The politics of looking dumb

A reprinted section of Michael Shermer's Why Darwin Matters appeared in Feb. 3's Toronto Star. In it, he relates a study where he asked individuals why they believed in God, and why do they think other people believe in God. The results were surprising:

• The majority (28%) said that their personal belief in God was due to the good design / complexity / natural beauty / perfection of the world.
• However, the most common answer to why other people believe in God was due to the comfort, relief that belief in God entails.

Shermer concludes that this is evidence of an intellectual attribution bias: people consider their beliefs rationally motivated where others' as being emotionally driven. I was surprised by this result as I had assumed that religious people would share their reasons for believing, intellectual or not.

But this is also why smart (religious or not) people sometimes believe weird things, he writes in Why People Believe Weird Things: they are better able to give intellectual reasons for their beliefs that they arrived at for nonintellectual reasons while at the same time recognizing the emotional needs of others. The intellectual attribution bias, coupled with the confirmation bias, therefore make smart people formidable opponents in arguments.

This suggests that most people, religious or otherwise, think they are smarter than others when they aren't.