Thinking about physics suppresses our social minds

Last year, a scientific study out of UBC-Vancouver made a splash by claiming that analytical thinking decreased people’s belief in God. Of course, this wasn’t much of a surprise – both hard-nosed science advocates and dreamy religious writers have noted the incompatibility between religious and analytic thinking. But new research offers a neurological perspective on this religion-science divide. Specifically, a team of cognitive scientists has found that the neural systems that deal with purely physical phenomena inhibit those that focus on social information, and vice-versa. Since many studies have linked social cognition to religious belief, it seems that our science minds and our religious minds are like streets at a crossroads: if one direction is flowing, the other is shut off.