Intelligent people ‘less likely to believe in God’
I’m not surprised in the least.
Intelligent people ‘less likely to believe in God’
Professor Richard Lynn, emeritus professor of psychology at Ulster University, said many more members of the “intellectual elite” considered themselves atheists than the national average.
A decline in religious observance over the last century was directly linked to a rise in average intelligence, he claimed.
But the conclusions – in a paper for the academic journal Intelligence – have been branded “simplistic” by critics.
Professor Lynn, who has provoked controversy in the past with research linking intelligence to race and sex, said university academics were less likely to believe in God than almost anyone else.
A survey of Royal Society fellows found that only 3.3 per cent believed in God – at a time when 68.5 per cent of the general UK population described themselves as believers.
A separate poll in the 90s found only seven per cent of members of the American National Academy of Sciences believed in God.
Professor Lynn said most primary school children believed in God, but as they entered adolescence – and their intelligence increased – many started to have doubts.
He told Times Higher Education magazine: “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 religious belief had declined across 137 developed nations in the 20th century at the same time as people became more intelligent.
But Professor Gordon Lynch, director of the Centre for Religion and Contemporary Society at Birkbeck College, London, said it failed to take account of a complex range of social, economic and historical factors.
“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,” he said.
Dr Alistair McFadyen, senior lecturer in Christian theology at Leeds University, said the conclusion had “a slight tinge of Western cultural imperialism as well as an anti-religious sentiment”.
Dr 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 institutions.”
Jun 12, 2008 @ 08:01:10
developing a simplistic characterisation of religion as primitive
No one’s “developing” this characterisation, that’s the fact of religion. It’s a carry over from our more primitive days when the world wasn’t reasonably well understood. We’ve outgrown our imaginary sky-parents.
Jun 12, 2008 @ 16:39:29
Scientist does study and finds – Sun Rises in the East! Shock News!
Jun 15, 2008 @ 22:36:33
Intelligence and academia, in America at least, has sadly come to be associated with atheism.
Was this true one hundred years ago? Absolutely not- in fact the opposite was true: Yale, Princeton, and Harvard were all seminaries. The top thinkers of the day viewed their fields as being wholly consistent with a belief in God.
What this ‘scientific’ report reveals is more the subjectivity and bias of academia today than it does anything else.
Jun 16, 2008 @ 09:10:50
Yes, and they also believed the earth was flat and the Sun revolved around the Earth, right? Yeah, the view of the catholic church has certainly proven itself over the centuries to be consistent with reality.
There is no subjectivity or bias in academia, the bias and subjectivity are the exclusive pervue of the religious community. You’ve proven that yourself, as once someone mentions something that’s “anti-religion”, you immediately jump to defend the Christian “god”. There are thousands of other gods and religions, you know. Academia’s views are consistent with a belief in Thor, so perhaps you should change religions?
There’s a reason the religious want education taken out of the schools: it’s the best way to ensure new recruits. Ignorance breeds religion. It’s why they’ve been eviscerating the educational system in the US for decades. They blame it on the “liberals”, but that doesn’t shield them anymore.
Jun 17, 2008 @ 15:17:43
CLASSIC BLOG DUDE!!! 10/10. Keep up the good work! Greetings from a Spanish chemist.