Jul 05 2017 : The Times of India (Chennai)
DECODING DOGMA - `Atheists less tolerant than the religious'
Greg Wilford
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THE INDEPENDENT
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Religious people are more tolerant of different viewpoints than atheists, according to researchers at a Catholic university .A study of over 700 people in the UK, France and Spain concluded that atheists and agnostics think of themselves as more open-minded than those of a religious bent, but are actually less tolerant to differing opinions and ideas. Religious believers “seem to better perceive and integrate diverging perspectives“, according to psychology researchers at the private Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium's largest French-speaking university .
Filip Uzarevic, who cowrote the paper, said his message was that “closed-mindedness is not necessarily found only among the religious“.
He told `Psypost': “In our study , the relationship between religion and closedmindedness depended on the specific aspect of closed-mindedness. Somewhat surprisingly, when it came to subtly measured inclination to integrate views that were diverg ing and contrary to one's own perspectives, it was the reli gious who showed more open ness.“ Uzarevic's paper called `Are atheists undog matic?', states that “irreli gion has become normative“ in some western countries. He inspected three aspects of mental rigidity in 445 atheists and agnostics, 255 Christians, and a group of 37 Buddhists, Muslims, and Jews.
Uzarevic said: “The idea started through noticing that, in public discourse, despite both the conservativereligious groups and liberalsecular groups showing strong animosity towards the opposite side, somehow it was mostly the former who were often la beled `closed-minded'.
“Moreover, such view of the secular being more tolerant and open seemed to be dominant in the psychological literature.“ The findings added the strength of a person's belief in either atheism or religion is directly correlated to how intolerant they are.
Filip Uzarevic, who cowrote the paper, said his message was that “closed-mindedness is not necessarily found only among the religious“.
He told `Psypost': “In our study , the relationship between religion and closedmindedness depended on the specific aspect of closed-mindedness. Somewhat surprisingly, when it came to subtly measured inclination to integrate views that were diverg ing and contrary to one's own perspectives, it was the reli gious who showed more open ness.“ Uzarevic's paper called `Are atheists undog matic?', states that “irreli gion has become normative“ in some western countries. He inspected three aspects of mental rigidity in 445 atheists and agnostics, 255 Christians, and a group of 37 Buddhists, Muslims, and Jews.
Uzarevic said: “The idea started through noticing that, in public discourse, despite both the conservativereligious groups and liberalsecular groups showing strong animosity towards the opposite side, somehow it was mostly the former who were often la beled `closed-minded'.
“Moreover, such view of the secular being more tolerant and open seemed to be dominant in the psychological literature.“ The findings added the strength of a person's belief in either atheism or religion is directly correlated to how intolerant they are.
outset let me make clear I am an atheist. But I agree that atheists are equally intolerant of religious people and atheists are also equally dogmatic. See the tweets and facebook pages of followers of Periyar in Tamilnadum, India.
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