Epley

Creating God in one's own image

edyong | November 30, 2009

For many religious people, the popular question "What would Jesus do?" is essentially the same as "What would I do?" That's the message from an intriguing and controversial new study by Nicholas Epley from the University of Chicago. Through a combination of surveys, psychological manipulation and brain-scanning, he has found that when religious Americans try to infer the will of God, they mainly draw on their own personal beliefs. Psychological studies have found that people are always a tad egocentric when considering other people's mindsets. They use their own beliefs as a starting point…