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I honestly cannot grasp how this could be a “predictor” of religious belief. Being confused by confusingly-crafted math-ish questions does not mean the rest of the world is perceived as a mystery too, and therefore religion is the answer to everything. I believe there is no god, but I can’t for the life of me figure out why the answer to the first question is “5¢” — could someone help me understand?
> I believe there is no god, but I can’t for the life of me figure out why the answer to the first question is “5¢” — could someone help me understand?

Question: "A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost? ____cents"

Let b be the cost of the ball in cents. Then b + 100 is the cost of the bat in cents.

  b + (b + 100) = 110
  2b + 100 = 110
  2b = 10
  b = 5
QED.
The ball can't be 10 cents, because 10 cent ball + 1.10 dollar bat = 1.20, and it'd exceed the total.

Since the difference is 1 dollar, we can do ball + ball + 1 dollar = 1.10, then we can see that 2(ball) = 10 cents, so 10/2 = 5 cents for the ball.

I think the questions gage whether or not the person's beliefs/thoughts/rightness come intuitively and they decide to settle, or they keep searching.

This question seems like it came straight out of the book, Thinking, Fast and Slow.
Great. This type of ideas drive me nuts! Two remarks:

- Both me and my girlfried would be capable of answering correctly. I'm an atheist, she is catholic. We are both engineers. And we also played the first 4 Professor Layton games, where these puzzles appear (and many more. Highly recommended games!).

- It appears that the article has a "religious people are dumb" connotation. Which, from personal experience, is very far from the truth!

Excellent. I am going to make sure my kids do not become religious by getting them to memorize the answers to these questions.