I like things that seem to upset some of my notions. The passage opens up the possibility that our religious brethren and sisteren (?) might have the edge on the rest of us when it comes to the personal side of things. I mean, in the aggregate, perhaps. Emotional intelligence--could it be enhanced by religious belief and practice? This has been a feeling I've had occasionally when exposed to religious or spiritual people. Our own Penelope, very 'spiritual', could be an example of such an emotionally capable person.Magical thinking is not just a result of ignorance or indoctrination—it appears to be a side effect of normal, socially adaptive thinking: we attribute intentions to the natural world in much the same way that we attribute intentions to other people. Indeed, a recent paper from a lab at the University of British Columbia reported that the better study participants were at reading others, the more strongly they believed in God, the paranormal, and the notion that life has a purpose [6]. Meanwhile, one of the few true avenues to atheism may be autism. The same lab found that the more autistic traits a person had, the less likely he or she was to believe in God [7].
Think of the difference in feeling between two sentences of condolence: "My thoughts are with you"/"My prayers are with you."
Looking at autism, we think naturally (and in a timely way) of Mr. Spock as the super-rational autist, and, I suppose, atheist.
My point I guess would be, why shouldn't we expect that different ways of perceiving the world would confer unique benefits to individuals? It isn't a zero-sum game, where one view is good and the other not.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc ... on/384962/