in eight regions . Socius 2 , 1–9. 10.1177/2378023116664353 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Evans E. M. (2001). Cognitive and contextual factors in the emergence of diverse belief systems: creation versus evolution . Cogn. Psychol. 42 , 217–266. 10.1006/cogp.2001.0749 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Evans J. S. (2008). Dual-processing accounts of reasoning, judgment, and social cognition . Annu. Rev. Psychol. 59 , 255–278. 10.1146/annurev.psych.59.103006.093629 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Evans J. S., Stanovich K. E. (2013). Dual-process theories of higher cognition: advancing the debate . Perspect. Psychol. Sci. 8 , 223–241. 10.1177/1745691612460685 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Friedman M., Rholes W. S. (2007). Successfully challenging fundamentalist beliefs results in increased death awareness . J. Exp. Soc. Psychol. 43 , 794–801. 10.1016/j.jesp.2006.07.008 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Galen L. W., Wolfe M. B., Deleeuw J., Wyngarden N. (2009). Religious fundamentalism as schema: influences on memory for religious information . J. Appl. Soc. Psychol. 39 , 1163–1190. 10.1111/j.1559-1816.2009.00476.x [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Gervais W. M., Norenzayan A. (2012). Analytic thinking promotes religious disbelief . Science 336 , 493–496. 10.1126/science.1215647 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Hampshire A., Highfield R. R., Parkin B. L., Owen A. M. (2012a). Fractionating human intelligence . Neuron 76 , 1225–1237. 10.1016/j.neuron.2012.06.022 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Hampshire A., Parkin B. L., Cusack R., Espejo D. F., Allanson J., Kamau E., et al.. (2012b). Assessing residual reasoning ability in overtly non-communicative patients using fMRI . Neuroimage Clin . 2 , 174–183. 10.1016/j.nicl.2012.11.008 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Harris S. (2004). The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason, 1st Edn. , New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Co. [ Google Scholar ]
• Hitchens C. (2007). God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, 1st Edn. New York, NY: Twelve. [ Google Scholar ]
• Howells T. H. (1928). A Comparative Study of Those Who Accept As against Those Who Reject Religious Authority . University of Iowa Studies of Character.
• Larson E. J., Witham L. (1998). Leading Scientists still reject God . Nature 394 :313 10.1038/28478 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Lynn R., Harvey J., Nyborg H. (2009). Average intelligence predicts atheism rates across 137 nations . Intelligence 37 , 11–15. 10.1016/j.intell.2008.03.004 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Morgan J. (2014). Religion and dual-process cognition: a continuum of styles or distinct types? Relig. Brain Behav. 6 , 112–129. 10.1080/2153599X.2014.966315 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Norenzayan A., Gervais W. M. (2013). The origins of religious disbelief . Trends Cogn. Sci. 17 , 20–25. 10.1016/j.tics.2012.11.006 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Nyborg H. (2009). The intelligence–religiosity nexus: a representative study of white adolescent Americans . Intelligence 37 , 81–93. 10.1016/j.intell.2008.08.003 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Oviedo L. (2015). Religious cognition as a dual-process: developing the model . Method Theor. Study Relig. 27 , 31–58. 10.1163/15700682-12341288 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Owen A. M., Hampshire A., Grahn J. A., Stenton R., Dajani S., Burns A. S., et al.. (2010). Putting brain training to the test . Nature 465 , 775–778. 10.1038/nature09042 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Pargament K. L., Smith B. W., Koenig H. G., Perez L. (1998). Patterns of positive and negative religious coping with major life stressors . J. Sci. Study f Relig. 37 , 710–724. 10.2307/1388152 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Pennycook G., Cheyne J. A., Barr N., Koehler D. J., Fugelsang J. A. (2014). Cognitive style and religiosity: the role of conflict detection . Mem. Cognit. 42 , 1–10. 10.3758/s13421-013-0340-7 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Pennycook G., Cheyne J. A., Koehler D. J., Fugelsang J. A. (2013). Belief bias during reasoning among religious believers and skeptics . Psychon. Bull. Rev. 20 , 806–811. 10.3758/s13423-013-0394-3 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Razmyar S., Reeve C. L. (2013). Individual differences in religiosity as a function of cognitive ability and cognitive style . Intelligence 41 , 667–673. 10.1016/j.intell.2013.09.003 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Saroglou V. (2002). Religion and the five factors of personality: a meta-analytic review . Pers. Individ. Dif. 32 , 15–25. 10.1016/S0191-8869(00)00233-6 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Shenhav A., Rand D. G., Greene J. D. (2012). Divine intuition: cognitive style influences belief in God . J. Exp. Psychol. Gen. 141 , 423–428. 10.1037/a0025391 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Simons D. J., Boot W. R., Charness N., Gathercole S. E., Chabris C. F., Hambrick D. Z., et al.. (2016). Do “brain-training” programs work? Psychol. Sci. Public Interest 17 , 103–186. 10.1177/1529100616661983 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Sinclair R. D. (1928). A Comparative Study of Those Who Report the Experience of the Divine Prescence with Those Who do Not . University of Iowa Studies of Character.
• Stanovich K. E., West R. F. (1998). Individual differences in rational thought . J. Exp. Psychol. 127 , 161–188. 10.1037/0096-3445.127.2.161 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Stirrat M., Cornwell R. E. (2013). Eminent scientists reject the supernatural: a survey of the Fellows of the Royal Society . Evolution 6 :33 10.1186/1936-6434-6-33 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Stroop J. R. (1935). Studies of interference in serial verbal reactions . J. Exp. Psychol. 18 :643 10.1037/h0054651 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Verhage F. (1964). Intelligence and religious persuasion . Nederlands tijdschift voor de Psychologie en haar Grensgebieden 19 , 247–254. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Whitehouse H. (2002). Modes of Religiosity: towards a cognitive explanation of the sociopolitical dynamics of religion . Method Theory Study Relig. 14 , 293–315. 10.1163/157006802320909738 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Whitehouse H. (2004). Modes of Religiosity: A Cognitive Theory of Religious Transmission. Leiden: BRILL. [ Google Scholar ]
• Zhong W., Cristofori I., Bulbulia J., Krueger F., Grafman J. (2017). Biological and cognitive underpinnings of religiousfundamentalism . Neuropsychology 100 , 18–25. 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2017.04.009 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Zuckerman M., Silberman J., Hall J. A. (2013). The relation between intelligence and religiosity: a meta-analysis and some proposed explanations . Pers. Soc. Psychol. Rev. 17 , 325–354. 10.1177/1088868313497266 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]

• Navigate to any page of this site.

