A new study has upended long-held assumptions that religious people are more closed-minded and intolerant than atheists.

The study, conducted byDr. Filip Uzarevic, a researcher at the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium, revealed that while atheists might consider themselves open-minded than religious folk, they are actually less tolerant of differing opinions.

The main message of the study is that closed-mindedness is not necessarily found only among the religious, Uzarevic told PsyPost.

Uzarevics analysis determined that religious believers seem to better perceive and integrate diverging perspectives. The study revealed, though, thatthelevel of closed-mindedness depends on the issue at hand.

The nonreligious compared to the religious seemed to be less closed-minded when it came to explicitly measured certainty in ones beliefs, he said. However, and somewhat surprisingly, when it came to subtly-measured inclination to integrate views that were diverging and contrary to ones own perspectives, it was the religious who showed more openness.

The paper,whichexplored whether atheists are undogmatic, claims that nonbelievers measured lower than religious people in self-reported dogmatism but were actually rated higher in subtly-measured intolerance.

The idea started, Uzarevic explained, through noticing that, in public discourse, despite both the conservative/religious groups and liberal/secular groups showing strong animosity toward the opposite ideological side, somehow it was mostly the former who were often labeled as closed-minded.

Moreover, he continued, such view of the secular being more tolerant and open seemed to be dominant in the psychological literature.

The study also revealed that the strength of a persons belief in religion or atheism directly impacts just how tolerant or intolerant they are.

Researchers surveyed 788 adults from the United Kingdom, Spain, and France. The majority of participants identified as atheists (302). The next largest group was Christians (255), then agnostics (143), Muslims (17), Buddhists (17), and Jews (3). Fifty-one described themselves as other.

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Religious people are more tolerant, open-minded than atheists, new study reveals - TheBlaze.com