Will Gervais is a senior lecturer in psychology at Brunel University London. He and some of his colleagues conducted a study recently to assess “the degree to which people hold supernatural beliefs.” They were trying to measure how religion works in human societies. To conduct their research, they surveyed a group of people concerning their belief in God. This survey also included a psychological assessment to evaluate the nature of participants’ commitment to their religious faith.
At this point, I don’t really want to get into the findings of their survey. The reason I don’t want to do that is that the findings are simply not that meaningful. The reason they are not very meaningful is because the results of this kind of “research” are not capable of giving any kind of reasons why their results should be regarded as meaningful. All they are able to do is (Continue reading here.)