Religion is a Mental Illness

New study links brain network damage to increased religious fundamentalism

Recent research found that damage to specific brain networks, primarily in the right hemisphere, is linked to higher levels of religious fun

PsyPost - Psychology News

A new study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that specific networks in the brain, when damaged, may influence the likelihood of developing religious fundamentalism. By analyzing patients with focal brain lesions, researchers found that damage to a particular network of brain regions—mainly in the right hemisphere—was associated with higher levels of fundamentalist beliefs. This finding provides new insight into the potential neural basis of religious fundamentalism, which has long been studied in psychology but less so in neuroscience.

Religious fundamentalism is a way of thinking and behaving characterized by a rigid adherence to religious doctrines that are seen as absolute and inerrant. It’s been linked to various cognitive traits such as authoritarianism, resistance to doubt, and a lower complexity of thought. While much of the research on religious fundamentalism has focused on social and environmental factors like family upbringing and cultural influence, there has been growing interest in the role of biology. Some studies have suggested that genetic factors or brain function may influence religiosity, but until now, very little research has looked at specific brain networks that could underlie fundamentalist thinking.

The researchers behind this study wanted to address a critical gap in understanding how brain lesions might affect religious beliefs, particularly fundamentalism. Prior research suggested that damage to the prefrontal cortex could increase fundamentalist attitudes, but this work was limited to small sample sizes and focused only on one part of the brain. The authors of the study hypothesized that instead of a single brain region being responsible, religious fundamentalism might arise from damage to a distributed network of connected brain regions.

“My primary interest is and has been mystical experience. But in the process researching the cognitive neuroscience of mystical experience, I came across brain network associations with religious fundamentalism,” study corresponding author Michael Ferguson, an instructor in neurology at Harvard Medical School and director of Neurospirituality Research at the Center for Brain Circuit Therapeutics.

To explore whether damage to specific brain networks could influence the likelihood of holding religious fundamentalist beliefs, the researchers used a method called lesion network mapping, which helps identify how different regions of the brain are connected and how damage to one area might disrupt related brain functions. The study involved two large groups of patients with focal brain damage, giving the researchers a unique opportunity to analyze how different types of brain lesions might be linked to religious beliefs.

The first group consisted of 106 male Vietnam War veterans who had sustained traumatic brain injuries during combat. These men, aged between 53 and 75 at the time of brain imaging, were part of a long-term study conducted at the National Institutes of Health. The second group included 84 patients from rural Iowa who had experienced brain injuries from various causes, such as strokes, surgical resections, or traumatic head injuries. This second group was more diverse in terms of gender and had a broader range of injury causes.

Both groups completed a scale designed to measure religious fundamentalism, which asked participants to respond to statements reflecting rigid and inerrant religious beliefs, such as the view that there is only one true religion or that certain religious teachings are absolutely correct and unchangeable.

For each participant, the researchers mapped the precise locations of their brain lesions using advanced imaging techniques like computerized tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). These scans were then analyzed using lesion network mapping to see how damage to certain brain areas was connected to changes in religious fundamentalism scores. The researchers also compared the brain lesion data to a larger database of lesions associated with various neuropsychiatric and behavioral conditions, which helped them understand how the brain regions linked to religious fundamentalism overlap with those involved in other psychological traits.

The researchers found that damage to certain areas of the brain, particularly in the right hemisphere, was associated with higher scores on the religious fundamentalism scale. Specifically, lesions affecting the right superior orbital frontal cortex, right middle frontal gyrus, right inferior parietal lobe, and the left cerebellum were linked to increased religious fundamentalism. In contrast, damage to regions such as the left paracentral lobule and the right cerebellum was associated with lower scores on the fundamentalism scale.

“The strength and reproducibility of the signal between psychological self-report measures of religious fundamentalism and the functional networks we identified in the brain surprised me,” Ferguson told PsyPost. “It increases confidence in the results.”

Interestingly, the researchers noted that the brain regions identified in this study are part of a broader network connected to cognitive functions like reasoning, belief formation, and moral decision-making. These areas are also associated with conditions like pathological confabulation—a disorder where individuals create false memories or beliefs without the intent to deceive. Confabulation is often linked to cognitive rigidity and difficulty in revising beliefs, characteristics that are also found in individuals with high levels of religious fundamentalism.

