God may have created man in his image, but it seems we return the favour. Believers subconsciously endow God with their own beliefs on controversial issues.
“Intuiting God’s beliefs on important issues may not produce an independent guide, but may instead serve as an echo chamber to validate and justify one’s own beliefs,” writes a team led by Nicholas Epley of the University of Chicago in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The researchers started by asking volunteers who said they believe in God to give their own views on controversial topics, such as abortion and the death penalty. They also asked what the volunteers thought were the views of God, average Americans and public figures such as Bill Gates. Volunteers’ own beliefs corresponded most strongly with those they attributed to God.
New Scientist (thanks, Tiram)
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Well, DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUH! =)
Although it’s nice to have some actual scientific proof.
I guess put simply you could describe that as a divine confirmation bias!
The article reminded me of this scene from “Life of Brian”…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uywIYQEHZLs
Perhaps they should scan and check the brains of those scientists .. and their beliefs. They seem to be a bit oo out of control in this area already for quite sometime. Denying something on their own inside .. research thy own and thou will know ….
Haven’t seen it this dumb for quite some time. Very useless … to the max. Take them from their projects.
There is nothing different in most religious people than non religious people .. normal human beings know.
We don’t want new hitlers been born … where religious people are the jews … that’s how I read this type of research a bit too much .. if you want to see it have use or such … The use is not clear nor on in these scientists anymore … take away their payment and let them sit at home with their dumb narcistic focus.
I personally see this as a great step towards lowering the unearned powers of religion.
This evidence shows that religion is genuinely no different from any other irrational belief. Hopefully if we study this more, governments may take a keen eye.
BTW @Ms G – Do not underestimate a scientist’s ability to disprove him/herself. That method of thinking is still a lot more closer to the truth than something which is just made up from the top of someone’s head.
Even as an atheist, I really don’t think this proves anything. Consider if the faithful are actually correct: God believes x and has told me as much – wouldn’t we find it terribly odd if people held views which were dissimilar to those they believed were held by god? “God has told me he’s against abortion, but I don’t think he’s considered all the arguments. Pretty sure he’s wrong on this one.” It would be silly.
Essentially, what I’m saying is that this phenomenon could be the result of any one of two causes: Either they are attributing their own beliefs to god for “validating and justifying” themselves – OR they actually, genuinely believe that god has a certain opinion, and therefore change their own opinion to match what they think he believes. It is impossible to disentangle these and find out which is actually at work.
Hmmm… there is something circular about this research…
Now, I haven’t done the reasearch or asked the questions, and I’m not trying to say that there might be an old bloke with a beard in the sky, but can we maybe think abou tthis differently for one second?
Lets say there was a book that alluded to ways of thinking about things. If you believed this came from the old bloke in the sky, and that that was what was the truth, then you’d have those views too. And you’d also believe that the old bloke had the same views.
Any thoughts? Anyone?
x
you can tell a lot about a person by what ‘faith’ they claim. The Deists I know who only believe in some vague notion of a “higher power”–such as the people who like the book “The Secret” and yoga students–don’t seem to have any problem with gay people or atheists, probably because there’s no scripture they can point to that says it’s wrong. Most atheists i know have no problem with gay marriage. One does and his reasons are the same reasons Christians give. EVERY conservative Christian I know is a against gay marriage.
I have a Christian co worker whom I speak with a lot and he tells me flat out things like “Yeah god doesn’t want gays to marry” and then I say “well what’s your opinion?” and he goes “well my opinion is that if you think about it, two guys doing it is disgusting.” Which of course means he’s biased without god.
Andrew, Jo, etc – If you read the rest of the article, you’ll see that they address what you’re saying. Here’s the very next paragraph after the jump:
“Next, the team asked another group of volunteers to undertake tasks designed to soften their existing views, such as preparing speeches on the death penalty in which they had to take the opposite view to their own. They found that this led to shifts in the beliefs attributed to God, but not in those attributed to other people.”
Getting them to consider opposing views effected what they thought God believes.