• In the menu, scroll to Add to Home Screen and tap it.

• In the menu, scroll past any icons and tap Add to Home Screen .

Religious Educator Vol. 18 No. 3 · 2017

Critical thinking in religious education, shayne anderson.

Shayne Anderson, "Critical Thinking in Religious Education,"  Religious Educator  18, no. 3 (2018): 69–81.

Shayne Anderson ( [email protected] ) was an instructor at South Ogden Junior Seminary when this article was published.

A common argument in an increasingly secular world today is that religion poses a threat to world peace and human well-being. Concerning the field of religious education, Andrew Davis, an honorary research fellow at Durham University, argues that religious adherents tend to treat others who do not agree with them with disrespect and hostility and states that efforts to persuade them to behave otherwise would be “profoundly difficult to realize.” [1] Consequently, he believes that religious education should consist only of a moderate form of pluralism. Religious education classes, in his view, should not make claims of one religion having exclusive access to the truth.

Others argue that religious education should consist only of teaching about religion in order to promote more democratic ways of being. [2] Their perception is that religion is yet another distinguishing and divisive tool used by those who seek to discriminate against others, thus impeding the progress of pluralistic democracies. Further, those perceived as religious zealots, so the argument goes, are the least apt to give critical thought to either their own beliefs or the beliefs of others. [3] This reasoning, in which religion and critical thinking are viewed as antithetical, is especially prevalent in popular culture, outside the measured confines of peer-reviewed publishing.

Reasons for why religion and critical thinking might be viewed as incompatible are as varied as the authors who generate the theories. They include the following: religions often claim to contain some amount of absolute truth, an idea in itself that critical theorists oppose; individual religions generally do not teach alternate views, a requisite for critical thinking; and, in critical theory, truth is comprised of “premises all parties accept.” [4] Theorist Oduntan Jawoniyi reduces the argument down to the fact that religious claims of truth “are empirically unverified, unverifiable, and unfalsifiable metaphysical truths.” [5]

One explanation for variations in opinions concerning the place of critical thinking in religious education may be that no consistent definition exists for critical thinking, a concept that stretches across several fields of study. For instance, the field of philosophy has its own nuanced definition of critical thinking, as does the field of psychology. My first aim in this article is to survey a range of definitions in order to settle upon a functional definition that will allow for faith while still fulfilling the objectives of critical thinking, and my second aim is to explore how this definition can apply to religious education in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Defining Critical Thinking

The first definition under consideration comes from a frequently cited website within the domain of critical thinking. Here critical theorists Michael Scriven and Richard Paul endeavor to encapsulate in one definition the wide expanse of critical thinking’s many definitions: “Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/ or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action. In its exemplary form, it is based on universal intellectual values that transcend subject matter divisions: clarity, accuracy, precision, consistency, relevance, sound evidence, good reasons, depth, breadth, and fairness.” [6]

Assessing the definition in parts will allow for a thorough examination, beginning with a look at critical thinking as being active and intellectually disciplined. Such admonitions are repeated often in the scriptures. The thirteenth article of faith teaches that members of the Church “seek after” anything that is “virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy.” The Prophet Joseph Smith borrows terminology here from what he calls the “admonition of Paul”—from the book of Philippians, where Paul lists many of the same qualities and then suggests, “Think on these things” (Philippians 4:8).

Common scriptural words that suggest active, skillful, and disciplined thinking include inquiring , pondering , reasoning , and asking . Additional scriptures suggest such things as “study it out in your mind” (D&C 9:8) or “seek learning, even by study and also by faith” (D&C 88:118). Assuredly, the portion of the definition of critical thinking pertaining to intellectual discipline fits well within the objectives of the Church’s education program.

The next part of the definition given by Scriven and Paul includes “conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/ or evaluating information.” The Gospel Teaching and Learning handbook, used by teachers and leaders in the Seminaries and Institutes of Religion program of the Church, sets forth the “fundamentals of gospel teaching and learning.” [7] Included in these fundamentals are (a) identifying doctrines and principles, (b) understanding the meaning of those doctrines and principles, (c) feeling the truth and importance of those doctrines and principles, and (d) applying doctrines and principles. Comparing the definition for critical thinking to the fundamentals of gospel teaching and learning, one can argue that conceptualizing is akin to identifying and analyzing, both of which require the understanding sought for by the previously mentioned fundamentals. Synthesizing and evaluating can be a part of understanding and feeling the importance of a concept. Also, application is found in both the definition and the fundamentals of gospel teaching and learning. It is an integral part of critical thinking and effective religious education within the Church.

Finally, according to this definition, critical thinking assesses “information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action.” This portion of the definition seems equally suited for religious education. So much of religion is based on personal experience and reflection on those experiences. Owing to the personal nature of religious observations, experiences, reflections, and reasoning, adherents often find them difficult to fully explain. This personal experience may be compared to a baseball player who has mastered the art of batting. Intellectually, the player may understand perfectly what must be done, as he or she may have practiced it innumerable times, but when asked to explain it to someone else the player is unable to do so. Such a situation does not detract from the fact that the batter has mastered the art, yet the explanation remains difficult. Additionally, religious experiences are often very personal in nature. Due to the value attributed to those experiences, a person may not choose to share them frequently because of a fear that others will not understand or may even attempt to degrade and minimize those experiences and the feelings associated with them. Thus, even on the occasion when someone attempts to articulate such experiences, they remain unexplained.

