Compartmentalization

A recent study (1) claims that analytic thinking promotes religious disbelief. The problem is that both analytic thinking and religious disbelief are not well defined terms. Statisticians can find relationships in almost anything, let alone the ones, not well defined. In a world where everybody is striving to put everybody else in neatly defined boxes, these are unfortunate avenues to pursue.

There are many similarities between analytic thinking (a.k.a. the scientific process) and religious beliefs. Religion, indeed, was the fist science, that attempted to explain the unknown and create a structure to promote systemic understanding. Ancient religions are dramatically different from the ones that emerged more recently. In this dimension alone, the authors seem to have a very narrow view in that they attempt to define religious disbelief as related to only modern religions. More importantly, analytic thinking – a very nebulous term – one could argue, is present in any pursuit that is outside the basic needs of a human – such as food, water and reproduction. Religion, philosophy, art, music, literature and science afford many avenues for analytic thinking.

In this respect, most advanced pursuits in the modern world, such as high energy Physics, resemble religion in many respects in that very little is understood and the hypotheses generally are based on belief systems. Both religion and Physics fundamentally dabble in the same questions and neither have concrete answers for them. It is time that we stopped the compartmentalization and labeling – a more satisfying experiment will be the unification of different ideas.

(1) Analytic Thinking Promotes Religious Disbelief. Will M. Gervais*,
Ara Norenzayan* University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC V6T1Z4, Canada.