That is the gist of a recent article in Science. The full title is “Analytic thinking promotes religious disbelief,” but the article provides the first theoretical support for the idea. Scientists have been interested in the cognitive underpinnings of religious beliefs, but this article actually provides experimental support concerning the impact that scientific thinking has on people people's religious beliefs. For those of us who have undergone a rational awakening, we often discover that the naïve religious beliefs that we clung to when we were young no longer apply in this world. Link
Of course, it is an article of faith among religious fundamentalists and I can cite Rick Santorum and various Bible thumping reverends, like Don McLeroy, on this issue that going to college provides an actual process that leads to loss of one's faith. The allegations, the conservative dogma, is that there is a left-wing radical agenda that disparages religion and encourages college students to lose their faith. "Their godless left-wing culture has taken over the mainstream media. They have taken over our universities. Thousands of professors have converted our colleges into left-wing seminaries. And in the last two years, with the help of their young converts, these so-called experts have taken over our national government. Well I disagree with those experts. Somebody's got to stand up to experts." Link
What the authors did was to provide a series of apparently inconsequential tests to a group of Canadian undergraduates. The authors cite research that showed "…there are 2 distinct but interacting systems for information processing. One (System 1) relies on frugal heuristics yielding intuitive responses, while the other (System 2) relies on deliberative analytic processing. Although both systems can at times run in parallel, System 2 often overrides the input of System 1 when analytic tendencies are activated and cognitive resources are available. Dual-process theories have been successfully applied to diverse domains and phenomena a cross a wide range of fields."
They ran a series of 5 tests to determine if analytical and cognitive processes could alter supernatural and religious beliefs. " If religious belief emerges through a converging set of intuitive processes, and analytic processing can inhibit or override intuitive processing, then analytic thinking may undermine intuitive support for religious belief." Of course intuitive processes refer to gut feelings as clearly revealed by George W. Bush and the other religious leaning individuals who create their own realities from their intuitive gut feelings.
Results of the 5 tests clearly indicated that presenting students with a series of analytic tasks, or analytic symbols, either before or after testing them for religious belief, religious belief was undermined.
Thus everything that religious conservatives lament concerning intellectual life on college campuses is true. Their greatest fears are realized. When students have been exposed to rational, analytic thinking processes, their faith is undermined and they begin to question things that they have believed in for so long. This is not part of a left-wing liberal plot to brainwash students, but to do precisely the opposite. To open their minds to the real world.
Every dogmatic religion fears thought and rational analysis. Martin Luther railed against people who spent too much time thinking about religion. He wanted faith and blind obedience to doctrine. “Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has…There is on earth among all dangers no more dangerous thing than a richly endowed and adroit reason… Reason must be deluded, blinded, and destroyed.” He felt the same way about Jews, but that is another story.