In a religious setting, information derived from observation, experience, and communication may come from meeting with others who share religious beliefs. Moroni 6:5 touches on this idea. “And the church [members] did meet together oft, to fast and to pray, and to speak with one another concerning the welfare of their souls.” Congregating has long been a cornerstone of religious experience. Doing so provides members opportunities for observation, experience, reflection, and communication, all of which make up the delicate tapestry of religious belief and behavior.

Adding to the definition given by Scriven and Paul, college professor and author Tim John Moore asserts that another quality important in critical thought is skepticism, verging on agnosticism, toward knowledge—calling into question whether reality can be known for certain. [8] This skepticism carries with it immediate doubt prior to being presented with knowledge. Others have termed it as a “doubtful mentality.” [9] This definition does not seem able to coexist with faith-motivated critical thinking. Many scriptures teach about the importance of faith trumping doubt, the most recognizable among them likely being James 1:5–6: “If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him. But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed.”

Concerning the type of doubt that arises even before learning facts, Dieter F. Uchtdorf of the Church’s First Presidency said, “Doubt your doubts before you doubt your faith.” [10] This admonition indicates that there is an ultimate source of truth, and when our doubts loom large it is better to doubt those doubts instead of doubting God. The Doctrinal Mastery: Core Document , a part of the S&I curriculum introduced in the summer of 2016, states that “God . . . is the source of all truth. . . . He has not yet revealed all truth.” [11] Thus, doubt should be curbed at the point when we do not have all the evidence or answers we seek. Such is the case in the scientific method: a tested hypothesis leads to a theory, and confirmed theories lead to laws. Fortunately, neither hypotheses nor theories are abandoned for lack of proof or the existence of doubt concerning them.

Some within a religious community may be hesitant to apply critical thinking to their own religious beliefs, believing that doing so could weaken their faith. Psychologist Diane Halpern, however, suggests that critical thinking need not carry with it such negative connotations. “In critical thinking , the word critical is not meant to imply ‘finding fault,’ as it might be used in a pejorative way to describe someone who is always making negative comments. It is used instead in the sense of ‘critical’ that involves evaluation or judgement, ideally with the goal of providing useful and accurate feedback that serves to improve the thinking process.” [12] Applying critical thinking need not indicate a lack of faith by a believer—an important point to consider when applying critical thinking to religious education. Critically thinking Christian believers are adhering to the Savior’s commandment to “ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you” (Matthew 7:7).

Religious believers may be concerned that other critical thinkers have reached an opinion different than theirs. This concern can be addressed by the way critical thinking is defined. Professor of philosophy Jennifer Mulnix writes that “critical thinking, as an intellectual virtue, is not directed at any specific moral ends.” [13] She further explains that critical thinkers do not have a set of beliefs that invariably lead to specific ends, suggesting that two critical thinkers who correctly apply the skills and attitudes of critical thinking to the same subject could hold opposing beliefs. Such critical thinking requires a sort of mental flexibility, a willingness to acknowledge that a person may not be in possession of all the facts. Including such flexibility when defining critical thinking does not disqualify its application to religious education. A religious person can hold beliefs and knowledge while remaining flexible, just as a mathematician holds firm beliefs and knowledge but is willing to accept more and consider alternatives in the light of additional information. In other words, being in possession of facts that a person is unwilling to relinquish does not mean that he or she is unwilling to accept additional facts.

Elder Dallin H. Oaks spoke about the idea of differing conclusions when addressing religious educators. “Because of our knowledge of [the] Plan and other truths that God has revealed, we start with different assumptions than those who do not share our knowledge. As a result, we reach different conclusions on many important subjects that others judge only in terms of their opinions about mortal life.” [14] Each person brings different life experience and knowledge, which they call upon to engage in critical thinking. While both are employing critical-thinking skills, they may be doing so with different facts and differing amounts of facts. All of the facts in consideration may be true, but because of the way those facts are understood, different conclusions are reached. Still, the thinking taking place can be correctly defined as critical.

Another belief included by some in a definition of critical thinking, though at odds with the edifying instruction presented in LDS religious education, is addressed by Rajeswari Mohan, who suggests that to teach using critical thinking would require “a re-understanding of the classroom.” [15] Generally, the understanding that currently exists of the classroom, both inside and outside of religious education, consists of creating an atmosphere of respect and trust, a safe place to learn and grow—something that Mohan calls “cosmopolitan instruction.” [16] In its place Mohan advocates that the classroom become “a site of contestation,” [17] which connotes controversy, argument, and divisiveness. Of course, it is possible to contest a belief, debate, and even disagree while still maintaining trust and respect, but such a teaching atmosphere is what Mohan considers cosmopolitan and, as such, it would require no re-understanding to accomplish it.

Elizabeth Ellsworth described her experience when attempting to employ the type of approach Mohan suggests in her own classroom. [18] In reflecting on the experience, she noted that it exacerbated disagreements between students rather than resolving or solving anything. She summarized what took place by saying, “Rational argument has operated in ways that set up as its opposite an irrational Other.” [19] Rather than having her class engage in discussion and learning, Ellsworth witnessed students who refused to talk because of the fear of retaliation or fear of embarrassment.

Such a situation does not align with D&C 42:14, “If ye receive not the Spirit ye shall not teach.” Additionally, this confrontational atmosphere in the learning environment seems to run counter to the doctrines taught by the Savior. Consider the words of Christ in 3 Nephi 11:29: “I say unto you, he that hath the spirit of contention is not of me, but is of the devil, who is the father of contention, and he stirreth up the hearts of men to contend with anger, one with another.”

