The minds of gods: A comparative study of supernatural agency

Cognition
Volume 129, Issue 1, October 2013, Pages 163–179
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2013.06.010

Benjamin Grant Purzycki

Centre for Human Evolution, Cognition, and Culture, University of British Columbia, 1871 West Mall, Vancouver, British Columbia V6T 1Z2, Canada

Highlights

• Christians show higher responses to God’s knowledge of moral than nonmoral information.
• Tyvans show a bias towards moralizing explicitly nonmoral Tyvan spirit-masters.
• Tyvans reason about spirit-masters’ knowledge and concerns spatially.
• Wider attributed knowledge breadth of spirit-masters predicts attributed concern for morality.

Abstract

The present work is the first study to systematically compare the minds of gods by examining some of the intuitive processes that guide how people reason about them. By examining the Christian god and the spirit-masters of the Tyva Republic, it first confirms that the consensus view of the Christian god’s mind is one of omniscience with acute concern for interpersonal social behavior (i.e., moral behaviors) and that Tyvan spirit-masters are not as readily attributed with knowledge or concern of moral information. Then, it reports evidence of a moralization bias of gods’ minds; American Christians who believe that God is omniscient rate God as more knowledgeable of moral behaviors than nonmoral information. Additionally, Tyvans who do not readily report pro- or antisocial behavior among the things that spirit-masters care about will nevertheless rate spirit-masters’ knowledge and concern of moral information higher than nonmoral information. However, this knowledge is distributed spatially; the farther away from spirits’ place of governance a moral behavior takes place, the less they know and care about it. Finally, the wider the breadth of knowledge Tyvans attribute to spirit-masters, the more they attribute moral concern for behaviors that transpire beyond their jurisdiction. These results further demonstrate that there is a significant gulf between expressed beliefs and intuitive religious cognition and provides evidence for a moralization bias of gods’ minds.

Keywords

Religion; Minds of gods; Supernatural Punishment Hypothesis; Omniscience; Cultural consensus analysis; Theological correctness

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0010027713001224

Belief bias during reasoning among religious believers and skeptics

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review
August 2013, Volume 20, Issue 4, pp 806-811

Gordon Pennycook, James Allan Cheyne, Derek J. Koehler, Jonathan A. Fugelsang

Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, Waterloo, Ontario, N2L 3G1, Canada

Abstract

We provide evidence that religious skeptics, as compared to believers, are both more reflective and effective in logical reasoning tasks. While recent studies have reported a negative association between an analytic cognitive style and religiosity, they focused exclusively on accuracy, making it difficult to specify potential underlying cognitive mechanisms. The present study extends the previous research by assessing both performance and response times on quintessential logical reasoning problems (syllogisms). Those reporting more religious skepticism made fewer reasoning errors than did believers. This finding remained significant after controlling for general cognitive ability, time spent on the problems, and various demographic variables. Crucial for the purpose of exploring underlying mechanisms, response times indicated that skeptics also spent more time reasoning than did believers. This novel finding suggests a possible role of response slowing during analytic problem solving as a component of cognitive style that promotes overriding intuitive first impressions. Implications for using additional processing measures, such as response time, to investigate individual differences in cognitive style are discussed.

http://link.springer.com/article/10.3758%2Fs13423-013-0394-3

The separate roles of the reflective mind and involuntary inhibitory control in gatekeeping paranormal beliefs and the underlying intuitive confusions

British Journal of Psychology
Volume 104, Issue 3, pages 303–319, August 2013
DOI: 10.1111/j.2044-8295.2012.02118.x

Annika M. Svedholm and Marjaana Lindeman

Institute of Behavioural Sciences, Division of Cognitive Psychology and Neuropsychology, University of Helsinki, Finland

Intuitive thinking is known to predict paranormal beliefs, but the processes underlying this relationship, and the role of other thinking dispositions, have remained unclear. Study 1 showed that while an intuitive style increased and a reflective disposition counteracted paranormal beliefs, the ontological confusions suggested to underlie paranormal beliefs were predicted by individual differences in involuntary inhibitory processes. When the reasoning system was subjected to cognitive load, the ontological confusions increased, lost their relationship with paranormal beliefs, and their relationship with weaker inhibition was strongly accentuated. These findings support the argument that the confusions are mainly intuitive and that they therefore are most discernible under conditions in which inhibition is impaired, that is, when thinking is dominated by intuitive processing. Study 2 replicated the findings on intuitive and reflective thinking and paranormal beliefs. In Study 2, ontological confusions were also related to the same thinking styles as paranormal beliefs. The results support a model in which both intuitive and non-reflective thinking styles and involuntary inhibitory processes give way to embracing culturally acquired paranormal beliefs.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.2044-8295.2012.02118.x/abstract

Unusual but sound minds: Mental health indicators in spiritual individuals

British Journal of Psychology
Volume 104, Issue 3, pages 364–381, August 2013
Issue published online: 15 JUL 2013

