Are Atheists More Intelligent?

Heheh... man I need to get some sleep too.

Play nice people. Lets try to keep the personal attacks, name calling, flaming, and just general disregard for rational discourse to a minimum.

Oh... who am I kidding.

What is humorous to me is most Atheists I know are so fervent about the fact that "There is no God" they may as well be part of a religion that worships one.

It is something I usually distinguish when labeling myself as am I not religious, am not apart of any religion nor do I have spiritual beliefs. However I also do not go around incising there is no god. There may be, I don't know - I just don't care either way.

The statistic was interesting I guess. But I don't know what else you were expecting when posting such a high-debated topic as religion on an internet forum. These type of discussions are prime trolling territory.

I would just remind anyone who wants to continue discussing in this thread (assuming its not locked) to try and be respectful of anyone's beliefs. Why does it matter what someone believes or they don't believe (or if either makes them smarter or not) as long as they are in no way harming you?

I don't now why someone think that believing in science and evolution makes them more intelligent.

Absolutely not. And thats coming from an atheist. Correlation does not equal causation as this thread is implying.

The thread is implying no such thing.

what is this thread implying then?

In alot of ways, I somewhat agree........

Edit: This is from personel MY experience.

It also took into consideration GPAs, University Entrance Exams, Mensa membership tests, among others. The article goes to the lengths of creating a distinction between analytic reasoning and intuitive reasoning. It even takes into consideration creative intelligence and emotional intelligence, and states that these tests only apply to analytic intelligence.

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The title of the thread might be a jab at the religiously inclined, but the article and the study only tell us that there is simply a strong correlation between intelligence or analytic intelligence if you prefer and willingness to believe in the supernatural.

It basically concludes that, as a result of a higher intelligence quotient and general measurements of accumulated knowledge, people have a higher chance of discarding the possibility of the supernatural than those who score lower on these same tests. This doesn't necessarily mean that atheism is only reserved for the intelligent or that all religious folk are less intelligent. It only points out a tendency.

I think it is very interesting that they've taken data that dates back all the way to 1928.

@cameron83: sure, knock yourself out.

I do agree with the last paragraph stated by the OP -"My take is that this makes perfect sense. More intelligent people are better at rational thought and (IMO) are more curious about explanations for phenomena and claims of such. Religion is generally the opposite of rational thought... certainly the supernatural is... and mostly works to shut down questioning and independent thought." It's true! Isn't a commandment "Thou shalt have no other gods" well being told you can't beleive in other things kinda takes away independent thought now doesn't it? Religion is just insane! There are a googolplex of possible explanations of the the universe. But instead of beleiving in science which has brought us 10,000x more explanations of the universe they beleive in a man in clouds. They don't have proof he's there and he doesn't answer their prayers, but he is just there. I want someone to explain faith and help me understand but I just don't honestly I haven't since I was a kid.

As far as I can tell the thread is not implying anything. I'm not even sure how a thread can imply something. Maybe you mean that the article is implying something, or that someone is inferring something. This thread is just a bunch of people arguing. It doesnt "imply" anything... except perhaps that people are argumentative.

Let the war begin.

@willpayton: To me it more or less implies that people didn't bother reading the whole article, if at all, but decided to have a strong opinion regardless.

But intelligence and beliefs are not inseparable.

I would agree with that. =)

Well, so far this thread seems to be going along pretty well...Oh crap I probably just jinxed it.

Yes, of course. But, where does that get you? There's many factors that go into beliefs... available data, historical context, upbringing, etc. It says nothing about whether that belief is true or not, rational or not, intelligent or not.

But regardless, my point is just that intelligence can affect the formation of beliefs, and beliefs can affect what we measure as intelligence. The study shows a statistical correlation between these two things. Making claims about "an atheist" or "a religious person" really shows nothing about the general truth of the article.

Oh, humanity...

Nobody can deny that people who are more intelligent are not quite as stupid as people who aren't so intelligent... Of course, this is not always the case. Cause some intelligent people are also stupid... ;)

I'd say they are intelligent up to a certain degree and it never quite surpasses that. Both believers and none believers basically limited their minds to a certain belief / world view, whereas having an uncanny imagination just means so much more. Ask Einstein.

The methodology is sound, and the data speaks for itself. Atheists are, on average, more intelligent.

