“Dear God, please confirm what I already believe”?

Question by Andromache: “Dear God, please confirm what I already believe”?
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18216-dear-god-please-confirm-what-i-already-believe.html

“God may have created man in his image, but it seems we return the favour. Believers subconsciously endow God with their own beliefs on controversial issues.

“Intuiting God’s beliefs on important issues may not produce an independent guide, but may instead serve as an echo chamber to validate and justify one’s own beliefs,” writes a team led by Nicholas Epley of the University of Chicago in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The researchers started by asking volunteers who said they believe in God to give their own views on controversial topics, such as abortion and the death penalty. They also asked what the volunteers thought were the views of God, average Americans and public figures such as Bill Gates. Volunteers’ own beliefs corresponded most strongly with those they attributed to God.

Next, the team asked another group of volunteers to undertake tasks designed to soften their existing views, such as preparing speeches on the death penalty in which they had to take the opposite view to their own. They found that this led to shifts in the beliefs attributed to God, but not in those attributed to other people.

Finally, the team used functional MRI scans of subjects’ brains to show that contemplating God’s beliefs activates the same brain areas as thinking about one’s own views, while thoughts about other Americans’ views activate a brain area used for inferring other people’s mental status.”

Opinions?

Best answer:

Answer by ♥ Neville Longbottom.
I didn’t read all that, so, sure.

Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!