Miguel Farias, Raphael Underwood and Gordon Claridge

Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3UD, England

Previous research has linked certain types of modern spirituality, including New Age and Pagan, with either benign schizotypy or insecure attachment. While the first view emphasizes a positive aspect of spiritual believers’ mental health (benign schizotypy), the second view emphasizes a negative aspect, namely the unhealthy emotional compensation associated with an insecure attachment style. This study addresses these two conflicting views by comparing a sample of modern spiritual individuals (N = 114) with a contrast group of traditional religious believers (N = 86). Measures of schizotypy and attachment style were combined with mental health scales of anxiety and depression. We further assessed death anxiety to determine whether modern spiritual beliefs fulfilled a similar function as traditional religious beliefs in the reduction of existential threat. Our results support a psychological contiguity between traditional and modern spiritual believers and reinforce the need to de-stigmatize spiritual ideas and experiences. Using hierarchical regression, we showed that unusual experiences and ideas are the major predictor of engagement in modern spiritual practices. Anxiety, depression variables, and insecure attachment were not significant predictors of spirituality or correlated with them; on the other hand, the results show that spiritual believers report high social support satisfaction and this variable predicts involvement in modern spirituality. Further, spiritual practices were negatively correlated with and negatively predicted by death anxiety scores. Overall, the results strengthen the association between modern spirituality, good mental health, and general well-being.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.2044-8295.2012.02128.x/abstract

A priori physicalism, lonely ghosts and cartesian doubt

Consciousness and Cognition
Volume 21, Issue 2, June 2012, Pages 742–746
doi: 10.1016/j.concog.2011.02.007

Philip Goff

University of Hertfordshire, Department of Philosophy, de Havilland Campus, Hatfield AL 10 9AB, United Kingdom

Abstract

A zombie is a physical duplicates of a human being which lacks consciousness. A ghost is a phenomenal duplicate of a human being whose nature is exhausted by consciousness. Discussion of zombie arguments, that is anti-physicalist arguments which appeal to the conceivability of zombies, is familiar in the philosophy of mind literature, whilst ghostly arguments, that is, anti-physicalist arguments which appeal to the conceivability of ghosts, are somewhat neglected. In this paper I argue that ghostly arguments have a number of dialectical advantages over zombie arguments. I go onto explain how the conceivability of ghosts is inconsistent with two kinds of a priori physicalism: analytic functionalism and the Australian physicalism of Armstrong and Lewis.

Keywords

Consciousness; Zombies; Ghosts; Hard problem; Physicalism; Conceivability arguments

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S105381001100033X

Holy water of hospital chapels as a possible source for nosocomical infections

Hygiene & Medizin 2012; 37 [3]: 72–76

Hubert Weiß

The ongoing discussion about effective preventive measures against nosocomical infections concentrates very much on activities of hygiene management and on the search for all possible ways of introduction of germs into the clinical area. This analysis investigates whether holy water in hospital chapels may provide a possible reservoir for a contamination of patients in the clinical area as well as hospital equipment. The microbial count and the spectrum of bacteria detected in holy water lead to the conclusion that holy water should be integrated into the monitoring and the hygiene management of hospitals as a critical control point. This paper develops suggestions for the expansion of hygiene management and for the reduction of microbial counts in holy water fonts. Finally, liability issues will be discussed.

http://www.mhp-verlag.de/en/search/1749-Holy-water-of-hospital-chapels-as-a-possible-source-for-nosocomical-infections/

Praying to stop being an atheist

International Journal for Philosophy of Religion
June 2010, Volume 67, Issue 3, pp 173-186
Cover Date 2010-06-01
DOI 10.1007/s11153-010-9227-8

T. J. Mawson

St. Peter’s College, Oxford, OX1 2DL, UK

Abstract

In this paper, I argue that atheists who think that the issue of God’s existence or non-existence is an important one; assign a greater than negligible probability to God’s existence; and are not in possession of a plausible argument for scepticism about the truth-directedness of uttering such prayers in their own cases, are under a prima facie epistemic obligation to pray to God that he stop them being atheists.

Keywords

God, Prayer, Atheism, Theism, Agnosticism, Divine hiddenness, Epistemic obligation

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11153-010-9227-8

Why Liberals and Atheists Are More Intelligent

Social Psychology Quarterly
March 2010 vol. 73 no. 1 33-57

Satoshi Kanazawa

Department of Management, London School of Economics and Political Science, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE, United Kingdom

Abstract

The origin of values and preferences is an unresolved theoretical question in behavioral and social sciences. The Savanna-IQ Interaction Hypothesis, derived from the Savanna Principle and a theory of the evolution of general intelligence, suggests that more intelligent individuals may be more likely to acquire and espouse evolutionarily novel values and preferences (such as liberalism and atheism and, for men, sexual exclusivity) than less intelligent individuals, but that general intelligence may have no effect on the acquisition and espousal of evolutionarily familiar values (for children, marriage, family, and friends). The analyses of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Study 1) and the General Social Surveys (Study 2) show that adolescent and adult intelligence significantly increases adult liberalism, atheism, and men’s (but not women’s) value on sexual exclusivity.

http://spq.sagepub.com/content/73/1/33