STATES CHRONICLE – Science and religion, or faith, have always been considered to be opposites, although if we look closely, we might find that they have several things in common. Most of the times we see people split into two big groups: the ones who believe in science and the ones who believe in a god.

A recent study shows that the reason some people are more rational and other are more faithful can be found in the structure of our brains. It was already known that our brain can be split into left and right that one part stands for analytical issues, critical thinking while the other stands for creativity and empathy.

This idea of opposition and tension between different parts of our brain is known as the opposing domains hypothesis. The two different parts of our brains are suppressed in turns, depending on the issue we are confronting with. If we need critical thinking then our brain will be less empathetic and the other way around.

So, faith is linked to the empathetic part of the brain, while science is part of the analytical area. And just as all the others, they tune out depending on how a person sees the world. The researchers conducted a study on 159 to 527 subjects.

The ones who had strong analytic thinking were more likely to discourage any spiritual belief while the ones who wore religious were more likely to show greater moral concern. However, the researchers weren’t able to demonstrate a cause and effect for this.

Because women tend to be more empathetic than men, most women also tend to be more spiritual or religious. If you think that people who are religious might be less intelligent than the others, you should bear in mind that 90 percent of the Nobel Prize laureates were religious or spiritual in some way.

Moreover, although most people believe science and religion are in constant conflict, it appears that people who are very scientific-minded and those who are very religious don’t see this conflict and may even see the two as being complementary.

Besides, 76 percent of scientists reported belonging to a religion while only 15 percent of scientists see a conflict between religion and science.

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