Many authors who offer definitions of critical thinking discuss how critical thinking leads to action; one author states, “Criticality requires that one be moved to do something.” [20] President Thomas S. Monson, while a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, said, “The goal of gospel teaching . . . is not to ‘pour information’ into the minds of class members . . . . The aim is to inspire the individual to think about, feel about, and then do something about living gospel principles.” [21] This application is the foundation of the teachings of Jesus Christ, the very purpose of his Atonement, to allow for individuals to change. This change does not solely consist of stopping some behavior but also includes starting new behaviors. Elder Neal A. Maxwell, for example, suggested that many of us could make more spiritual progress “in the realm of the sins of omission . . . than in any other place.” [22]

Critical Thinking Exaggerated

President Boyd K. Packer taught that “tolerance is a virtue, but like all virtues, when exaggerated, it transforms itself into a vice.” [23] This facet of critical thinking whereby critical thinking prompts action must be explained carefully, as it can be exaggerated and transformed into a vice. Mohan described this aspect of critical thinking that moves individuals to action outside of the classroom as having a “goal of transformative political action” aimed at challenging, interrupting, and undercutting “regimes of knowledge.” [24] Pedagogy of the Oppressed author and political activist Paulo Freire taught that this action brought about the “conquest” [25] of an oppressed class in a society over its oppressors. Some would argue that if it does not lead to this kind of contending, transformative action, critical thinking is incomplete. [26]

Transformative action taken by individuals to change themselves is necessary. Yet the idea that one can effect change within the Church, for individuals or the organization itself, by compulsion or coercion in a spirit of conquest can lead to “the heavens [withdrawing] themselves; the Spirit of the Lord [being] grieved” (D&C 121:37). Critical thinking defined to include this contention does not have a place in religious education within the Church.

A balanced definition of critical thinking that allows for faith in things which are hoped for and yet unseen (see Alma 32:21) may look something like this: Critical thinking consists of persistent, effortful, ponderous, and reflective thought devoted to concepts held and introduced through various ways, including experience, inquiry, and reflection. That person then analyzes, evaluates, and attempts to understand how those concepts coincide and interact with existing knowledge, ready to abandon or employ ideas based upon their truthfulness. This contemplation then leads the person to consistent and appropriate actions.

Because of the benefits of critical thinking, some have taken its application to an extreme, allowing it to undermine faith. Addressing a group of college students in 1996, President Gordon B. Hinckley said, “This is such a marvelous season of your lives. It is a time not only of positive thinking but sometimes of critical thinking. Let me urge you to not let your critical thinking override your faith.” [27]

Examples in Doctrine

Despite a potential to undermine faith when applied incorrectly, critical thinking holds too much promise to be abandoned. This is particularly the case for religious education in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Not only do questions and critical thought have an appropriate place in the Church, but as President Dieter F. Uchtdorf has pointed out, the Church would not exist without it. [28] He explains that the doctrinally loaded and foundational experience of the First Vision came as the result of Joseph Smith’s critical thought toward existing churches and a desire to know which he should join. Knowing for ourselves if the church that was restored through Joseph Smith’s efforts is truly the “only true and living church” (D&C 1:30) can be done only by following his lead and “ask[ing] of God” (James 1:5). “Asking questions,” President Uchtdorf said, “isn’t a sign of weakness; it’s a precursor of growth.” [29]

This concept of critically thinking while still acting in faith is illustrated in Alma 32:27–43, when Alma teaches a group of nonbelievers who nonetheless want to know the truth. Table 1 compares Alma’s words with concepts of critical thinking.

Figure 1. Alma and Critical Thinking.

The necessity of exercising faith is a major component of all religion. “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:8–9). “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). “I was led by the Spirit, not knowing beforehand the things which I should do” (1 Nephi 4:6). “Look unto me in every thought; doubt not, fear not” (D&C 6:36). The skeptical critic of religion could assert that these statements amount to blind faith or towing the line without a rational or logical reason to do so. Applying critical thinking to such assertions may disclose, ironically, that such approaches are no different than using rational thought.

In Educating Reason , author Harvey Siegel responds to a criticism sometimes waged against critical thinking called the indoctrination objection. His argument provides a means for reconciling faith with logic. In short he observed that critical thinkers have traditionally been opposed to indoctrination of any kind. Over time much has been applied to the perception of, and even the definition of, indoctrination, which now carries with it highly negative connotations of teaching content that is either not true or is taught in such a way that the learner is not provided a way to measure the truthfulness of what is being taught. Yet the fundamental definition of indoctrination is simply to teach.

The indoctrination objection is based on the idea that critical thinkers want to reject all indoctrination, but they cannot do so because critical thinking itself must be taught (indoctrinated). The definition he gives to indoctrination is when students “are led to hold beliefs in such a way that they are prevented from critically inquiring into their legitimacy and the power of the evidence offered in their support; if they hold beliefs in such a way that the beliefs are not open to rational evaluation or assessment.” [32] Siegel delicately defines an indoctrinated belief as “a belief [that] is held non-evidentially.” [33]

It must be acknowledged that children are not born valuing rational thought and evidence; those values must be taught, or indoctrinated. According to Siegel, “If an educational process enhances rationality, on this view, that process is justified.” [34] He later adds that such teaching is not only defensible, but necessary. “We are agreed that such belief-inculcation is desirable and justifiable, and that some of it might have the effect of enhancing the child’s rationality. Should we call it indoctrination? This seems partly, at least, a verbal quibble.” [35]

A teacher is justified in teaching students and a learner is justified in studying if doing so will eventually enhance rationality and if students are allowed to evaluate for themselves what is being taught.

There may even be a period when rationality is put on hold, or the lack of rationality perpetuated, temporarily for the sake of increasing critical thought in the end. This concept of proceeding with learning without first having an established rationale for doing so is the very concept of faith. Just as “faith is not to have a perfect knowledge of things” (Alma 32:21), reasons may not always be understood at first, just as a rational understanding for accepting a teaching is not always given at first. The moment when a learner must accept a teaching without first having a sufficient reason for doing so is faith. Students who continue to engage in the learning process are acting in faith. If the things being taught are true, those things will eventually lead those students to increased rationality and expanded intellect. Such teaching should not detour the student from seeking his or her own personal confirmation. Teaching in a manner that discourages students from establishing their own roots deep into the ground is antithetical to both critical thinking and the purposes of LDS religious education.

