God may have created man in his image, but it seems we return the favour. Believers subconsciously endow God with their own beliefs on controversial issues.
鈥淚ntuiting God鈥檚 beliefs on important issues may not produce an independent guide, but may instead serve as an echo chamber to validate and justify one鈥檚 own beliefs,鈥� writes a team led by of the University of Chicago in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The researchers started by asking volunteers who said they believe in God to give their own views on controversial topics, such as abortion and the death penalty. They also asked what the volunteers thought were the views of God, average Americans and public figures such as Bill Gates. Volunteers鈥� own beliefs corresponded most strongly with those they attributed to God.
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Next, the team asked another group of volunteers to undertake tasks designed to soften their existing views, such as preparing speeches on the death penalty in which they had to take the opposite view to their own. They found that this led to shifts in the beliefs attributed to God, but not in those attributed to other people.
Moral compass
鈥淧eople may use religious agents as a moral compass, forming impressions and making decisions based on what they presume God as the ultimate moral authority would believe or want,鈥� the team write. 鈥淭he central feature of a compass, however, is that it points north no matter what direction a person is facing. This research suggests that, unlike an actual compass, inferences about God鈥檚 beliefs may instead point people further in whatever direction they are already facing.鈥�
鈥淭he experiments in which we manipulate people鈥檚 own beliefs are the most compelling evidence we have to show that people鈥檚 own beliefs influence what they think God believes more substantially than it influences what they think other people believe,鈥� says Epley.
Finally, the team used fMRI to scan the brains of volunteers while they contemplated the beliefs of themselves, God or 鈥渁verage Americans鈥�. In all the experiments the volunteers professed beliefs in an Abrahamic God. The majority were Christian.
In the first two cases, similar parts of the brain were active. When asked to contemplate other Americans鈥� beliefs, however, an area of the brain used for inferring other people鈥檚 mental states was active. This implies that people map God鈥檚 beliefs onto their own.
Imagination link
Other researchers say the findings reinforce earlier studies suggesting that thinking about God is intimately linked to the imagination.
These experiments 鈥渟upport previous findings that representations of God seem intimately related to the self, also in terms of brain function鈥�, says Uffe Schj酶dt of Aarhus University in Denmark, whose research published earlier this year showed that praying uses similar brain regions as talking to a friend.
鈥淭hese findings help explain why supernatural religious agents are often attributed a physical form and issue edicts that resemble the social practices of the culture from which they emerge,鈥� says Jordan Grafman of the US National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke in Bethesda, Maryland, whose team earlier this year linked emergence of religion with the development of 鈥渢heory of mind鈥�, the capacity to recognise that other living things have independent thought and intentions.
Journal reference: , (in press)
