Today's Must-Read: Is It an Insult If It's True?

It's a widespread comment on the internet that fundamentalist Christians aren't playing with a full deck. You've all heard or read it in one context or another. Well, get a load of this:

A study published in the journal Neuropsychologia has shown that religious fundamentalism is, in part, the result of a functional impairment in a brain region known as the prefrontal cortex. The findings suggest that damage to particular areas of the prefrontal cortex indirectly promotes religious fundamentalism by diminishing cognitive flexibility and openness — a psychology term that describes a personality trait which involves dimensions like curiosity, creativity, and open-mindedness.

The article points out that this does not offer a complete explanation for the prevalence of fundamentalism:

The authors emphasize that cognitive flexibility and openness aren’t the only things that make brains vulnerable to religious fundamentalism. In fact, their analyses showed that these factors only accounted for a fifth of the variation in fundamentalism scores. Uncovering those additional causes, which could be anything from genetic predispositions to social influences, is a future research project that the researchers believe will occupy investigators for many decades to come, given how complex and widespread religious fundamentalism is and will likely continue to be for some time.

So there you have it.

The article goes into some detail about how the study was conducted, but it's worth a read.