Hmm the statistics provide an interesting picture. One's intelligence can influence the outcome of what they believe in. Or alternatively, one's beliefs can stifle their intelligence into not believing what is evidently true. It does seem to be the case that those who have no religion, or in some cases a God can be more intellectually open to the world. Of course, there are intelligent believers but the main issue there is that after all the arguments and debating they can make for God, it comes down to "I have faith he exists."

Also I'm surprised this hasn't erupted into an all out flame war.

dumb is universal

yes, love it.

lol nope.

They think they are.

Not me.

Intelligence does not correlate to religious beliefs. I know some atheist that are dumb as hell as well as religious people who are dumb. But I also know some religious people that are very intelligent as well as atheist that are very intelligent.

I don't see how a belief system or lack there of can in any way influence the level of intellect of an individual.

First some are making a false assumption that having a religious belief precludes the acceptance of certain areas of science. This is simply not the case. I was raised a devout catholic. I went to a catholic school almost 30 years ago ( not long after Vatican II) that taught the big bang and the theory of evolution. In the religious classes at that school we were taught that a lot of the old testament ( specifically the book of genesis) was the stories of the Jewish culture at the time to explain what they did not understand to their children when asked questions. We were also taught that the Jewish people of the time had a oral tradition. Much of their history was passed down by orators who had nothing written down. Children asked questions and naturally parents came up with answers ( much like the myths of many cultures). Fact is I was the dux of science every year at school and the grade average of our school was higher than that of other non religious schools around us.

Personally I have questioned my beliefs a lot over my life and maintain them because science can actually explain all the mysteries ( or things hard to swallow) to me that defy "logic". First of all "creationism vs Big bang. Quite frankly there is no reason the two need to be mutually exclusive. Let's look at the big bang, it's very nature actually defies the laws of thermodynamics in so far as energy was "created", the state of being went to a higher energy state (enthalpy) and it also became in essence more ordered ( Entropy) considering the vast complex star systems created. Now we can say the seed that caused the big bang came from a previous big crunch and yadda yadda but at some point something had to start the cycle.

Another big issue is the being that has always been and always will. really not that hard to extrapolate when you think about it. We live in what we refer to as a 3 dimensional universe ( i.e. it has volume height, depth, and width). But we do know of the forth dimension - time. We have only linear movement on that. Presumably therefore a being who existed in a fourth dimension could move as freely along time as we can across a floor. So just one dimension up from us and time holds no meaning or restriction to. Suddenly having always been seems easy. Take that a few more dimensions and there will likely be concepts as far beyond our grasp as depth is to a 2 dimensional being. Presumably the way such a being would interact with lower dimensions would mean also far greater control.

Einstein and Rosen used a very simple analogy to describe and postulate their Bridge theory. The postulated that as gravity ( and other forces ) warp time and space but the things that cause these warps have a physical thing that stops them ( planet, atom etc) that intense gravity without said barrier ( like a Black Hole) would bend time and space and create a warp through it. They used an example of a piece of paper being a 2 dimensional universe. As a three dimensional being I can bend a piece of paper ( 2 dimensional( so that it touches itself making the shortest distance between two points ( at opposite ends of the paper) the actual points themselves and not the length of the paper. higher dimensional being would have similarly greater ability to do so.

No long spiel I know, but I've done this to show it can take as much intellect for a theologian to answer the philosophical questions s/he can come up with as it takes for a scientist do do his thing.

In a general sense atheists tend to be smarter... but the reason they are smarter is not because they are atheists and being an atheist doesn't make you smarter.

The cause is actually more to do with theistic claims. Basically... The bible claims that the Earth was made in 6 days... person goes and researches that claim which includes cosmology, astronomy, geology, and evolution. Theists claim that God is all knowing, all powerful, all loving, and so the dutiful person goes and studies ethicsm epystemology, logic, and philosophy in general. Theists Claim the Exodus, America is a christian nation, and hitler was an atheist and that make them study history.

IN the end the reason Atheists are smarter is because theists make a lot of claims that are wrong and atheists deal with them so often and learn about all this stuff that it exorcises the brain and generally makes them smarter.

There is also the matter that something like 96% (this may be a wrong stat) of the elite thinkers in the world are atheists and that skews the results ^.^

But if your a theist and study and use your brain, there is probably no difference and if this were true, then atheists would have to explain Francis Collins and that 4% of top thinkers/scientists that aren't atheists... although I will say Francis Collins "becoming" a theist deserves a slap upside the head for how stupid that story is.

