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Most religions aren’t exactly famed with being in touch with modern culture, but it seems their followers might not even be in touch with reality.

That’s right, according to new research religious people are more likely to have a poorer understanding of the world then those who decide to live their life by their own morals, instead of by scripture which was written thousands of years ago. Who’d have thought it?

According to the scientists (of course) at the University of Helsinki, they found that those with religious beliefs were more likely to believe inanimate objects like rocks and paper have ‘human qualities’, like having the capacity to think and feel. Riiiiight.

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Marjaana Lindeman and Annika Svedholm-Häkkinen, who completed the study, said:

The more the participants believed in religious or other paranormal phenomena, the lower their intuitive physics skills, mechanical and mental rotation abilities, school grades in mathematics and physics, and knowledge about physical and biological phenomena were… and the more they regarded inanimate targets as mental phenomena.

The researchers went on to compare religious people with those with autism, saying that they both struggle to distinguish between the mental and physical.

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As they struggle to comprehend the physical world, this is when they apply their own human characteristics to the whole universe, resulting in the birth of beliefs in gods and supernatural beings.

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But this bruising assessment of religious people didn’t stop there, with researchers also comparing their confusion between the mental and physical aspects of the world to that of those living in ancient civilisations and small children.

Researchers asked 258 Finnish people to explain how much they agreed that ‘there exists an all-powerful, all-knowing, loving God’ and if they believed in paranormal phenomena, The Independent reports.

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They then partnered these answers with a range of other factors which included survey answers, exam results and a number of other tests.

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