Association is not cause.

Asserting that people with whom you don't agree are brain-damaged is pretty much ceding the debate with bad-faith arguments.

All the study really said is that people with a certain kind of cognitive impairment were more likely to be fundamentalists. I would suspect they would also be more likely to be politically conservative. So??

One must always remember that statistics don't have a mechanism for determining causality, only association. In statistics, it is VERY easy to get causality exactly backwards. For all we know, fundamentalism causes cognitive impairment (not the same as physical brain damage) rather than the inverse. But more likely, both certain brain injuries and being steeped in certain thought patterns, cause similar impairments with similar features.

This study and the articles about it are more heat than light; they produce nice click-bait. But don't take their explanatory power that seriously.

In fairness to the author of this piece, buried near the end, beyond the attention span of many eager readers, is the admission that poor functioning of the prefrontal cortex only accounts for about 20% of the factors influencing fundamentalism, and so there are many other influences (or at least associations) to tease out. They didn't lead with that because it makes the premise of the article far less provocative, stand-out and interesting.

I’d be wary about using Salon as a “reputable” news source.

Thank you for sharing this!

The word "damage" is used loosely here.

A lack of mental openness or flexibility is not a sign of damage, unless one means religious indoctrination has damaged one's ability to make sound and sometimes good moral judgements.

I would be more inclined to say that fundamentalism, and the various ways one reaches that level of belief, impairs his or her ability to see beyond it.

Brain malfunction, due to a blow to the head, disease, or substance abuse, can be more accurately described as brain damage.

That's interesting. Near the end of my marriage, I became extreme in my religious beliefs. I personally believe that was a reaction to the ongoing abuse I was experiencing.

On the upside, it worked to finally help me see that those beliefs were not valid. A couple years after the divorce, as I began to heal, I realized that none of the things I had believed would happen due to my "obedience to God" were happening. If anything, the reverse was happening. So I was able to let those things go completely.