Just curious if anybody here had read the last study regarding the IQ scores of Athiests'?

Question

This is actually a serious question, believe it or not.
A while back I had read a study in one of my courses about how the IQ scores of self pronounced athiests' were drastically lower than that of people who had a religious belief system. (not just Christian, before you go all "athiest" on me). The theory is having "something" to believe in, opened up your mind to absorb more information. What are your thoughts on this?

(infidel, any others) I'm really not trying to make myself feel better or anything of the sort. Like I said it was a SERIOUS question. I'm not trying to offend anybody with this one. But I do accept some will be offended and maybe I should be sorry about that. I'm not but maybe I should be.

(kurt) no I'm DEFINITELY not Ann, she put hers on right after mine to show how intelligent she is. Hmm, maybe this study does have merit.
Also, just FYI I'm not a conservative, I know thats what most of you seem to think. I do have religious beliefs however, and my IQ is upper 140s!
Sorry no tabloids, either.

(jim B) you spelled dumber wrong, lol. way to prove a point though.

Update: (annie B)I NEVER said I thought Athiests were stupid!
Besides why are Atheists so worried, what a dumb christian thinks, hmmm.
The least you could do is read the ENTIRE question.
I just believe everybody has a right to their religious opinions, not just those with out religion!

Answer 1

I know this is a serious question, but I think you better duck sweetie, cause peeps are gunna pumble ya..... lol...

Answer 2

I am willing to assume that the study you found was made by some church group. However an IQ test is mostly based on how much school you was able to take in. It is not a real world test of intelligence.

I went through a three day IQ test about 20 years ago which checked almost all aspects. Not just if I knew my math or how well I could spell. At the time I stole a car, got busted for drugs and a few other items. I defended myself in court at the age of 18 and beat it all with a deal to take the testing. The judge said he wanted to know why someone so smart would do such a thing.

I am athiest and I am smart. I only did what I did because I was bored. Did not hurt anyone just pissed some people off. But that was long ago.

I am very very open minded but not willing to believe in fairytales. Sorry bible thumpers. You are not ever going to get the smarter people because they know better. You will only be able to scam the people who are weak minded. If they are smart they are the ones who are running the church. What a scam. All that money just given to them. Only better job would be a rock star.

Answer 3

The question would then be how the bias of the test affected its outcome. In a study that doesn't play as expected or produces lopsided results in a population, one of the first things to do is check the methodology. IQ tests are notoriously ineffective at measuring actual intelligence both through linguistic bias and the fact that no one can really define what intelligence is. The so-called Intelligence Quotient is questionable as well.

It's a handy measure, but it really needs to be taken as the substandard measure that it is.

I'm skeptical about the study because of personal experience. In the Mensa meetings that I've attended, out of 45 people, only 2 weren't atheists. One was agnostic and one was a Catholic. In order to get into Mensa, you have to have a score in the 98th percentile or higher on various intelligence measuring tests.

Answer 4

Sounds like complete BS to me, but I'll google it.

[updated]
OK I can't find an actual study done on this subject, though I only searched for a few minutes. But I seriously doubt that if an unbiased study were performed that they would have found the correlation you suggest.

Disclaimer: I'm agnostic with a 164 IQ and am a member of Mensa--at least when I bother paying dues. But honestly I don't believe intelligence is quantifiable; regardless of the subject being secular or theistic. After all I have a genius IQ and sometimes forget to change out of my pajamas before leaving for work.

Answer 5

There have been studies that show that over 90% of the National Academy of Scientists (NAS) are atheist or agnostic. It seems to me that you need to be quite intelligent to be a greater scientist in the NAS. Personally, I happen to have a 140 IQ and I have been a member of Mensa. I've known a lot of atheists and they all seem fairly intelligent to me. Of course, the latter two are anecdotal evidence and not worth much. But they are examples of high IQ atheists. On the other hand, atheists are drastically under-represented in the prison system and in poverty areas.

And don't worry. Atheists believe in many things. They just lack one belief in one superstition.

I suspect that the study you read was less than accurate.

Answer 6

Well considering I always hear the opposite, and some of the smartest people have been/are non believers, this is an out and out LIE. So were these "courses" at a religion based college? That would sure explain why you might hear it that way!

I'm sorry, but believing does not necessarily open up your mind because your belief is only certain things and certain ways and would not approve of your just up and including other things on your own. Non believers are open to exploring, discovering, and trying to figure out our world.

Of course, maybe you only believe you have read that so you believe it's true! Maybe in school you were able to just BELIEVE your way to passing your tests as well?

Sorry... I guess I went "all atheist on you"!