Teaching in a way that encourages and invites students to think critically about doctrines reflects not only teaching practices encouraged in today’s religious education within the Church but also doctrines of the Church. The culture and doctrine of the Church seeks to avoid indoctrinating members in the negative or pejorative sense. On the Church’s official Newsroom website is an article explaining what constitutes the doctrines of the Church. Included in that list is this statement: “Individual members are encouraged to independently strive to receive their own spiritual confirmation of the truthfulness of Church doctrine. Moreover, the Church exhorts all people to approach the gospel not only intellectually but with the intellect and the spirit, a process in which reason and faith work together.” [36] More than solely a statement of doctrine on a newsroom website, this concept is bolstered by the words of canonized scripture: “Seek learning, even by study and also by faith” (D&C 88:118). “You have not understood; you have supposed that I would give it unto you, when you took no thought save it was to ask me. But you must study it out in your mind; then you must ask me” (D&C 9:7–8). And finally, from the admonition of Paul, who, after speaking of doctrines, counseled believers to “think on these things” (Philippians 4:8).

The Prophet Joseph Smith addressed the relationship between faith and intellect. “We consider,” he said, “that God has created man with a mind capable of instruction, and a faculty which may be enlarged in proportion to the heed and diligence given to the light communicated from heaven to the intellect; and that the nearer man approaches perfection, the clearer are his views.” [37] In other words, acting in faith, or giving heed and diligence to light communicated from heaven, can enlarge the intellectual faculty and clarify views. Diligence and heed are required in religious education, in which the content being taught is considered irrational by secular society. Amid ridicule by the irreligious, when the intellect is enlarged, the faithful recognize enhanced rationality and clearer views that are never realized by those who are ridiculing. This process continues until full rationality is achieved and the promise of God is fulfilled: “Nothing is secret, that shall not be made manifest; neither any thing hid, that shall not be known” (Luke 8:17). What a promise for a critical thinker!

Critical thinking has the potential to be a powerful tool for educators; that potential does not exclude its use by teachers within the Church. When used appropriately, critical thinking can help students more deeply understand and rely upon the teachings and Atonement of Jesus Christ. The testimony that comes as a result of critical thought can carry students through difficult times and serve as an anchor through crises of faith. As Elder M. Russell Ballard teaches,

Gone are the days when a student asked an honest question and a teacher responded, “Don’t worry about it!” Gone are the days when a student raised a sincere concern and a teacher bore his or her testimony as a response intended to avoid the issue. Gone are the days when students were protected from people who attacked the Church. Fortunately, the Lord provided this timely and timeless counsel to you teachers: “And as all have not faith, seek ye diligently and teach one another words of wisdom; yea, seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom; seek learning, even by study and also by faith.” [38]

Critical thought does not consist of setting aside faith, but rather faith is using critical thought to come to know truth for oneself.

[1] Andrew Davis, “Defending Religious Pluralism for Religious Education,” Ethics and Education 3, no. 5 (November 2010): 190.

[2] Oduntan Jawoniyi, “Religious Education, Critical Thinking, Rational Autonomy, and the Child’s Right to an Open Future,” Religion and Education 39, no. 1 (January 2015): 34–53; and Michael D. Waggoner, “Religion, Education, and Critical Thinking,” Religion and Education 39, no. 3 (September 2012): 233–34.

[3] Waggoner, “Religion, Education, and Critical Thinking,” 233–34.

[4] Duck-Joo Kwak, “Re‐Conceptualizing Critical Thinking for Moral Education in Culturally Plural Societies,” Educational Philosophy and Theory 39, no. 4 (August 2007): 464.

[5] Jawoniyi, “Religious Education,” 46.

[6] Michael Scriven and Richard Paul, quoted in “Defining Critical Thinking,” Foundation for Critical Thinking, http:// www.criticalthinking.org/ pages/ defining-critical-thinking/ 766.

[7] Gospel Teaching and Learning Handbook: A Handbook for Teachers and Leaders in Seminaries and Institutes of Religion (Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 2012), 39.

[8] Tim John Moore, “Critical Thinking and Disciplinary Thinking: A Continuing Debate,” Higher Education Research & Development 30, no. 3 (June 2011): 261–74.

[9] Ali Mohammad Siahi Atabaki, Narges Keshtiaray, Mohammad Yarmohammadian, “Scrutiny of Critical Thinking Concept,” International Education Studies 8, no. 3 (February 2015): 100.

[10] Dieter F. Uchtdorf, “The Reflection in the Water” (CES fireside for young adults at Brigham Young University, 1 November 2009), https:// www.lds.org/ media-library/ video/ 2009-11-0050-the-reflection-in-the-water?lang=eng#d.

[11] Seminaries and Institutes of Religion, Doctrinal Mastery: Core Document (Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 2016), 2.

[12] Diane F. Halpern, “Teaching Critical Thinking for Transfer across Domains,” The American Psychologist 53, no. 4 (April 1998): 451.

[13] Jennifer Wilson Mulnix, “Thinking Critically About Critical Thinking,” Educational Philosophy and Theory 44, no. 5 (July 2012): 466.

[14] Dallin H. Oaks, “As He Thinketh in His Heart” (evening with a General Authority, 8 February 2013), https:// www.lds.org/ prophets-and-apostles/ unto-all-the-world/ as-he-thinketh-in-his-heart-?lang=eng.

[15] Rajeswari Mohan, “Dodging the Crossfire: Questions for Postcolonial Pedagogy,” College Literature 19/ 20, vol. 3/ 1 (October 1992–February 1993): 30.

[16] Mohan, “Dodging the Crossfire,” 30.

