Correlation between increasing intelligence and atheism

dilbert2

There are a lot of websites on the internet indicating that atheism often increases with education and a rise in intelligence. For instance, countries with better education systems and higher IQ’s are usually secular with little religion. In secular nations such as Sweden there also seems to be a lot less bigotry, sexism etc. than what one would find in a more religious and superstitious society and this is surely a sign of intellectual maturity and intelligence.

Do you agree that there is a correlation between atheism/ secularism, and a better educated, less superstitious populace?

Biggins

Try here: http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=614

You might get some answers there too.

humbert

It would be difficult to prove that one country has a higher average IQ than another.

bnt

humbert wrote: »

It would be difficult to prove that one country has a higher average IQ than another.

These are Statistical questions, which never involve Proof in the conventional sense. Nothing is ever "proven" in Statistics, but there are expressions of confidence e.g. you can say that a statement has a Confidence of e.g. 95%.

Or you can say that two variables are correlated, which means that their trends are connected positively or negatively. The argument here is that there's a negative correlation between religiosity and intelligence, and I've seen studies over the last few years that support that. The correlations account for exceptions, so don't make the mistake of thinking that you can refute such statistical evidence by pointing out a few exceptions. A more detailed discussion of this is for the other forum.

Sisko

Biggins wrote: »

Try here: http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=614

You might get some answers there too.

It'd get banned from there. It's the religion section after all.

Considering religion tends to take advantage of the uneducated and the ignorant , its pretty obvious that indeed it is the case that the more educated and intelligent a society is the less religious it becomes.

cowzerp

I know intelligent people who believe in God etc, but far more less intelligent people who do and always will because there sheep who would still be believing in Santa if there mothers did not tell them it was only made up to make Xmas fun.

Intelligence will definitely give you more chance of looking at it logically and making up your own mind wheter it makes sense or not.

Seachmall

It's called the Savanna-IQ Interaction Hypothesis.

Essentially stating the more intelligent you are the more likely you are to follow evolutionary novel thinking.

It relates to religion as a result of Neoteny, i.e. due to us evolving in a pack we tend to look for superior, parent-like, figures in our life.

"Man's evolution as a neotenous ape has put him in a similar position to the dog's. He becomes sexually mature and yet he still needs a parent - a super-parent, one as impessive to him as a man must be to a dog. The answer was to invent a god - either in the shape of a Mother Goddess, or a male god in the shape of God the Father, or perhaps a whole family of gods. Like real parents they would protect, punish and be obeyed" - Dr. Desmond Morris (People Watching)

Taking this into consideration with the hypothesis suggest the more intelligent you are the less religious you tend to be. In saying that there are more influential factors that influence someone's beliefs (upbringing, culture etc.).

This is not a reason to believe there is or isn't a God, so don't use it as one.

How many people in Ireland have actually taken an IQ test though?


Having gone through education etc all I've taken are aptitude tests, these stats are clearly made up tbh.

paddyandy

Intelligence is not Wisdom and if you don't understand that..........

Sisko

Yeah but having a large amount of either will naturally steer you away from man made fairytales.

im invisible

Funny, i was going to start a thread about the corelation between atheism and poor social skills/ lack of empathy/ tact the other day after reading a few threads on here, but thought better of it..

pragmatic1

I agree. Think its fairly obvious tbh.

partyatmygaff

Not this old chestnut again.

I disagree completely.

Sisko

im invisible wrote: »

Funny, i was going to start a thread about the corelation between atheism and poor social skills/ lack of empathy/ tact the other day after reading a few threads on here, but thought better of it..

Ah yeah. Sure there's no need. We all know the religious excel at social skills , empathy and tact.

fedor.2.

partyatmygaff wrote: »

Not this old chestnut again.

I disagree completely.

That what your god told you to say, huh?

MagicMarker

Not long ago I came across a Canadian study that found that the more years in education you have, the more likely you are to be an atheist.

philologos

Just what we need! More atheism on After Hours :pac:

philologos

MagicMarker wrote: »

Not long ago I came across a Canadian study that found that the more years in education you have, the more likely you are to be an atheist.

