Stephan: What this report like most other reports fails to distinguish -- perhaps because the people who write these stories, and do this research, are spiritual unawakened, is the difference between religious and spiritual. Religion is entirely man made. People decide what is religious. People create the dogmas. The experience of gnosis is something quite different from that. Sometimes gnosis is experienced within a religious context, but often it is not.
Religion, because it is inherently irrational, rarely does well when exposed to the cold light of rational thought, which is why only a very small proportion of scientists are religious, although many are spiritual. This truth is why all fundamentalism, of whatever denomination, is anti-intellectual, and pro willful ignorance.
A new University of British Columbia study finds that analytic thinking can decrease religious belief, even in devout believers.
The study, which is published in the April 27 issue of Science, finds that thinking analytically increases disbelief among believers and skeptics alike, shedding important new light on the psychology of religious belief.
‘Our goal was to explore the fundamental question of why people believe in a God to different degrees,