[17] Mohan, “Dodging the Crossfire,” 30.

[18] Elizabeth Ellsworth, “Why Doesn’t This Feel Empowering? Working through the Repressive Myths of Critical Pedagogy,” Harvard Educational Review 59, no. 3 (September 1989): 297–325.

[19] Ellsworth, “Why Doesn’t This Feel Empowering?,” 301.

[20] Nicholas C. Burbules and Rupert Berk, “Critical Thinking and Critical Pedagogy: Relations, Differences, and Limits,” in Critical Theories in Education , ed. Thomas S. Popkewitz and Lynn Fendler (New York: Routledge, 1999), 45–66.

[21] Thomas S. Monson, in Conference Report, October 1970, 107.

[22] Neal A. Maxwell, “The Precious Promise,” Ensign , April 2004, 45, https:// www.lds.org/ ensign/ 2004/ 04/ the-precious-promise?lang=eng.

[23] Boyd K. Packer, “These Things I Know,” Ensign , May 2013, 8, https:// www.lds.org/ ensign/ 2013/ 05/ these-things-i-know?lang=eng.

[24] Mohan, “Dodging the Crossfire,” 30.

[25] Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed , trans. Myra Bergman Ramos (New York: Continuum International, 1970).

[26] Donaldo Macedo, introduction to Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed , 11–26.

[27] Gordon B. Hinckley, “Excerpts from Recent Addresses of President Gordon B. Hinckley,” Ensign , October 1996, https:// www.lds.org/ ensign/ 1996/ 10/ excerpts-from-recent-addresses-of-president-gordon-b-hinckley?lang=eng.

[28] Uchtdorf, “The Reflection in the Water.”

[29] Uchtdorf, “The Reflection in the Water.”

[30] Harvey Siegel, “Indoctrination Objection,” in Educating Reason: Rationality, Critical Thinking, and Education (New York: Routledge, 1988), 78–90.

[31] Halpern, “Teaching Critical Thinking for Transfer across Domains,” 451.

[32] Siegel, Educating Reason , 80.

[33] Siegel, Educating Reason , 80.

[34] Siegel, Educating Reason , 81.

[35] Siegel, Educating Reason , 82.

[36] “Approaching Mormon Doctrine,” 4 May 2007, http:// www.mormonnewsroom.org/ article/ approaching-mormon-doctrine.

[37] B. H. Roberts, A Comprehensive History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints , 2nd ed. (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1976), 2:8.

[38] M. Russell Ballard, “The Opportunities and Responsibilities of CES Teachers in the 21st Century” (address to CES religious educators, 26 February 2016), https:// www.lds.org/ broadcasts/ article/ evening-with-a-general-authority/ 2016/ 02/ the-opportunities-and-responsibilities-of-ces-teachers-in-the-21st-century?lang=eng&_r=1.

Contact the RSC

185 Heber J. Grant Building Brigham Young University Provo, UT 84602 801-422-6975

Helpful Links

Religious Education

BYU Studies

Maxwell Institute

Articulos en español

Artigos em português

Connect with Us

Subscribe to Our Newsletter

April 26, 2012

Losing Your Religion: Analytic Thinking Can Undermine Belief

A series of new experiments shows that analytic thinking can override intuitive assumptions, including those that underlie religious belief

By Marina Krakovsky

People who are intuitive thinkers are more likely to be religious, but getting them to think analytically even in subtle ways decreases the strength of their belief, according to a new study in Science .

The research, conducted by University of British Columbia psychologists Will Gervais and Ara Norenzayan, does not take sides in the debate between religion and atheism, but aims instead to illuminate one of the origins of belief and disbelief. "To understand religion in humans," Gervais says, "you need to accommodate for the fact that there are many millions of believers and nonbelievers."

One of their studies correlated measures of religious belief with people's scores on a popular test of analytic thinking. The test poses three deceptively simple math problems. One asks: "If it takes five machines five minutes to make five widgets, how long would it take 100 machines to make 100 widgets?" The first answer that comes to mind—100 minutes—turns out to be wrong. People who take the time to reason out the correct answer (five minutes) are, by definition, more analytical—and these analytical types tend to score lower on the researchers' tests of religious belief.

On supporting science journalism

If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing . By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.

But the researchers went beyond this interesting link, running four experiments showing that analytic thinking actually causes disbelief. In one experiment, they randomly assigned participants to either the analytic or control condition. They then showed them photos of either Rodin's The Thinker or, in the control condition, of the ancient Greek sculpture Discobolus, which depicts an athlete poised to throw a discus. ( The Thinker was used because it is such an iconic image of deep reflection that, in a separate test with different participants, seeing the statue improved how well subjects reasoned through logical syllogisms.) After seeing the images, participants took a test measuring their belief in God on a scale of 0 to 100. Their scores on the test varied widely, with a standard deviation of about 35 in the control group. But it is the difference in the averages that tells the real story: In the control group, the average score for belief in God was 61.55, or somewhat above the scale's midpoint. On the other hand, for the group who had just seen The Thinker, the resulting average was only 41.42. Such a gap is large enough to indicate a mild believer is responding as a mild nonbeliever—all from being visually reminded of the human capacity to think.

Another experiment used a different method to show a similar effect. It exploited the tendency, previously identified by psychologists, of people to override their intuition when faced with the demands of reading a text in a hard-to-read typeface. Gervais and Norenzayan did this by giving two groups a test of participants' belief in supernatural agents like God and angels, varying only the font in which the test was printed. People who took the belief test in the unclear font (a typewriterlike font set in italics) expressed less belief than those who took it in a more common, easy-to-read typeface. "It's such a subtle manipulation," Norenzayan says. "Yet something that seemingly trivial can lead to a change that people consider important in their religious belief system." On a belief scale of 3 to 21, participants in the analytic condition scored an average of almost two points lower than those in the control group.