The researchers also found a spatial overlap between brain lesions associated with criminal behavior and this fundamentalism network, which aligns with previous research suggesting that extreme religious beliefs may be linked to hostility and aggression toward outgroups.

“It’s sobering, but one of the takeaway findings is the shared neuroanatomy between religious fundamentalism, confabulations, and criminal behavior,” Ferguson said. “It refocuses important questions about how and why these aspects of human behavior may be observed to relate to each other.”

The researchers emphasize that damage to this brain network does not guarantee that a person will develop fundamentalist beliefs, nor does it imply that individuals with strong religious convictions have brain damage. Instead, the findings point to the possibility that certain brain networks influence how people process beliefs and how flexible or rigid their thinking becomes, especially in the context of religion.

“A major caveat is that these results do not indicate that people with strong religious beliefs confabulate or that individuals high in religious fundamentalism commit crimes,” Ferguson explained. “Rather, our data may help us understand the style of cognitive or emotional processing that increase or decrease the probability of holding fundamentalism attitudes.”

The authors suggest that future research should explore how this brain network influences religious fundamentalism in more diverse populations, including people from non-Christian religious traditions or from different cultural backgrounds. It would also be valuable to study patients both before and after brain injuries to better understand how changes in the brain might affect religious beliefs over time. Additionally, research could investigate how this brain network relates to other types of belief systems, such as political ideologies or moral convictions, to see if similar patterns of cognitive rigidity or reduced skepticism emerge in these contexts.

“The personal beliefs of the authors span a broad continuum from adherents of religious faiths through agnosticism to atheism,” Ferguson noted. “We approach the weighty subject matter of this research as earnest seekers of scientific data and encourage readers to receive our results in the spirit of open-minded empirical inquiry driven by scientific curiosity and without prejudice or malice to any group or faith.”

The study, “A neural network for religious fundamentalism derived from patients with brain lesions,” was authored by Michael A. Ferguson, Erik W. Asp, Isaiah Kletenik , Daniel Tranel, Aaron D. Boes, Jenae M. Nelson, Frederic L. W. V. J. Schaper, Shan Siddiqi, Joseph I. Turner, J. Seth Anderson, Jared A. Nielsen, James R. Bateman, Jordan Grafman, and Michael D. Fox.

Religious fundamentalism is a global and enduring phenomenon. Measuring religious fundamentalism following focal brain damage may lend insight into its neural basis. We use lesion network mapping, a technique that uses connectivity data to identify functional brain networks, to analyze two large, independent datasets of brain lesion patients. We found a network of brain regions that, when damaged, are linked to higher religious fundamentalism. This functional network was lateralized to the right hemisphere and overlaps with the locations of brain lesions associated with specific neuropsychiatric and behavioral conditions. Our findings shed light on neuroanatomy that may influence the emergence of religious fundamentalism, offering implications for understanding the relationship between brain networks and fundamentalist behavior.

Religious fundamentalism, characterized by rigid adherence to a set of beliefs putatively revealing inerrant truths, is ubiquitous across cultures and has a global impact on society. Understanding the psychological and neurobiological processes producing religious fundamentalism may inform a variety of scientific, sociological, and cultural questions. Research indicates that brain damage can alter religious fundamentalism. However, the precise brain regions involved with these changes remain unknown. Here, we analyzed brain lesions associated with varying levels of religious fundamentalism in two large datasets from independent laboratories. Lesions associated with greater fundamentalism were connected to a specific brain network with nodes in the right orbitofrontal, dorsolateral prefrontal, and inferior parietal lobe. This fundamentalism network was strongly right hemisphere lateralized and highly reproducible across the independent datasets (r = 0.82) with cross-validations between datasets. To explore the relationship of this network to lesions previously studied by our group, we tested for similarities to twenty-one lesion-associated conditions. Lesions associated with confabulation and criminal behavior showed a similar connectivity pattern as lesions associated with greater fundamentalism. Moreover, lesions associated with poststroke pain showed a similar connectivity pattern as lesions associated with lower fundamentalism. These findings are consistent with the current understanding of hemispheric specializations for reasoning and lend insight into previously observed epidemiological associations with fundamentalism, such as cognitive rigidity and outgroup hostility.

A Neural Circuit for Spirituality and Religiosity Derived From Patients With Brain Lesions

Over 80% of the global population consider themselves religious, with even more identifying as spiritual, but the neural substrates of spiri

Biological Psychiatry

Over 80% of the global population consider themselves religious, with even more identifying as spiritual, but the neural substrates of spirituality and religiosity remain unresolved.

