"They interviewed Christians, Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus, and secular people from several different societies and found that no matter which culture they came from, they were biased against people who did not believe in a god or gods."
"Q. As part of the study, people were told a story about a man who tortured animals as a child and moved on to other violent acts as he matured, culminating in murdering five homeless people. Then the people were asked: is this man more likely to be a teacher? Or a teacher who does not believe in god(s)? Those two answers are logically inconsistent – why did you ask that question in that way?
A. This question was designed to exploit the “conjunction fallacy,” a common logical error that people make when asked to estimate the probability of some specific condition versus a more general one. This is also known as the “Linda problem”, and it is typically presented in the following way: “Linda is 31 years old, single, outspoken, and very bright. She majored in philosophy. As a student, she was deeply concerned with issues of discrimination and social justice, and also participated in anti-nuclear demonstrations. Which is more probable? a) Linda is a bank teller, or b) Linda is a bank teller and is active in the feminist movement.
The correct answer is of course a), because the number of feminist bank tellers can never be higher than the number of bank tellers. But most people give the wrong answer to this problem, because the person’s description sounds more representative of option b). Our study simply looked at how often people committed this fallacy when the person in the story was described as atheist versus religious. This allowed us to examine people’s intuitions, rather than more reflective, politically correct answers."
