Can anyone list credible studies that show religious people have lower IQ's?

Question

I'd be interested to read them.

I said credible LOL

Answer 1

HERE YA GO!

Paraphrased and summarized from The Effect of Intelligence on Religious Faith, Burnham P. Beckwith, Free Inquiry, Spring 1986:

1. Thomas Howells, 1927
Study of 461 students showed religiously conversative 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, 10-16. Negative correlation between religiosity and 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 stydents, 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.

8. Brown and Love, 1951
At U. of Denver, tested 613 male and female students. Mean test scores of non-believers = 119, believers = 100. Percentile NBs = 80, BBs = 50. 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 U. 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% of christians, 58% 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.

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

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

Student Body Comparisons-

1. Rose Goldsen, Student belief in a divine god, percentages 1952.
Harvard 30; UCLA 32; Dartmouth 35; Yale 36; Cornell 42; Wayne 43; Weslyan 43; Michigan 45; Fisk 60; Texas 62; N. Carolina 68.

2. National Review Study, 1970 Students Belief in Spirit or Divine
God. Percentages: Reed 15; Brandeis 25; Sarah Lawrence 28; Williams 36; Stanford 41; Boston U. 41; Yale 42; Howard 47; Indiana 57; Davidson 59; S. Carolina 65; Marquette 77.

3. Caplovitz and Sherrow, 1977
Apostasy rates rose continuously from 5% in "low" ranked schools to 17% in "high" ranked schools.

Niemi, Ross, and Alexander, 1978
In elite schools, organized religion was judged important by only 26%, compared with 44% of all students.

Studies of Very-High-IQ groups.

1. Terman, 1959
Studied group with IQ > 140. Of men, 10% held strong religious belief, of women 18%. 62% of men and 57% if women claimed "little religious inclination" while 28% men and 23% of women claimed it was "not at all important."

2. Warren and Heist, 1960
Found no differences among National Merit Scholars. Results may have been affected by the fact that NM scholars are not selected on the basis of intelligence or grades alone, but also on "leadership" and such like.

3. Southern and Plant, 1968
42 male and 30 female members of Mensa. Mensa members were much less religious in belief than the typical American college alumnus or adult.

1. William S. Ament, 1927
C. C. Little, president U. of Michigan, checked persons listed in Who's Who in America: "Unitarians, Episcopalians, Congregationalists, Universalists, and Presbyterians are ... far more numerous in Who's Who than would be expercted on the basis of the population which they form. Baptists, Methodists, and Catholics are distinctly less numberous."

Ament confirmed Little's conclusion. He noted that Unitarians, the least religious, were more than 40 times as numerous in Who's Who as in the U.S. population.

2. Lehman and Witty, 1931
Identified 1189 scientists found in both _Who's Who_ (1927) and American Men of Science (1927). Only 25% in AM of S and 50% of those listed in Who's Who reported their religious denomination despite the specific requests to do so, "religious denomination (if any)." Well over 90% of the general population claims religious affiliation. The figure of 25% suggest far less religiosity among scientists.

Unitarians were 81.4 times as numerous among eminent scientists as non-Unitarians.

3. Kelley and Fisk, 1951
Found a negative (-.39) correlation between the strength of religious values and research competence. [How these were measured I have no idea.]

4. Ann Roe, 1953
Interviewed 64 "eminent scientists, nearly all members of the prestigious National Academy of Sciences or the American Philosophical Society. She reported that, while nearly all of them had religious parents and had attended Sunday school, 'now only three of these men are seriously active in church. A few others attend upon occasion, or even give some financial support to a church which they do not attend... All the otheres have long since dismissed religion as any guide to them, and the church plays no part in their lives...A few are militantly atheistic, but most are just not interested.'"

5. Francis Bello, 1954
Questionnaired or interviewed 107 young (<= 40) nonindustrial scientists judged by senior colleagues to be outstanding. 87 responded. 45% claimed to be "agnostic or atheistic" and an additional 22% claimed no religious affiliation. For 20 most eminent, "the proportion who are now a-religious is considerably higher than in the entire survey group."