Answer 7

I wont say the artical was valid or not, but I can see how this could be. IQ doesnt say how smart a person is but how much information they can absorb. Now religious people might not believe everything science says but they have absorbed the information and yet have room for other alternative ideas. Whereas it seems many (not all) atheists have no room to absorb anything that they cannot see or someone cannot prove so I say there can be validity in this theory.

Answer 8

STUDIES OF STUDENTS

1. Thomas Howells, 1927
Study of 461 students showed religiously conservative students "are, in general, relatively inferior in intellectual ability."

2. Hilding Carlsojn, 1933
Study of 215 students showed that "there is a tendency for the more intelligent undergraduate to be sympathetic toward… atheism."

3. Abraham Franzblau, 1934
Confirming Howells and Carlson, tested 354 Jewish children, aged 10-16. Found a negative correlation between religiosity and IQ as measured by the Terman intelligence test.

4. Thomas Symington, 1935
Tested 400 young people in colleges and church groups. He reported, "There is a constant positive relation in all the groups between liberal religious thinking and mental ability… There is also a constant positive relation between liberal scores and intelligence…"

5. Vernon Jones, 1938
Tested 381 students, concluding "a slight tendency for intelligence and liberal attitudes to go together."

6. A. R. Gilliland, 1940
At variance with all other studies, found "little or no relationship between intelligence and attitude toward god."

7. Donald Gragg, 1942
Reported an inverse correlation between 100 ACE freshman test scores and Thurstone "reality of god" scores.

test
scores 100
50%
119
80%
%
rank
test rank test rank
believers non-believers
8. Brown and Love, 1951
At the University of Denver, tested 613 male and female students. The mean test scores of non-believers was 119 points, and for believers it was 100. The non-believers ranked in the 80th percentile, and believers in the 50th. Their findings "strongly corroborate those of Howells."

9. Michael Argyle, 1958
Concluded that "although intelligent children grasp religious concepts earlier, they are also the first to doubt the truth of religion, and intelligent students are much less likely to accept orthodox beliefs."

10. Jeffrey Hadden, 1963
Found no correlation between intelligence and grades. This was an anomalous finding, since GPA corresponds closely with intelligence. Other factors may have influenced the results at the University of Wisconsin.

11. Young, Dustin and Holtzman, 1966
Average religiosity decreased as GPA rose.

12. James Trent, 1967
Polled 1400 college seniors. Found little difference, but high-ability students in his sample group were over-represented.

13. C. Plant and E. Minium, 1967
The more intelligent students were less religious, both before entering college and after 2 years of college.

14. Robert Wuthnow, 1978
Of 532 students, 37 percent of Christians, 58 percent of apostates, and 53 percent of non-religious scored above average on SATs.

15. Hastings and Hoge, 1967, 1974
Polled 200 college students and found no significant correlations.

mean
SATs 1022
1108
1119
1148
group religious slightly
anti-
religious moderately
anti-
religious strongly
anti-
religious
16. Norman Poythress, 1975
Mean SATs for strongly anti-
religious (1148), moderately anti-religious (1119), slightly anti-religious (1108), and religious (1022).

17. Wiebe and Fleck, 1980
Studied 158 male and female Canadian university students. They reported "nonreligious S's tended to be strongly intelligent" and "more intelligent than religious S's."


you must have been given bad info, check out this site...

http://kspark.kaist.ac.kr/Jesus/Intelligence%20&%20religion.htm

Answer 9

IQ tests are crap, but hey I belong to people who are consistently labeled as having a lower than average IQ. If everyone knows that IQ stands for Intelligence Quotient, than how come no one has ever thought about devising tests to measure where it is that people peak so the job market can exploit that rather than handing us a seemingly diversified monoculture in jobs and other possibilities?

Our thoughts themselves cannot be measured, but we think nonetheless. So how can the unmeasurable ever be represented by a finite number? IQ is a good way to keep us all in check and think that the possibilities within us are unattainable. Just think about it!

Answer 10

I am just going to give you a list of Atheists and since your IQ is bound to be higher than mine, you'll know who all of them are: Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Thomas Edison, Bertrand Russell, Mark Twain, Albert Einstein, Carl Sagan,Richard Leakey, Ron Reagan, Jr.,Susan B. Anthony, Woody Allen,Issac Asimov, Luther Burbank and Samuel Coleridge.

These are only a few of those dumb Atheists. Of course all the Atheists that are on Answers aren't mensa material. How ever the brainwashed sheep who howl their one note songs aren't Christian mental giants either. Other wise you wouldn't have accepted that material as fact.

Answer 11

I read a study about religion and scientists and doctors. I think doctors were a little more than half atheist or non-religious, scientists nearly completely - the numbers are on Wikipedia under "atheism" if ya wanna look, I believe.
So, I don't know about the average intelligence of atheists - but a whole bunch of very smart people are atheist. So - I don't know. Are all the very not-intelligent people atheists, too?