Courtesy of Wikipedia.

A weak negative correlation between education and Christian fundamentalism was found by Burton et al. (1989), a small study comparing the religious beliefs and educational achievements of white, Protestant residents of Delaware County, Indiana. Contrary to the researchers' expectations, fundamentalist converts were not less educated people.

In Australia, 23% of Christian church attenders have earned a university or postgraduate degree, whereas the figure for the general population is 13%. Christianity is the predominant religion in Australia, although adherence is falling. Commentators on the survey attribute the educational levels to sociological factors, such as age, class and income, making no claims about intelligence.

Studies of Mormons in the US show that Mormons with higher education attend church more regularly than uneducated Mormons. Survey research indicated that 41% of Mormons with only elementary school education attend church regularly. By contrast, 76% of Mormon college graduates attend church regularly and 78% of Mormons who went beyond their college degrees to do graduate study attend church regularly.

Tonyandthewhale

So you have a weak correlation in one study (with a small and not particularly generalisable sample population and no representation for atheists), another correlation which the researcher puts down to the confounding factors of age, class and income (so not technically anything to do with the link between atheism and intelligence) and another study about patterns WITHIN mormonism which again has nothing to do with more intelligent people being atheists? What was your point?

paddyandy

MagicMarker wrote: »

Not long ago I came across a Canadian study that found that the more years in education you have, the more likely you are to be an atheist.

Information is all you get from Books.Teachers can teach wisdom if they have any.Education helps over some hurdles in life

philologos

Tonyandthewhale wrote: »

So you have a weak correlation in one study (with a small and not particularly generalisable sample population and no representation for atheists), another correlation which the researcher puts down to the confounding factors of age, class and income (so not technically anything to do with the link between atheism and intelligence) and another study about patterns WITHIN mormonism which again has nothing to do with more intelligent people being atheists? What was your point?

All of these studies contradict what MagicMarker cited about education. You should read the post thoroughly before responding.

pragmatic1

paddyandy wrote: »

Information is all you get from Books.Teachers can teach wisdom if they have any.Education helps over some hurdles in life

What else would you be expecting from books?

Seachmall

paddyandy wrote: »

Information is all you get from Books.Teachers can teach wisdom if they have any.Education helps over some hurdles in life

People of wisdom exist in all religions and in non-religious communities. Only one of those religions or non-religious communities can be right. Therefor one can assume there is no correlation between wisdom and belief.

Wisdom, also, is not measurable so your claims are unprovable. Nor can the distinction between "True" and "False" wisdom be made.

MagicMarker

paddyandy wrote: »

Information is all you get from Books.Teachers can teach wisdom if they have any.Education helps over some hurdles in life

I'm sure there's a point in there somewhere.

MagicMarker

philologos wrote: »

Courtesy of Wikipedia.

Courtesy of the same Wiki page.

Religious Believers as a group were found to be significantly less intelligent and more authoritarian than religious Skeptics.

Killer Pigeon

Some people show off the fact that they are atheist to make themselves look smart. They think, "Hey, all the smart people seem to be atheists now, I think I'll join them". TheAmazingAtheist on youtube is an example, the reality is people like him are actually morons.

You have to pass 'The Test' before you can be considered a true atheist/agnostic.

Sky King

IQ tests measure very specific things and do not measure loads of facets of what I would consider important aspect of the mind, including emotional intuition and creativity.

Ergo they are a load of cack.

Killer Pigeon

Sky King wrote: »

IQ tests measure very specific things and do not measure loads of facets of what I would consider important aspect of the mind, including emotional intuition and creativity.

Ergo they are a load of cack.

I think it's obvious that creationists have a very low IQ though.

philologos

MagicMarker wrote: »

Courtesy of the same Wiki page.

