High IQ turns academics into atheists 12 June 2008 By Rebecca Attwood Intelligence is a predictor of religious scepticism, a professor has argued. Rebecca Attwood reports Belief in God is much lower among academics than among the general population because scholars have higher IQs, a controversial academic claimed this week. In a forthcoming paper for the journal Intelligence, Richard Lynn, emeritus professor of psychology at the University of Ulster, will argue that there is a strong correlation between high IQ and lack of religious belief and that average intelligence predicts atheism rates across 137 countries. In the paper, Professor Lynn - who has previously caused controversy with research linking intelligence to race and sex - says evidence points to lower proportions of people holding religious beliefs among "intellectual elites". The paper - which was co-written with John Harvey, who does not report a university affiliation, and Helmuth Nyborg, of the University of Aarhus, Denmark - cites studies including a 1990s survey that found that only 7 per cent of members of the American National Academy of Sciences believed in God. A survey of fellows of the Royal Society found that only 3.3 per cent believed in God at a time when a poll reported that 68.5 per cent of the general UK population were believers. Professor Lynn told Times Higher Education: "Why should fewer academics believe in God than the general population? I believe it is simply a matter of the IQ. Academics have higher IQs than the general population. Several Gallup poll studies of the general population have shown that those with higher IQs tend not to believe in God." He said that most primary school children believed in God, but as they entered adolescence - and their intelligence increased - many began to have doubts and became agnostics. He added that most Western countries had seen a decline of religious belief in the 20th century at the same time as their populations had become more intelligent. Andy Wells, senior lecturer in psychology at the London School of Economics, said the existence of a correlation between IQ and religiosity did not mean there was a causal relationship between the two. Gordon Lynch, director of the Centre for Religion and Contemporary Society at Birkbeck, University of London, said that any examination of the decline of religious belief needed to take into account a wide and complex range of social, economic and historical factors. He added: "Linking religious belief and intelligence in this way could reflect a dangerous trend, developing a simplistic characterisation of religion as primitive, which - while we are trying to deal with very complex issues of religious and cultural pluralism - is perhaps not the most helpful response." Alistair McFadyen, senior lecturer in Christian theology at the University of Leeds, said that Professor Lynn's arguments appeared to have "a slight tinge of intellectual elitism and Western cultural imperialism as well as an antireligious sentiment". David Hardman, principal lecturer in learning development at London Metropolitan University, said: "It is very difficult to conduct true experiments that would explicate a causal relationship between IQ and religious belief. Nonetheless, there is evidence from other domains that higher levels of intelligence are associated with a greater ability - or perhaps willingness - to question and overturn strongly felt intuitions." rebecca.attwood@tsleducation.com. source site
Um... Duh? Once people get to a certain level of intelligence (or develop enough to use that intelligence), they ignore things like religion that have a base in faith and not fact. They also tend to become egomaniacal and bloat themselves up to be their own God. Most people of a high enough intelligence feel that they are superior, so they make themselves appear so in any way possible. One could also say that they're seeing through the bullshit, but that's where things become a matter of religious belief. I hate debating religious belief because there's no way to prove anyone right or wrong either way, and it just makes people bitter once they've argued long enough. Personally, I'm a hopeful agnostic. I like the handicapping comfort of having a safety-net deity to rescue my soul upon death, but I'm not ready to fully believe without a bit more proof or a good reason.
^^^ Exactly, the more people think about it, the more they don't want to lose control of their lives. The superiority complex some people develop prevents them from accepting the fact the that there could be a God that is greater than all, including themselves. Because of this, some people are just scared away from religion, as they think themselves to be too great to lose control of their lives to serving a God.
WTF Lol... I'm no genious or anything but I think the smarter you get the more you realise how much of a moron it takes to believe in something so silly. The smarter you are the more you notice this. I certainly don't have a superiority complex. Not in life anyway. Nor do I fear the loss of control.
This makes too much sense I live in an area where atheism/agnostic rates are super-low, and its easy to see the connection between the two (most of the time).
O God o God ... what have we come to? The Wise seem Foolish and the Foolish are wise... ...and thats all I will say to this one.. because I see no facts values to prove this point.. I'll come back when its a worthy debate...
It always angers me when studies like this become controversial, and my point extends to the studies about race and sex that were mentioned in your post as well. People are so afraid to admit that certain things may result in differences between people (primarily race and sex, but IQ is an interesting variation) and fly in the face of research for fear of being called prejudice. I'm glad this guy isn't victim to this, and that he's willing to investigate such things in pursuit of further knowledge and understanding of the human mind with all the variations that it entails. I'm not saying I agree with this outright, and want to look into the study in much more detail before I come to my own conclusions, nor am I going to go off on a religion=stupidity campaign. I'm just glad that there are still researchers willing to look into these subjects when so many are afraid to even talk about them. The fact is, there are going to be differences caused by things like gender (or IQ in this case), and ignoring them for fear of reprisal is counter productive to the cause of understanding the human mind as much as possible. Denying differences doesn't make them go away, we should try to investigate them so we can understand these differences better, and overcome the resulting problems and prejudices without letting them become excuse for persecution of any kind. Another interesting tid-bit of the world outside of FH from you Reynbow, you've become FH's ex-officio news reporter.
Not to sound offensive or anything but basically everything you said there can be summed up like this. 'I like the idea of this but I don't want to comment on it's truth for fear of reprisal from other FH members.' So basically you're doing what you're saying you are glad that the researcher here is not doing. Contradicting yourself. Your comments were completely on the fence and had no real effect at all. It was a completely nuetral comment. You said it yourself; 'I'm not saying I agree with this outright, and want to look into the study in much more detail before I come to my own conclusions, nor am I going to go off on a religion=stupidity campaign.' So yeah... WTF?
