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Atheists like to think they are more rational people but, as death approaches, they secretly play the irrational odds, according to new work which suggests that when even non-religious people think about their own death and consciously still seem to be more skeptical about religion, they unconsciously grow more receptive to religious belief.
Credit: Xianwei Meng From shamans and mystics to cult leaders and divine kings, why have people throughout history accorded high status to people believed to have supernatural powers? According to a study led by researchers from the University of Oxford, this tendency to attribute social dominance to such individuals is rooted in early development. As part of the study, 48 infants aged 12 to 16 months watched a series of animated videos in which two characters competed for a reward. In each scenario, one character displayed physically counterintuitive methods of making progress across the scr...