Analytic thinking undermines belief because, as cognitive psychologists have shown, it can override intuition. And we know from past research that religious beliefs—such as the idea that objects and events don't simply exist but have a purpose—are rooted in intuition. "Analytic processing inhibits these intuitions, which in turn discourages religious belief," Norenzayan explains.

Harvard University psychologist Joshua Greene, who last year published a paper on the same subject with colleagues Amitai Shenhav and David Rand, praises this work for its rigorous methodology. "Any one of their experiments can be reinterpreted, but when you've got [multiple] different kinds of evidence pointing in the same direction, it's very impressive."

The study also gets high marks from University of California, Irvine, evolutionary biologist Francisco Ayala, the only former president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science to have once been ordained as a Catholic priest, and who continues to assert that science and religion are compatible. Ayala calls the studies ingenious, and is surprised only that the effects are not even stronger. "You would expect that the people who challenge the general assumptions of their culture—in this case, their culture's religious beliefs—are obviously the people who are more analytical," he says.

The researchers, for their part, point out that both reason and intuition have their place. "Our intuitions can be phenomenally useful," Gervais says, "and analytic thinking isn't some oracle of the truth."

Greene concurs, while also raising a provocative question implicit in the findings: "Obviously, there are millions of very smart and generally rational people who believe in God," he says. "Obviously, this study doesn't prove the nonexistence of God. But it poses a challenge to believers: If God exists, and if believing in God is perfectly rational, then why does increasing rational thinking tend to decrease belief in God?"

Is Religious Faith Compatible With Scientific Thinking?

Integrating faith-based and evidence-based beliefs in a mentally-healthy way..

Posted November 14, 2023 | Reviewed by Monica Vilhauer

• Faith is a normal process for dealing with uncertainty when answers to questions are lacking.
• Unlike scientific skepticism, denialism can often lead to non-evidence-based beliefs.
• Thinking scientifically is a learned skill rather than an innate trait.

A few years ago, a high school reader wrote in after reading my blogpost, " Flat Earthers: Belief, Skepticism, and Denialism " posing interesting questions about religious faith and denialism—that is, the refusal to acknowledge evidence or lack thereof, even when it's staring you in the face. In this blogpost, I'll revisit the discussion I had with him.

Religious Belief and Denialism

First, he asked whether those with strong religious beliefs were more prone to denialism. I answered as follows:

The tricky thing is that many of our beliefs are difficult, and sometimes impossible, to falsify. In other words, there are many unknowns that religious beliefs try to satisfy with answers. Is there a God? What happens when we die?

Faith—that is, choosing to believe something in the absence of evidence—is a normal process for dealing with uncertainty around those kinds of questions. In my opinion, there’s an optimal way to hold faith-based beliefs that acknowledges the possibility of being wrong and gives room for others to have different beliefs. We tend to get into trouble when we confuse faith with absolute truth and hold beliefs without cognitive flexibility. In my Flat Earth blogpost, I referred to H. H. Price’s distinction between “belief in” and “belief that.” 1 As I mentioned, faith is a kind of “belief in.”

Based on this conceptual framework, religious faith doesn't have to involve denialism. Several Catholic Popes have argued that faith and reason can be compatible (I refer to Pope John Paul II's insightful comments on this in my blogpost, " The Death of Facts: The Emperor's New Epistemology "). But of course, that often isn’t the case, as with fundamentalists who insist on the literal meaning and truth of a religious text. So, to answer the question, it’s not religion per se that facilitates denialism so much as a rigid cognitive style that lies at one end of a continuum of cognitive flexibility and is epitomized in religious fundamentalism.

Ignoring the Truth

Next, the reader asked what happens to denialists when the evidence doesn't support their beliefs. How is it that they can turn a blind eye when truth stares them in the face?

I answered that confirmation bias —the tendency to ignore or reject evidence and opinion that contradicts what we believe, while gravitating towards evidence that supports it—is a universal trait that we all have (even scientists!) in various degrees. For those who hold their personal beliefs strongly, disregarding evidence—or arguing with people against it—is often the default. These days, many of us can feel this tendency within our online interactions.

It’s sometimes claimed that science and religion are but two faith-based philosophical approaches to knowledge. I don’t agree with that characterization—science is the antithesis of faith-based knowledge and is inherently designed to be open to the reformulation of theories based on new data. But it is true that most of us hold scientific beliefs based not so much on faith as on the trust of experts. In my opinion, mistrust or loss of trust is a major root cause of those who embrace conspiracy theories. Once scientific evidence and expert consensus is rejected, it can lead us down the “rabbit hole” of misinformation, especially on the internet. Similarly, loss of trust—more so I think than denialism—explains how one can come to abandon evidence and shift beliefs in a different direction.

Thinking Scientifically

Finally, the student asked if there was a fundamental difference in the way that religious believers and scientific minds think and whether the former was related to gullibility.

In response, I cautioned against splitting styles of belief and people in general into black and white dichotomies. After all, many people have religious beliefs and still think scientifically. Many famous scientists, from Galileo to Francis Collins , were avowed theists.

Still, it may be that scientific and religious modes of thinking depend on some innate preferences (e.g. one might be genetically predisposed to prefer faith-based or evidence-based beliefs) that, in turn, influence what we believe. For example, it has been shown that religiosity can predict belief in some conspiracy theories that contradict scientific consensus. 2 Similar work has found that conspiracy thinking is related to “teleologic thinking,” defined as the attribution of purpose and causes to natural events or entities, as well as “need for certainty” and a relative lack of analytical thinking. 3,4

In my view however, a preference for how we develop beliefs is much better explained by how we’re taught as we grow up in the world, rather than there being any significant innate differences. “Scientific thinking”—that is, arriving at knowledge through experimentation and the scientific method—is not how we innately come to believe things. Rather, it’s a deliberate method that humans have devised to steer us away from the natural cognitive biases that often lead us to embrace false beliefs.

