Scientists have claimed that they are able reduce belief in God by directing magnetic force into the brain, the Telegraph reports.

Scientists from the University of York and a team from the University of California, Los Angeles, (UCLA) targeted the part of the brain to do with detecting and solving problems. Half the participants received a low amount of magnetic energy that would not have affected their brains. The other half received enough to lower activity in the posterior medial frontal cortex.

Those whose targeted area of the brain was momentarily shut down reported 32.8 per cent less belief in God, angels or heaven. Additionally, they were 28.5 per cent more positive in their feelings towards an immigrant who criticised their country.

The team sought to find out whether religious belief and anti-immigrant sentiment were trigger responses to problems.

"People often turn to ideology when they are confronted by problems," said Dr Keise Izuma, from the University Of York's Department of Psychology.

"We wanted to find out whether a brain region that is linked with solving concrete problems, like deciding how to move one's body to overcome an obstacle, is also involved in solving abstract problems addressed by ideology.

"We decided to remind people of death because previous research has shown that people turn to religion for comfort in the face of death.

"As expected, we found that when we experimentally turned down the posterior medial frontal cortex, people were less inclined to reach for comforting religious ideas despite having been reminded of death."

However the author of the paper went further.

"These findings are very striking," he said. "[They are] consistent with the idea that brain mechanisms that evolved for relatively basic threat-response functions are re-purposed to also produce ideological reactions."