Intelligence has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not you believe in a higher being.

I, for one, know a few atheists that are just a couple of hippies that do nothing for society.

What we call data and facts will likely be proven wrong in the future.

Back then, it was a fact proven with data that Earth was flat.

Back then, it was a proven fact that Earth was the center of the universe.

Back then, it was a fact that Earth was only 10 thousand years old.

What we call facts are really just tested hypotheses and educated theories.

But let it be said that I do not believe that evolution is a lie; I believe that it DOES occur, but what's to say that a higher being did not include that in His creation?

Americans are funny when it comes to religion

I agree.

Most facts ARE facts. Some are just tested hypotheses and educated theories.

What was called 'fact' in early recorded history was indeed 'best guess' but the more we evolve the closer these 'facts' become to the truth. Or will we find out the the Earth is actually triangular in the near future?

Oh good another Atheists are better than everyone else thread, I'm not a religious person by any means but this crap is getting ridiculous and makes Atheists look just as bad as the bible thumpers they seem to hate so much. As for the thread, there are many highly intelligent people who believe in a higher power, Einstein for instance. The thing about him trying to scientifically prove the existence of god was BS but he did believe in the possibility. On the same note there are some very dumb people who are Atheists. Now neither of these facts mean that believing or not believing in a god or gods means you're more or less intelligent because like every other intangible thing intelligence varies from person to person regardless of the group they're in.

@joshmightbe: I actually cant believe people are taking this thread seriously, or at least taking the question seriously.

@durakken: When ever some one brings up the 6 day thing as an argument against evolution I always ask what is a day to god? If he exists then he'd obviously not be native to this planet and he'd a being of infinite life span and given what we know about perception of time for we know a day could be millions or billions of years in our measure, for all we know we might still be on day 8 or 9.

@optimuspalm: I knew there would be people arguing the second I read the title. And I was right, a lot of the Atheists are doing their overly wordy version of "Haha, we're smarter", while the religious people are doing their equally overly wordy, "Nuh,uh", and all the agnostics are shaking their heads and wondering yet again when the Atheist vs Religion pissing contest will end if ever.

@beatboks1: I don't want to enter into a debate here I assure you, and if I had had more than 3 hours of sleep I probably wouldn't be typing this. Within that wall of mostly coherent text I noticed some things I feel I should address. Modern philosophy differs from science. We can philosophize for eternity nowadays with the what ifs and whatnots. It is much easier to work on a premise when you already have an ultimate answer though, because at the moment that things start bottle-necking you'll always gravitate towards the same answer, no matter what is being discussed.

This is the same reason some physicists end up going nuts. They turn their attention towards tackling certain problems that are just too much for us at the moment and with no safety net they simply lose it. By safety net I mean some deity that can be used to put whatever it is on hold until bolder men succeed where others have failed, "Ah well, this is just how [insert deity] wants it to be."

Anyway, this thread is not about demonstrating any sort of knowledge of certain scientific concepts or how to loosely apply philosophical ideas to them. These could probably be discussed in The Science Thread, if you want.

The title of the thread seems to be getting more antagonism than the actual study; the study simply shows that there is a noticeable tendency. The tendency is that people who have been tested to have a higher analytic intelligence are more likely to not believe in the supernatural than those who are measurably on an average or below average scale when compared to them. This of course doesn't mean that all non-believers are geniuses, and it surely doesn't mean that all believers are non-intelligent.

It is not a study on how a belief system affects intellect, but how intellect affects a belief system. All of this of course, in a generalized aspect.

I can tell you for sure that this study has nothing to do with the ability to grasp scientific concepts, that's for sure. There's plenty of people in the world who are extremely intelligent that only have at best an elementary understanding of scientific concepts.

Pretty much this.

@joshmightbe: I think I could write a small book on my experiences with the "internet atheist." It was a shock to me when running into these kind of people for the first time. As a mostly passive non-believer I pretty much felt ashamed because of them. At the end of the day, there is nothing to be gained from the whole argument of "deity vs no deity." It really is people arguing over something that won't be proven or disproved in the hopes that one day they can go "Aha! It is I that was right all along, not you."

I would think that they are.