Explaining the Critical Thinking Results

The study that apparently claimed that critical thinking is incompatible with religion (discussed in the preceding post) can be explained quite simply. According to The Los Angeles Times:

In the final experiment, students in the control group read text in a clear, legible font, while those in the other group were forced to squint at a font that was hard to read, a chore that has been shown to trigger analytic thinking. Sure enough, those who read the less legible font rated their belief in supernatural agents at 10.40 on a 3-to-21 scale, compared with 12.16 for those who read the clear font.

It looks like analytic thinking caused the WEIRD sample to assess themselves as less religious. This might simply mean that more rigorous thinkers have higher standards. Someone who believed part but not all of a doctrine might assess their religiosity differently in different contexts.

On the other hand, maybe it reflects a belief that a just and omnipotent God would not allow Comic Sans to exist.