Your claim was about education. There are contradictions in studies. Indeed, in respect to intelligence it largely comes down to social class, education, region, wealth in respect to atheists. Like all things, correlation is not causation but it comes down to other factors.

From the link above:

For a start, look at the graph of IQ versus belief, and focus on nations with a mean IQ of around 100. In these nations, there's almost no correlation between IQ and belief. The apparent connection comes mostly from a gaggle of nations that are characterised by high levels of belief and low IQ. And, importantly, these are all low-income nations. We already know - and Lynn acknowledges - that increasing material wealth in Western Nations in the 20th century lead to increasing IQ. Does this have anything to do with it?

Sky King

Killer Pigeon wrote: »

I think it's obvious that creationists have a very low IQ though.

I would tend to disagree.

We're all very worldly now because of easy access to media and the internet. A person could have had a strict and isolated upbringing, believing in creationism and still be very 'intelligent' in this capacity that is measured by IQ.

I would argue that it is education and exposure to the wider world as opposed to this classical notion of intelligence that makes a person question things they were taught as a child.

pragmatic1

Sky King wrote: »

IQ tests measure very specific things and do not measure loads of facets of what I would consider important aspect of the mind, including emotional intuition and creativity.

Ergo they are a load of cack.

Theres a fairly strong correlation between high IQ and success in later life. Being emotionally intelligent isnt really equal to being highly intelligent. In addition, the two arent mutually exclusive. Maybe we arent comfortable saying that people arent equal when it comes to intelligence because we equate intelligence with a persons worth.

Sky King

Success is subjective, and different people have different priorities in life.

For some people, success is rearing a healthy happy family. Is this any less valid than business or sporting success?

Ghost Buster

Access to information and a wider social group can certainly help ones noggin get around the whole notion of atheism being possible. I had a very typical irish upbringing as a catholic in a rural area outside a small town with catholicism being rooted in every aspect of life. I knew i did not believe most of what i was being told from my early teens but the notion of not believing in something was utterly alien to me as I had been taught voodoo and superstitious bollockology from year one.Then I went off to college, the internet was born, non RTE / Church run tv became available and so after a very brief flirtation with Paganism I had that EUREKA moment and realised that its possible to live very happily without any supernatural beliefs in ones life.
I think its possible to realise that religion is nonsense at any time but certainly access to other information or call it education if you like is a help toward atheism.
And no Im not a science head by any means.

Logical Fallacy

paddyandy wrote: »

Intelligence is not Wisdom and if you don't understand that..........

LoL, yeah...and don't forget about street smarts.

And various other arguments to make stupid people feel less so.

MagicMarker

philologos wrote: »

Your claim was about education.

It's not my claim, it's the scientific, peer reviewed study's claim.

philologos wrote: »

There are contradictions in studies. Indeed, in respect to intelligence it largely comes down to social class, education, region, wealth in respect to atheists. Like all things, correlation is not causation but it comes down to other factors.

From the link above:

I don't disagree with the factors that contribute to the level of intelligence in any given society.

I find it funny though that the Wiki page you originally quoted from was perfectly acceptable for you at the time, but since I've quoted from it you had to find a different source to quote to dispute what I quoted from your original source.

Kidchameleon

Some of the most intelligent human beings throughout history were religious so the OP is stupid. Also claiming that somebody who is religious is less intelligent than somebody who is not is completely retarded.

Just some of the great minds who were not atheist...

Nicholas Copernicus (1473-1543)

Copernicus was the Polish astronomer who put forward the first mathematically based system of planets going around the sun. He attended various European universities, and became a Canon in the Catholic church in 1497. His new system was actually first presented in the Vatican gardens in 1533 before Pope Clement VII who approved, and urged Copernicus to publish it around this time. Copernicus was never under any threat of religious persecution - and was urged to publish both by Catholic Bishop Guise, Cardinal Schonberg, and the Protestant Professor George Rheticus. Copernicus referred sometimes to God in his works, and did not see his system as in conflict with the Bible.

Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)

Galileo is often remembered for his conflict with the Roman Catholic Church. His controversial work on the solar system was published in 1633. It had no proofs of a sun-centered system (Galileo's telescope discoveries did not indicate a moving earth) and his one "proof" based upon the tides was invalid. It ignored the correct elliptical orbits of planets published twenty five years earlier by Kepler. Since his work finished by putting the Pope's favorite argument in the mouth of the simpleton in the dialogue, the Pope (an old friend of Galileo's) was very offended. After the "trial" and being forbidden to teach the sun-centered system, Galileo did his most useful theoretical work, which was on dynamics. Galileo expressly said that the Bible cannot err, and saw his system as an alternate interpretation of the biblical texts.

Isaac Newton (1642-1727)

In optics, mechanics, and mathematics, Newton was a figure of undisputed genius and innovation. In all his science (including chemistry) he saw mathematics and numbers as central. What is less well known is that he was devoutly religious and saw numbers as involved in understanding God's plan for history from the Bible. He did a considerable work on biblical numerology, and, though aspects of his beliefs were not orthodox, he thought theology was very important. In his system of physics, God is essential to the nature and absoluteness of space. In Principia he stated, "The most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being."

William Thomson Kelvin (1824-1907)

Kelvin was foremost among the small group of British scientists who helped to lay the foundations of modern physics. His work covered many areas of physics, and he was said to have more letters after his name than anyone else in the Commonwealth, since he received numerous honorary degrees from European Universities, which recognized the value of his work. He was a very committed Christian, who was certainly more religious than the average for his era. Interestingly, his fellow physicists George Gabriel Stokes (1819-1903) and James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879) were also men of deep Christian commitment, in an era when many were nominal, apathetic, or anti-Christian. The Encyclopedia Britannica says "Maxwell is regarded by most modern physicists as the scientist of the 19th century who had the greatest influence on 20th century physics; he is ranked with Sir Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein for the fundamental nature of his contributions." Lord Kelvin was an Old Earth creationist, who estimated the Earth's age to be somewhere between 20 million and 100 million years, with an upper limit at 500 million years based on cooling rates (a low estimate due to his lack of knowledge about radiogenic heating).

Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

Einstein is probably the best known and most highly revered scientist of the twentieth century, and is associated with major revolutions in our thinking about time, gravity, and the conversion of matter to energy (E=mc2). Although never coming to belief in a personal God, he recognized the impossibility of a non-created universe. The Encyclopedia Britannica says of him: "Firmly denying atheism, Einstein expressed a belief in "Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the harmony of what exists." This actually motivated his interest in science, as he once remarked to a young physicist: "I want to know how God created this world, I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts, the rest are details." Einstein's famous epithet on the "uncertainty principle" was "God does not play dice" - and to him this was a real statement about a God in whom he believed. A famous saying of his was "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."


Some more names who are / were religious...

Muhammad Ali, Charles Darwin, Matt Groening, Malcolm X, J.R.R. Tolkien, Oscar Wilde

MagicMarker

Kidchameleon wrote: »

Some of the most intelligent human beings throughout history were religious so the OP is stupid. Also claiming that somebody who is religious is less intelligent than somebody who is not is completely retarded.

Not being able to read is completely retarded, you should learn.

Seachmall

Kidchameleon wrote: »

Some of the most intelligent human beings throughout history were religious so the OP is stupid. Also claiming that somebody who is religious is less intelligent than somebody who is not is completely retarded.

We're talking about statistics, not individuals.

I'm sure any of us could produce a list of famous Atheist thinkers but it would be completely irrelevant to the discussion.

Also, Einstein's use of the word God is probably the most misunderstood use of the word today.

cc4life

Seachmall wrote: »

We're talking about statistics, not individuals.

I'm sure any of us could produce a list of famous Atheist thinkers but it would be completely irrelevant to the discussion.

Also, Einstein's use of the word God is probably the most misunderstood use of the word today.

Go on and make a list and save me looking it up

Seachmall

cc4life wrote: »

Go on and make a list and save me looking it up

Seriously?

cc4life

Seachmall wrote: »

Seriously?