In two independent brain lesion datasets (N1 = 88; N2 = 105), we applied lesion network mapping to test whether lesion locations associated with spiritual and religious belief map to a specific human brain circuit.

We found that brain lesions associated with self-reported spirituality map to a brain circuit centered on the periaqueductal gray. Intersection of lesion locations with this same circuit aligned with self-reported religiosity in an independent dataset and previous reports of lesions associated with hyper-religiosity. Lesion locations causing delusions and alien limb syndrome also intersected this circuit.

These findings suggest that spirituality and religiosity map to a common brain circuit centered on the periaqueductal gray, a brainstem region previously implicated in fear conditioning, pain modulation, and altruistic behavior.

Biological and cognitive underpinnings of religious fundamentalism - PubMed

Beliefs profoundly affect people's lives, but their cognitive and neural pathways are poorly understood. Although previous research has iden

PubMed

Beliefs profoundly affect people's lives, but their cognitive and neural pathways are poorly understood. Although previous research has identified the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) as critical to representing religious beliefs, the means by which vmPFC enables religious belief is uncertain. We hypothesized that the vmPFC represents diverse religious beliefs and that a vmPFC lesion would be associated with religious fundamentalism, or the narrowing of religious beliefs. To test this prediction, we assessed religious adherence with a widely-used religious fundamentalism scale in a large sample of 119 patients with penetrating traumatic brain injury (pTBI). If the vmPFC is crucial to modulating diverse personal religious beliefs, we predicted that pTBI patients with lesions to the vmPFC would exhibit greater fundamentalism, and that this would be modulated by cognitive flexibility and trait openness. Instead, we found that participants with dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) lesions have fundamentalist beliefs similar to patients with vmPFC lesions and that the effect of a dlPFC lesion on fundamentalism was significantly mediated by decreased cognitive flexibility and openness. These findings indicate that cognitive flexibility and openness are necessary for flexible and adaptive religious commitment, and that such diversity of religious thought is dependent on dlPFC functionality.

“… fundamentalism, properly understood, is not about religion. It is about the inability to seriously entertain the possibility that one might be wrong. In individuals such fundamentalism is natural and, within reason, desirable. But when it becomes the foundation for an intellectual system, it is inherently a threat to freedom of thought.” -- Jonathan Rauch, “Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought”

• https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/cv18.pdf#page=13
• https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/cv19.pdf#page=18

Taliban orders girls’ high schools shut hours after re-opening

Backtracking by the Taliban means female students above the sixth grade will not be able to attend school.

www.aljazeera.com

The Taliban administration in Afghanistan has announced that girls’ high schools will be closed, hours after they reopened for the first time in nearly seven months.

The backtracking by the Taliban means female students above the sixth grade will not be able to attend school.

A Ministry of Education notice said on Wednesday that schools for girls would be closed until a plan was drawn up in accordance with Islamic law and Afghan culture, according to Bakhtar News Agency, a government news agency.

“We inform all girls high schools and those schools that are having female students above class six that they are off until the next order,” said the notice.

“Yes, it’s true,” Taliban spokesman Inamullah Samangani told AFP when asked to confirm reports that girls had been ordered home.

He would not immediately explain the reasoning, while education ministry spokesman Aziz Ahmad Rayan said: “We are not allowed to comment on this.”

“It’s very disappointing that girls, who were waiting for this day, made to return from school. It shows that Taliban are not reliable and cannot fulfill their promises,” Shukria Barakzai, an Afghan politician and journalist based in London, said.

“It means that secondary and high schools are banned for girls. Even primary schools are not open across the country. Most of the provinces do not have girls’ primary schools,” Barakzai told Al Jazeera from London.

“It shows that the Taliban is exactly the same as before – they are against girls’ education.”

A shortage of teachers

The education ministry acknowledged authorities faced a shortage of teachers – with many among the tens of thousands of people who fled the country as the Taliban swept to power after the West-backed government of President Ashraf Ghani collapsed.

“We need thousands of teachers and to solve this problem we are trying to hire new teachers on a temporary basis,” the spokesman said.

The Ministry of Education had announced last week that schools for all students, including girls, would open around the country on Wednesday – the first day of Afghanistan’s new school year – after months of restrictions on education for high school-aged girls.

On Tuesday evening a ministry spokesman released a video congratulating all students on their return to class.

An AFP team was filming at Zarghona High School in the capital, Kabul, when a teacher entered and said the class was over.

Crestfallen students, back at school for the first time since the Taliban seized power in August last year, tearfully packed up their belongings and filed out.

“I see my students crying and reluctant to leave classes,” said Palwasha, a teacher at Omra Khan girls’ school in Kabul.

“It is very painful to see your students crying.”

“We all got disappointed and we all became totally hopeless when the principal told us, she was also crying,” said a student, who was not named for security reasons.

Female education

The last time the Taliban ruled Afghanistan, from 1996 to 2001, it banned female education and most female employment. But after returning to power in August the group has promised opportunities for girls’ education and employment.

The international community has made the education of girls a key demand for any future recognition of the Taliban administration, which took over the country in August as foreign forces withdrew.

United Nations envoy Deborah Lyons called reports of the closure “disturbing”.

“If true, what could possibly be the reason?” she tweeted.

The Norwegian Refugee Council expressed ‘deep concerns’ against the government announcement.

“We expect the Taliban government to allow all girls and boys across the whole country to resume their complete education cycle, in line with earlier public assurances they have given,” Jan Egeland, the NRC Secretary-General, said in a statement on Wednesday.

When the Taliban took over last August, schools were closed because of the COVID-19 pandemic, but only boys and younger girls were allowed to resume classes two months later.

The Taliban had insisted they wanted to ensure schools for girls aged 12 to 19 were segregated and would operate according to Islamic principles.

The Taliban have imposed a slew of restrictions on women, effectively banning them from many government jobs, policing what they wear and preventing them from travelling outside of their cities alone.

Even if schools do reopen fully, barriers to girls returning to education remain, with many families suspicious of the Taliban and reluctant to allow their daughters outside.

Others see little point in girls learning at all.

“Those girls who have finished their education have ended up sitting at home and their future is uncertain,” said Heela Haya, 20, from Kandahar, who has decided to quit school.

“What will be our future?”

Human Rights Watch also raised the issue of the few avenues girls are given to apply their education.

“Why would you and your family make huge sacrifices for you to study if you can never have the career you dreamed of?” said Sahar Fetrat, an assistant researcher with the group.

Narrated Abu Sa`id Al-Khudri:

The Prophet (ﷺ) said, "Isn't the witness of a woman equal to half of that of a man?" The women said, "Yes." He said, "This is because of the deficiency of a woman's mind."

Narrated Abu Sa`id Al-Khudri:

On `Id ul Fitr or `Id ul Adha Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) (p.b.u.h) went out to the Musalla. After finishing the prayer, he delivered the sermon and ordered the people to give alms. He said, "O people! Give alms." Then he went towards the women and said. "O women! Give alms, for I have seen that the majority of the dwellers of Hell-Fire were you (women)." The women asked, "O Allah's Messenger (ﷺ)! What is the reason for it?" He replied, "O women! You curse frequently, and are ungrateful to your husbands. I have not seen anyone more deficient in intelligence and religion than you. O women, some of you can lead a cautious wise man astray." Then he left. And when he reached his house, Zainab, the wife of Ibn Mas`ud, came and asked permission to enter It was said, "O Allah's Messenger (ﷺ)! It is Zainab." He asked, 'Which Zainab?" The reply was that she was the wife of Ibn Mas'ub. He said, "Yes, allow her to enter." And she was admitted. Then she said, "O Prophet of Allah! Today you ordered people to give alms and I had an ornament and intended to give it as alms, but Ibn Mas`ud said that he and his children deserved it more than anybody else." The Prophet (ﷺ) replied, "Ibn Mas`ud had spoken the truth. Your husband and your children had more right to it than anybody else."

Narrated Abu Sa`id Al-Khudri:

Once Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) went out to the Musalla (to offer the prayer) of `Id-al-Adha or Al-Fitr prayer. Then he passed by the women and said, "O women! Give alms, as I have seen that the majority of the dwellers of Hell-fire were you (women)." They asked, "Why is it so, O Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) ?" He replied, "You curse frequently and are ungrateful to your husbands. I have not seen anyone more deficient in intelligence and religion than you. A cautious sensible man could be led astray by some of you." The women asked, "O Allah's Messenger (ﷺ)! What is deficient in our intelligence and religion?" He said, "Is not the evidence of two women equal to the witness of one man?" They replied in the affirmative. He said, "This is the deficiency in her intelligence. Isn't it true that a woman can neither pray nor fast during her menses?" The women replied in the affirmative. He said, "This is the deficiency in her religion."

According to Yunus-Ibn Wahb-Ibn Zayd (commenting on God's word: "And he whispered""' ): Satan whispered to Eve about the tree and succeeded in taking her to it; then he made it seem good to Adam. He continued. When Adam felt a need for her and called her, she said: No! unless you go there. When he went, she said again: No! unless you eat from this tree. He continued. They both ate from it, and their secret parts became apparent to them. He continued. Adam then went about in Paradise in flight. His Lord called out to him: Adam, is it from Me that you are fleeing? Adam replied: No, my Lord, but I feel shame before You. When God asked what had caused his trouble, he replied: Eve, my Lord. Whereupon God said: Now it is My obligation to make her bleed once every month, as she made this tree bleed. I also must make her stupid, although I created her intelligent (halimah), and must make her suffer pregnancy and birth with difficulty, although I made it easy for her to be pregnant and give birth. Ibn Zayd continued: Were it not for the affliction that affected Eve, the women of this world would not menstruate, and they would be intelligent and, when pregnant, give birth easily.

I left Islam for liberal values. Now woke liberals are embracing a new religion | Opinion

When I heard people asked to check their privilege or introspect the ways they have been racist, it sounded like the inner jihad that Muslims are supposed to perform to make sure they are on the correct path.

www.newsweek.com

I was raised in a religious Muslim home and practiced the faith for a long time. Eventually, I realized I was not a religious man, after spending a long time educating myself, immersed in our texts. Certain things bothered me after I investigated them deeply. I felt the hijab was misogynistic, and I opposed the strain of violence that had emerged from our holy books. Then there were the blasphemy laws outlined in the Quran, which seemed like the opposite of the liberal values I believe in. As a secular man, I went about my life, working as a contractor for the Canadian military for over a decade in Kosovo, Sudan, Bosnia, Haiti, and then Afghanistan. I encountered other Muslims, and others like me, who were not longer Muslim. But when I came back to Canada in 2014, I returned to a different country than the one I had left.

I had left a country that was proud of being the opposite of what bothered me about Islam, that was proud of a tradition of free inquiry and free speech, open debate and civil discourse. The Canada I returned to resembled the religion of my youth more than it did its opposite.

I left a culture that was steeped in a sentiment that could be summed up as, "I may disagree with what you say, but I respect your right to say it." I returned to a culture summarized by, "I disagree with what you say, so shut up."

Now, Ex-Muslims like me who criticized the religion of our youth were called horrible slurs: "house Muslims," "native informants," "Uncle Toms," or bounty bars, implying we were brown on the outside but white inside. Strangers called me a white supremacist for saying the hijab is misogynistic. In October of 2014, Sam Harris had his infamous exchange with Ben Affleck. Harris laid out a compelling case about Islam and spoke of its concentric circles of fundamentalism. Affleck called his argument "gross and racist."

The dam broke. Once they started calling it racist to criticize Islam, it was easy to shut the conversation down completely. The accusation meant the accused was morally beyond the pale, and thus completely dismissible. Words like micro-aggressions, trigger warnings, and safe spaces became mainstream. An emphasis on pervasive racism grew exponentially. To even question the extent to which racism was everywhere resulted in accusations of being a racist. Like with religious blasphemy codes, you can only talk about certain topics in specific ways.

I couldn't help but notice there was an almost fundamentalist, faith-like aspect to these claims. It was as if in the years since I'd been gone, our society had decided to adopt the blasphemy codes of my youth. When I heard people asked to check their privilege or introspect the ways they have been racist, it sounded like the inner jihad that Muslims are supposed to perform to make sure they are on the correct path.

How did this happen? How did the religious tenets I had abandoned come to take over the liberal culture I had abandoned them for?

To answer this question, I did what I had once done with the texts of Islam: I educated myself. I started reading about critical race theory and Intersectionality. I spent eighteen months reading critical social justice scholarship, and gender and queer theories. It was here I found the rejection of the Enlightenment values that made these theories closer to religion than to its opposite.

But there are many other similarities. In Islam, giving offense to the pious is considered a grave sin. Recall the 2015 murders at the French publication Charlie Hebdo; the artists had insulted the Prophet Muhammad and his followers, and thus deserved to die. But there's a less extreme version of causing harm through giving offense that's known as "fitna"—doing something that causes civil strife. A woman can cause fitna by dressing provocatively, as can someone who questions Islam publicly.

You can see this idea that giving offense causes harm everywhere in the new critical social justice culture. Anything that gives offense to marginalized people must be repressed for the good of society. And anyone criticizing people of color too strenuously or offending them must be deplaformed and canceled.

And just as in Islam, there is a jockeying for who is the accurate representation of the faith, Sunnis or Shia, in the social justice camp, believers decide who the true representatives of each oppressed group are. Fall afoul of the right political view and you will be denounced; people throw around terms such as "political blackness" or "multi-racial whiteness." Just as apostates from Islam are said to not have been real Muslims, detransitioners are told they were never really trans and Black people who speak out against the tenets of critical race theory are told they're not really Black.

In Muslim countries, biology textbooks will censor evolution. Now, due to gender theory, biology is similarly coming into conflict with an ideology—and losing. A mixture of post-colonial theory and critical race theory is behind a push to disrupt texts, a call to decolonize the Western Canon and school curricula. Critical social justice ideologies are in direct conflict with Enlightenment values and the rigors of the scientific method, like Islam, and are thus a huge threat to liberalism—like Islam.

I have had the good fortune to meet and speak with many brave people in the fights against fundamental Islam and critical social justice. As I once did when speaking to Muslims, I keep hearing about the silent majority that is opposed to CSJ.

That silent majority needs to become vocal very quickly. We need more people to be brave enough to speak up and push back. The long march through the institutions is sprinting into the final lap, and it cannot be allowed to win. Take it from an ex-Muslim.

Obaid Omer is a podcaster and free speech advocate. He was born in India and lives in Canada.

“... a few psychologists have shown that people associate with God all that is good. And so, when atheists will say that they don’t believe in God, they’re very often understood to say ‘I don’t believe in good.’ [..] And this is also very commonly seen in Social Justice movements where, to say 'I don’t like this approach to equality,’ [..] it’s essentially to say ‘I am a Nazi.’” - Helen Pluckrose

Link between religious fundamentalism and brain damage established by scientists

A study published in the journal Neuropsychologia has shown that religious fundamentalism is, in part, the result of a functional impairment in a brain region known as the prefrontal cortex. The findings suggest that damage to particular areas of the prefrontal cortex indirectly promotes religious fundamentalism by diminishing cognitive flexibility and openness—a psychology term that describes a personality trait which involves dimensions like curiosity, creativity, and open-mindedness.

www.rawstory.com

The results showed that, as expected, damage to the vmPFC and dlPFC was associated with religious fundamentalism. Further tests revealed that this increase in religious fundamentalism was caused by a reduction in cognitive flexibility and openness resulting from the prefrontal cortex impairment. Cognitive flexibility was assessed using a standard psychological card sorting test that involved categorizing cards with words and images according to rules. Openness was measured using a widely-used personality survey known as the NEO Personality Inventory. The data suggests that damage to the vmPFC indirectly promotes religious fundamentalism by suppressing both cognitive flexibility and openness.

A study published in the journal Neuropsychologia has shown that religious fundamentalism is, in part, the result of a functional impairment in a brain region known as the prefrontal cortex. The findings suggest that damage to particular areas of the prefrontal cortex indirectly promotes religious fundamentalism by diminishing cognitive flexibility and openness—a psychology term that describes a personality trait which involves dimensions like curiosity, creativity, and open-mindedness.

Religious beliefs can be thought of as socially transmitted mental representations that consist of supernatural events and entities assumed to be real. Religious beliefs differ from empirical beliefs, which are based on how the world appears to be and are updated as new evidence accumulates or when new theories with better predictive power emerge. On the other hand, religious beliefs are not usually updated in response to new evidence or scientific explanations, and are therefore strongly associated with conservatism. They are fixed and rigid, which helps promote predictability and coherence to the rules of society among individuals within the group.

The authors emphasize that cognitive flexibility and openness aren’t the only things that make brains vulnerable to religious fundamentalism. [..] Uncovering those additional causes, which could be anything from genetic predispositions to social influences, is a future research project that the researchers believe will occupy investigators for many decades to come