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The Camino de Santiago de Compostela
Why do we believe in gods? Religious belief not linked to intuition or rational thinking, new research suggests
Are people born with the propensity to be religious, as some studies seem to have shown?
It is even claimed in some religious apologetic circles that somehow being religious is the natural state, either an evolved genetic predisposition, or, in fundamentalist creationist apologetics, that God intelligently designed us to be religious (obviously it couldn't have evolved, that would be heretical!).
Strangely, this god intelligently designed us to be religious but couldn't make us all have the 'one true religion'.
Of course, the bottom line is that somehow, atheism is unnatural, even perverse and definitely not something God intended.
The basis for that view of the origin of religiosity is based on the idea that religious belief is based on intuition rather than rational, analytical thinking (the Intuitive Belief Hypothesis). Certainly, arguments for creationism are invariable intuitive or more accurately, incredulitive, "I don't understand it, or can't believe it, therefore God!"
Now a new study by academics from Coventry and Oxford universities casts considerable doubt on this view and suggests that intuitive vs analytical thinking actually don't have much bearing on religious belief.