So your Implying what with you comments? Pegasi has a point and he can have it ..this isn't debate forum... I think Pegasi statement Was a wonderful reply because all I can see this topic going to is a very Idealist point of view which isn't my type of thing... he isn't CONTRADICTING himself he is simply stating his first thoughts on the subject ... and he saying it neutral because thats his point of view... and Unlike certain members he doesn't want to join in on a very rude and bold comment of calling out people Morons...
I don't believe everything about religion but I believe in god. I am smart, not genius or anything though lol. It probably also has to do with family situation. If you are a scholar who makes a lot of money you are probably less likely to rely on god than someone who needs to feed their family on a low paying job. There are many variables though.
Dude chill, seriously. I can understand why you want to inform FH about these things, but there's no need to get all militant about it. If you'd taken more care reading what I said (and what you actually quoted), you'd realise that what I meant was that I wanted to look into it further before making a solid statement of my opinion, not that I was going to refrain from forming an opinion at all. I'm sorry for not agreeing outright just because some research has been presented, we all know that research like this is far from always right, and agreeing outright without looking into it yourself is a sure sign of a low IQ IMO. I appreciate that you're an intelligent guy with strong, thought out opinions, and I respect you for that. But the fact that you get overly aggressive towards people who don't agree with you outright really gets me. Not only is it counter productive for arguments' sake because it alienates people who disagree with you, but it doesn't make you come off well either. It really seems like, whilst you clearly think carefully about your own views, you're not willing to discuss them calmly without belittling those who you feel contradict you (even though I didn't actually do this). Bearing this in mind, does it really surprise you when people get a bad impression of you despite your clear intelligence? Don't get me wrong, your outspoken nature is a strong part of your forum presence, and I'm not saying you should abandon your outspoken nature (let's face it, this is never gonna happen and, in many ways, it would be a shame if it did). But there's no point starting discussions if you're not actually willing to discuss things. You may not have meant any offence, but it was caused I assure you. I have strong views on similar subjects, and am a keen advocate of investigating the mental and psychological differences between males and females for example. I couldn't care less if people have a go at me for it, if they want to ignore scientific facts to make themselves feel politically correct then they're not worth my time, and I appreciate that you feel this too. But read what I say more carefully before lumping me with people like this, and don't accuse me of being non-committal just because I don't jump on the anti-religion bandwagon. What you've posted, and the resulting source, contains no statistical data or results of the research, are you really criticising me for not stating a definitive opinion based pretty much on the words "new research suggests"?
Uhh well I actually just wanted to know what you think to be honest. Because of how you present yourself around here, you're one of the people I honestly want to hear from. When I saw you had replied to this thread I was all ready and waiting to read your response, then I felt dissapointed... I don't feel like I was attacking you at all, I just wanted an honest opinion from you. I'm willing to discuss something with people and if you were to actually meet me in real life and talk to me, you would see that I really do love to 'debate' issues. The problem with this is I only like to talk about these things with people that actualy know something about what they're talking about. Most of the people here are far to stupid for anything like this. [Yeah sure, I'll put that in the category of attacking]
Ok, that's actually a pretty good response, and I appreciate that you're maintaining a respectful attitude even though you disagree. I apologise for getting defensive, especially since its very hypocritical considering what I was saying. Also, thanks for your comments, its nice to know that you're interested in what I have to say. I respect you too, and it would be a sad day indeed if you stopped having a go at all the ignorant people here. It just really gets me when people call me apathetic, especially on a subject like this where I think that evidence one way or the other is really important and you'd be foolish to ignore it. But can you appreciate my point that you don't present any actual evidence supporting your point aside from the fact that research has been carried out? I'm not going to deny that this makes sense to me, but I refuse to commit to a definitive statement on its scientific truth until I have the facts and results in front of me. I'm not criticising your OP, its an interesting subject and deserves to be posted, but without the actual facts presented, it doesn't achieve much in trying to appreciate whether these reported results are scientifically valid or not. As I said, this study potentially has alot of sense behind it, but agreeing with a scientific principle just because it makes sense to you on first impression seems silly to me. I regret getting defensive about this, and don't want an agression to negate my points. But I stand by my conviction to refrain from concrete comments until I have the facts to hand. This may make a lot of sense straight off, and its certainly intruiging enough to warrant further investigation, but I'll make my final decision once I'm confident that I'm informed enough to do so. I'm not going to support the results of this study until I have seen and appreciated them myself. apologies for any repetition here, but its far into the AM hours here and my brain is starting to hurt. I'm off until tomorrow, so please don't think that I'm abandoning this discussion. I'm genuinely keen to hear more about this, and if you were able to find some solid figures or results for me to look at, you'd be hard pushed to stop me from committing to an opinion on its validity, no matter who may disagree with what I say. (To the discussion at large) I do however think that using things like this to criticise and belittle religious people misses the entire point though (I'm not accusing you of this in any way Reyn, but I think we can agree that this discussion is potentially headed the way of "religious people are morons"). Discoveries like this should be used to better understand society and work around an problem or difficulties that we encounter. Using things like this as an excuse to look down on people is senseless, and defeats the object of the research entirely. It's possible to agree with this study without looking down on religious people, remember that a high IQ doesn't make you a better person than someone with a low IQ. This may seem a tad pre-emptive, but I will come down hard on people who use this thread to slag off religious people.