Does Logical Thinking Reduce Religious Belief? New Research Says No (opens in new tab)

There is a certain modern confidence—especially among educated Westerners—that religion survives mainly because human beings have not thought hard enough yet. The theory goes something like this: faith belongs to intuition, emotion, and cognitive shortcuts. Rational analysis, meanwhile, belongs to science, skepticism, and logic. Therefore, if you activate analytical thinking strongly enough, religious belief should weaken. It is an elegant theory. Clean. Efficient. The intellectual equivalent...