The Sceptical Brain Makes You Doubt God, Study

Why are many people turning increasingly to atheism? The skeptical brain holds the key, according to salon

A 2008 report by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life found that just 12.7 percent of people of a religion remained unattached to any religious group. But why do some people become irreligious?

"One skeptical hypothesis about the external world, namely that one is a brain in a vat with systematically delusory experience, is modelled on the Cartesian Evil Genius hypothesis, according to which one is a victim of thoroughgoing error induced by a God-like deceiver," according to an article published in stanford.edu.

Science writer and skeptic Michael Shermer, in his book "The Believing Brain," says that earlier, belief was beneficial to human evolution. And "the tendency to find patterns in both meaningful and meaningless noise" - or, as he calls it, "patternicity" - was only to keep humans alive.

Explaining that earlier, hearing a "rustle in the grass" could mean a hungry predator or just the wind, it could could also spell death. Hence, the humans developed a cautious attitude and began to falsely believe leads, which got passed on. As Shermer puts it, "we are the descendants of those who were most successful at finding patterns."

Hence, when humans notice the patterns, they tend to fill them with "meaning, intention, and agency," or agenticity. "God is the ultimate pattern that explains everything that happens," he wrote, "the ultimate intentional agent."

Shermer explains that there is heavy "genetic influence on intentional belief." Moreover, "people who grow up in religious families and later become religious have inherited a disposition to resonate positively with religious sentiments."

In his popular book, "The God Gene," American geneticist Dean Hamer said that "we have a genetic predisposition for spiritual belief that is expressed in response to, and shaped by, personal experience and the cultural environment."

Hence, belief is a way of believing in some safeguard for humans. According to a May Gallup poll, 86 percent of Americans believe in God.

But a skeptical brain works in a different way from a believing brain. In a 2012 study called "Is it Just a Brick Wall or a Sign From the Universe: An fMRI Study of Supernatural Believers and Skeptics," participants' "brain activity was monitored while they read a scenario, then looked at a picture."

Then they were asked a few questions. What thoughts would that image evoke if they were in the particular scene, and then saw the picture on a poster in the street? The responses varied.

After a job interview, imagine you are walking on the street and see a poster of a business suit. Those who are "supernaturally inclined" take it as a "meaningful omen" or a hint that they would be able to get their jobs. But the others saw no meaning in it.

Hence, the researchers found that the right inferior frontal gyrus in the brain "was activated more strongly in skeptics than in supernatural believers." If this part of the brain is active, then participants would not find supernatural meaning in the images, as the active region of the brain is associated with "cognitive inhibition", or the brain's capacity to stop or override a certain mental process such as halting unwanted thoughts or irrelevant data.

Hence, the skeptics would not find the picture of the suit any indication of their ability to get their job, while the believers would connect the links. Thus, the study showed that "a skeptical attitude toward supernatural phenomena is associated with stronger cognitive inhibition." Many of the skeptics earlier held supernatural beliefs, so the researchers feel that "developmental increases in cognitive inhibition may be among the factors that contribute to the decline of these beliefs."

Vern L. Bengtson and Norella M. Putney, authors of the book "Families and Faith: How Religion Is Passed Down Across Generations," have a different, more sociological approach. They looked at the progression of religious faith from parents to children to find out "what families should or should not do to be effective in sustaining religious continuity."

The authors found that "parents who interact with their children during their formative years in a warm, affirming and respectful manner are more likely to pass on their religious tradition, beliefs, and practices." Parents of the same faith who remained married, and had strong relationships with grandparents of the same faith could pass on their beliefs to their children easily.

However, if resistant children were forced into religious activities, they would quickly rebel.