6. Jack Chambers, 1964
Questionnaired 740 US psychologists and chemists. He reported, "the highly creative men [jft- assume no women included] ... significantly more often show either no preference for a particular religion or little or no interest in religion." Found that the most eminent psychologists showed 40% no preference, 16% for the most eminent chemists.

7. Vaughan, Smith, and Sjoberg, 1965
Polled 850 US physicists, zoologists, chemical engineers, and geologists listed in American Men of Science_(1955) on church membership, and attendance patterns, and belief in afterlife. 642 replies.

38.5% did not believe in afterlife, 31.8% did. Belief in immortality was less common among major university staff than among those employed by business, government, or minor universities. The contemporaneous Gallup poll showed 2/3 of US population believed in afterlife, so scientists were far less religious than typical adult.

Answer 2

When you stand before God on Judgement day, tell HIM how smart you are and how much you have accomplished, and whatever else you may have summed up from all your studies and all your wisdom gatherings. You see all the smartest most intelligent people in the past, where are they and you see they are not immortal? You tell me where your IQ stands, being smart doesn't make you any better in anyones eyes, otherwise why? you have to prove that you are on an intelligent level to all those who you think are going to care if you are intelligent and you if you have high IQ levels. To me you will be going to HELL along with all the religious people, because Jesus HIMSELF argued with the religious people, who ultimately killed Jesus in the end and hung HIM on the Cross. To me you and your IQ and your religiousity buddies are on your way at a phenominal rate of speed to HELL. I pray that you repent and ask Jesus to come into your heart and save you from Death, Hell and the Grave. You wanna be wise and have a receive a dynamic abundant of wisdom, give your life to Jesus and you will have Pure wisdom

Answer 3

Well, I'll tell you right now, based on their responses to questions regarding simple concepts in science, I would venture that the average Christian's IQ is between 85 to 110. They are either bordering on mild retardation while the smartest are barely above average intelligent. The rest are average intelligence, none of them are intellectuals, I can assure you, and if they are, they are the theologians and preachers who get a thrill off of interpreting religion and having power over "their" followers.

(my IQ is 129)

Malak:
better look up the ranges in IQ and what the numbers stand for......or are you vigilant in your ignorance in that as well?
http://www.iqtestforfree.com/IQ-Score-Ranges.php

Answer 4

Atheists come here simply to insult us, the only thing to do is ignore them. Funny how they keep saying we're not tolerant, yet all they do is sling insults at us. Talk about intolerance! I use to actually think some atheists were humans, but since being here, I realize they're just rude, nasty, snide and vicious. But hey, doesn't matter, their opinion means absolutely nothing. I would like to know why they spend so much time in this section though. Really, with no religion, and apparently, having no souls to need any help with spirituality, why would they concern themselves with this section? Oh yeah, to try to prove their intellectual superiority! I suppose if you're without a soul, you would spend an awful lot of time trying to make yourself sound intelligent. Yep, time for them to go praise the big bang from nothingness, considering how very logical they are and all.

Answer 5

Thats about the best post I've read all day!
Oh, and my IQ is 147 and I do believe it.

Answer 6

Not just their lack of knowledge of science, but their lack of knowledge of history as well. Even Christian history is foreign to most of them. And don't get me started on basic skills in logical deduction, inference and extrapolation.

And they voted in George Bush.

As for my IQ, it is in the neighbourhood of those provided by others ;-)

Answer 7

This is a nice little graph i found charting the correlation of religiosity to average IQ. Insightful.

http://w-uh.com/posts/031226a-religion_vs_IQ.html

Answer 8

There is only anecdotal evidence to that effect. And just because you are a bit slow, it doesn't mean all bible thumpers are.

Answer 9

Here's another:

Answer 10

here's one