The recent research by researchers at Case Western Reserve University and Babson College in the US have examined the relationship between belief in God or a universal spirit with measures of analytic thinking and moral concern in eight different experiments, each involving 159 to 527 adults. Consistently through all eight, the more religious the person, the more moral concern they showed. But no cause and effect was established. They found that both spiritual belief and empathic concern were positively associated with frequency of prayer, meditations and other spiritual or religious practices, but neither were predicted by church dinners or other social contact associated with religious affiliation. Like other studies, these experiments showed that analytic thinking discourages acceptance of spiritual or religious beliefs. But the statistical analysis of data pooled from all eight experiments indicates empathy is more important to religious belief than analytic thinking is for disbelief.

The apparent conflict between science and religion can be interpreted in this manner. Because the empathetic and analytical networks suppress each other, they may create two extremes. The researchers say humans are built to engage and explore using both networks.  The researchers say that far from always conflicting with science, under the right circumstances religious belief may positively promote scientific creativity and insight. That is why many of history’s most famous scientists were spiritual or religious. Those noted individuals were intellectually sophisticated enough to see that there is no need for religion and science to come into conflict. The researchers refer to Baruch Aba Shalev’s book 100 years of Nobel Prizes, which found that, from 1901 to 2000, 654 Nobel laureates, or nearly 90%, belonged to one of 28 religions. The remaining 10.5% were atheists, agnostics or free thinkers. Therefore one can be a religious and be a very good scientist.

The researchers agree with the New Atheists that suspension of analytical thinking—at the wrong time—can be dangerous. The researchers suggest that taking a carefully considered leap of religious faith appears to be an effective route to promoting emotional insight. Theirs and other studies find that, overall, religious belief is associated with greater compassion, greater social inclusiveness and greater motivation to engage in pro-social actions.