Religion Wires the Brain to Believe Nonsense

[Dr H]

A neuroscientist explains why evangelicals are wired to believe Trump’s lies.

One reason Trump supporters believe his lies comes from a basic fact about the brain: it takes more mental effort to reject an idea as false than to accept it as true. In other words, it’s easier to believe than to not.

For Christian fundamentalists, being taught to suppress critical thinking begins at a very early age. It is the combination of the brain’s vulnerability to believing unsupported facts and aggressive indoctrination that create the perfect storm for gullibility.


https://www.rawstory.com/2018/10/neuroscientist-explains-evangelicals-wired-believe-trumps-lies/

The cognitive resources explanation makes some sense -- basically people are lazy.

Critical thinking, however, is not something inborn that then gets repressed.   It needs to be taught, and learned.  Evolution gave us instincts:  you see a shadow out of the corner of your eye, the hippocampus gives you a kick, and you jump the other way.  Because it's better to jump from a shadow that might be a tiger, than to not jump from one that is a tiger.  

It's only after that automatic reaction that we have the leisure to intellectualize and interpret the experience.  That can go a lot of ways.  We can reason that the shadow was cast by a rock, or a tree, or a bush -- or that it was cast by a tiger, a bear, or a demon.  To make any kind of objective assessment we'd have to gather evidence, compare similar experiences (replicate), analyze, test predictive theories (perhaps with our lives) -- in short, do a bunch of work.

And people are lazy.  It's just easier to jump at every shadow, and imagine they're cast by demons lurking in the dark.  
So long as it means we don't become lunch for a tiger, it works out, from a survival perspective.

If you teach people critical thinking, and they practice it, they'll be a lot less jumpy, and probably accomplish a whole lot more.

But they still may get eaten by a tiger.