Science is grounded in a particular form of skepticism that holds that beliefs should be based on repeated observation and experimental controls—that is, evidence. As a result, when there’s no evidence, as with many religious questions, science tends to be either agnostic or nihilistic, which is not always appropriate (e.g., absence of evidence is not always evidence of absence, especially when research to test a hypothesis hasn’t been conducted). Note, however, that this kind of skepticism isn't the same as denialism. Denialism involves the rejection of evidence, which rather than leading to nihilism, often results in a tenacious conviction of non-evidence-based beliefs.

Thinking scientifically requires learning this method throughout one’s life. That happens in science class in elementary school and beyond, but needs to be reinforced outside of the classroom. Science class isn’t going to “stick” if it’s refuted within the broader culture or subculture that we live in. Within subcultures, there are many beliefs that may be idiosyncratic to the rest of the world that are reified within our in-group. When our group and individual identities are based on those same beliefs, it tends to bolster our conviction around those beliefs and, often, the need to defend them. Ironically, when we come to believe that giving up our beliefs threatens our very identity , that’s often when those beliefs can be the most destructive.

1. Price HH. Belief ‘in’ and belief ‘that.” Religious Studies 1965; 1:5-27.

2. Landrum AR, Olshansky A. The role of conspiracy mentality in denial of science and susceptibility to viral deception about science. Politics and the Life Sciences , 2019; 38:193-209.

3. Wagner-Egger P, Delouvée S, Gauvrit N, Dieguez S. Creationism and conspiracism share a common teleologic bias. Current Biology 2018; 28:R867-R868.

4. Swami V, Voracek M, Stieger S, Tran US, Furnham A. Analytic thinking reduces belief in conspiracy theories. Cognition 2014; 133, 572-585.

Joseph M. Pierre, M.D., is a Health Sciences Clinical Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at University of California, San Francisco and the Unit Chief of the Langley Porter Psychiatric Hospital Adult Inpatient Unit.

• Find a Therapist
• Find a Treatment Center
• Find a Psychiatrist
• Find a Support Group
• Find Online Therapy
• United States
• Brooklyn, NY
• Chicago, IL
• Houston, TX
• Los Angeles, CA
• New York, NY
• Portland, OR
• San Diego, CA
• San Francisco, CA
• Seattle, WA
• Washington, DC
• Asperger's
• Bipolar Disorder
• Chronic Pain
• Eating Disorders
• Passive Aggression
• Personality
• Goal Setting
• Positive Psychology
• Stopping Smoking
• Low Sexual Desire
• Relationships
• Child Development
• Therapy Center NEW
• Diagnosis Dictionary
• Types of Therapy

Understanding what emotional intelligence looks like and the steps needed to improve it could light a path to a more emotionally adept world.

• Emotional Intelligence
• Gaslighting
• Affective Forecasting
• Neuroscience

USU Home A-Z Index

• Author Gallery
• < Previous

Home > Student Work > Graduate Studies > Theses and dissertations > 10

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The impact of religious schema on critical thinking skills.

Matthew Kirby , Utah State University

Date of Award:

Document type:, degree name:.

Educational Specialist (EdS)

Department:

Committee chair(s).

Gretchen Gimpel Peacock

Scott Bates

Norman Jones

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between critical thinking and religious schema as represented by religious orientation. Past research has included religious belief within the larger construct of paranormal belief, and demonstrated a correlation between high levels of paranormal belief and poor critical thinking skills. Studies in the psychology of religion suggested that a more complex religious measure based on religious orientation was necessary to understand these correlations. Additionally, schema theory offered a cognitive framework within which to experimentally test the cause of these correlations. This study found that primed religious schema did not account for the relationship between paranormal/religious belief and critical thinking skills. This study did find that poor critical thinking performance was predicted by higher levels of extrinsic religious orientation.

b406d0dffd7cc5f6c5761048d1e72542

Recommended Citation

Kirby, Matthew, "The Impact of Religious Schema on Critical Thinking Skills" (2008). All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023 . 10. https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/etd/10

Previous Versions

Since October 31, 2008

Included in

Social Psychology Commons

https://doi.org/10.26076/e355-8ca7

Advanced Search

• Notify me via email or RSS
• Departments
• Research Centers
• Conferences and Events
• Disciplines
• Student Work
• Open Educational Resources

For Authors

• Author Dashboard
• Expert Gallery
• Open Access

Scholarly Communication

• (435) 797-0816

Research Data

• 435-797-2632
• Research Data Management Services @ USU

Home | About | FAQ | My Account | Accessibility Statement | Privacy Policy | Copyright

USU Library - 3000 Old Main Hill - Logan UT 84322 - 435.797.0816

Essay Help Services – Sharing Educational Integrity

Hire an expert from our writing services to learn from and ace your next task. We are your one-stop-shop for academic success.

Alexander Freeman

Please fill the form correctly

Customer Reviews

• Dissertations
• Business Plans
• PowerPoint Presentations
• Editing and Proofreading
• Annotated Bibliography
• Book Review/Movie Review
• Reflective Paper
• Company/Industry Analysis
• Article Analysis
• Custom Writing Service
• Assignment Help
• Write My Essay
• Paper Writing Help
• Write Papers For Me
• College Paper Writing Service

Finished Papers

Earl M. Kinkade

"The impact of cultural..."

Charita Davis

Finished Papers

Laura V. Svendsen

Standard essay helper

Finished Papers

Transparency through our essay writing service

Transparency is unique to our company and for my writing essay services. You will get to know everything about 'my order' that you have placed. If you want to check the continuity of the order and how the overall essay is being made, you can simply ask for 'my draft' done so far through your 'my account' section. To make changes in your work, you can simply pass on your revision to the writers via the online customer support chat. After getting ‘my’ initial draft in hand, you can go for unlimited revisions for free, in case you are not satisfied with any content of the draft. We will be constantly there by your side and will provide you with every kind of assistance with our best essay writing service.

Customer Reviews

Finished Papers