Just something else to throw onto the atheist v theist debate.
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."
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High IQ turns academics into atheists
by darth frosty 47 Replies latest jw friends
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darth frosty
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Satanus
The force is strong in this naughty one;)
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John Doe
A basic rule of logic, correlation does not indicate causation.
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SweetSweetApostasy
We believe in god a different way: "... It is the root of all true art and all true science" - Albert Einstein
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cognizant dissident
A basic rule of logic, correlation does not indicate causation.
True, but it does not rule it out either.
I want to agree with the article, but that's probably because I'm an atheist.
Maybe we should start a JWD "study" to test his hypothesis. Have people post their IQ's and also whether they believe in God or not? See if there is any co-relation on this forum. Do you think that would get anybody upset? I don't want to be a troublemaker or anything, like you are John
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parakeet
That's why, when extreme regimes come into power, they kill academics first. Academics know how to think and reason -- can't have that sort of thing if you're the Taliban, Khmer Rouge, Nazis. You need a population that is willing to let you do their thinking for them.
The WTS would do it too, if that's what they thought Jehovah wanted. -
John Doe
I want to agree with the article, but that's probably because I'm an atheist.
Maybe we should start a JWD "study" to test his hypothesis. Have people post their IQ's and also whether they believe in God or not? See if there is any co-relation on this forum. Do you think that would get anybody upset? I don't want to be a troublemaker or anything, like you are John
I'm also an atheist. I don't think your emprical study would prove much though, because I doubt many people know what their genuine iq is. I know I don't. Furthermore, you're not going to get an accurate cross sampling of iqs even if they were known, by asking people to post them publicly.
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Lady Zombie
Oooo! I like this! (I'm an atheist)
IQ is a tricky subject. My Master's is in Psychology and IQ is a somewhat controversial subject in that field.
IQ tests are reliable for screening for mental retardation and the other extreme of genius, but if you try to pin down IQ points to actual intelligence, it gets kind of fuzzy.
For instance, if 100 is average (absolute middle of the bell curve), is someone who has an IQ of 105 "more intelligent?" What about 110, and so on? Are these people "smarter" or are they better at taking tests, or had a good education from K to 12? Maybe both? Sometimes other factors like health, stress, etc. play into test performance.
We Psych students were often used as testing guinea pigs and I took several IQ tests. On the days when I felt great, I scored pretty high. Once I had a bad head cold when I took the test and my score was considerably lower.
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LtCmd.Lore
I'm also an atheist. I don't think your emprical study would prove much though, because I doubt many people know what their genuine iq is. I know I don't. Furthermore, you're not going to get an accurate cross sampling of iqs even if they were known, by asking people to post them publicly.
Right, if I had a low IQ I certainly wouldn't post it.
And of course you'd also have to take everyone entirely at their word.
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darth frosty
Parakeet I agree with your thought and I will give you a scripture to back it up.
Ecclesiastes 9:13-18. Thats where it talks about the town that came under seige and one man needy but wise, was able to devise a way for the lil city to defeat the great king. But, alas the needy but wise man was forgotten.
Often throughout history the smarter people who had reasoned deeply on things and thought out of the box, if they were really smart saw a need to conceal some of their knowledge and reasonings.
Even in the 'enlightened' times that we live in, the mystical part of our Bi-cameral mind still holds sway in the majority.
I choose to look to a balance between the 2. I clasify myself as a spiritual atheist. You have those who give way to their deep faith and you have those who wholly give themselves to their scientific evidence. I believe that the satisfying answer lies in a unification between the 2.