Thanks..i scrolled through them fast and thought the religious ones were better :P

Naomi00

No, I think to be honest it's more of an 'I'm better than everyone because I'm an Atheist' attitude , rather than actual knowledge.



I don't really care what beliefs people have, but Atheists always seem to have to give people 10 reasons why they're wrong, and force their views on everyone else (e.g political correctness over trivial things, on a larger scale) which generally makes people feel like they can't practice any religion incase they upset someone. I think it's a closed minded attitude to have thus not as 'intelligent' as OP described.

Seachmall

Naomi00 wrote: »

No, I think to be honest it's more of an 'I'm better than everyone because I'm an Atheist' attitude , rather than actual knowledge.

It's an apparent statistical correlation, not an opinion. You can't just say "I don't agree".

That's silly.

Bloody Nipples

Naomi00 wrote: »

No, I think to be honest it's more of an 'I'm better than everyone because I'm an Atheist' attitude , rather than actual knowledge

To be fair, there is a lot of this type about. Generally gnostic atheists and generally clueless when actually drawn into discussion on the topic. Not that I generalise or anything.

darkman2

IMO atheists can be, and are, just as intolerant as religious fanatics.

MagicMarker

Naomi00 wrote: »

No, I think to be honest it's more of an 'I'm better than everyone because I'm an Atheist' attitude , rather than actual knowledge.

Atheists do think they're better than everyone else, they are the ones who feel that this whole universe was made especially for them, oh wait, that's them religious folk.

Naomi00 wrote: »

I don't really care what beliefs people have, but Atheists always seem to have to give people 10 reasons why they're wrong, and force their views on everyone else (e.g political correctness over trivial things, on a larger scale)

OMG you're right, atheists are always pushing their views on everyone else.

I'm going to say this to the next atheists who knock on my door! Oh...wait, that's them religious folk who do that.

Naomi00 wrote: »

which generally makes people feel like they can't practice any religion incase they upset someone. I think it's a closed minded attitude to have thus not as 'intelligent' as OP described.

OMG the atheists are always stopping people from practicing their religions, let's not forget about all those schools that atheists are running, brainwashing those children with the odd rape thrown in for good measure. Oh, darn it, it's them religious folk again.

Bloody Nipples

darkman2 wrote: »

IMO atheists can be, and are, just as intolerant as religious fanatics.

Well "can be" and "are" are two different things. One I wouldn't take offence at and one I would, so which is it?

MagicMarker

darkman2 wrote: »

IMO atheists can be, and are, just as intolerant as religious fanatics.

People in being just as intolerant as other people shocker.

Seachmall

darkman2 wrote: »

IMO atheists can be, and are, just as intolerant as religious fanatics.

Well neither belief or lack of belief requires arrogance and I'd imagine overall they're roughly the same in that respect.

Although I do agree that atheist's can be perceived as more arrogant, particularly online.

It tends to be the group who disagree with legal policy or cultural assumptions that make noise because they feel they're not being appropriately represented or being "oppressed" (for the lack of a better word).

Factor in the fact that Dawkins' books are influential for younger atheists and Dawkins promotes a vocal approach that perception is understandable, although ultimately unjustified.

geetar

the list of great minds that was posted is irrelevant.

its a societal intelligence that brings atheism.

those great scientists/philosphers etc, may very well have been atheist, or doubtful of religion but would never declare it publically. they would lose all credibilty in a society where atheism was a crime and the public were all devout to their religions.

contrarily, go through the greatest minds of scientists and philosphers today, i would not be surprised if they were all entirely atheist.

Freddie59

Sisko wrote: »

It'd get banned from there. It's the religion section after all.

Considering religion tends to take advantage of the uneducated and the ignorant , its pretty obvious that indeed it is the case that the more educated and intelligent a society is the less religious it becomes.

So because you're religious you're uneducated and ignorant. Nice.:rolleyes: