do religious people have lower IQs?

Question

Numerous studies show this.


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c 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c There is also a constant positive relation between liberal scores and intelligencec"

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."

Answer 1

No offense, but I don't think any serious scientist would believe any paper whose principal evidence came from 1951 and earlier. In fact, aptitude/intelligence studies of the kind that you have cited are very much out of vogue right now, because they can be used to stratify people inappropriately. Many similar studies have tried to show that black people are less intelligent than white people, for example.

And actually the study you've listed with number 6 doesn't really support your point, because "little or no relationship" doesn't mean that religious people aren't intelligent, it means that you can't make any connection between religion and intelligence, in either direction.

And IQ, by the way, does not appear to be a valid measure, since it's supposed to be invariant over a person's life, but is obviously affected by things like listening to music before taking the test.

All these points aside, I think what you're trying to say is that you have to be stupid to believe in God. That's not true. Unfortunately, many intelligent people these days are misled into believing that they shouldn't believe in God because they can't see him. This is a mistake. In fact, science is actually a very similar process of projecting hypotheses about things we don't yet know, and then testing them. This is very similar to exercising faith in God.

It's good to be educated if your education helps you to progress. It's only a mistake if your education leads you away from God, and from understanding the true purposes of life. My church encourages its members to get education and to find truth wherever they can. In this way, education and religion do not conflict, because they are both ways of finding out truth.

Many people can create a list of well-respected people in the arts and sciences who believed in God. Surely you wouldn't claim that people like Henry Eyring, the developer of the field of kinetics, was not intelligent. And, by the way, he was a devout member of the same church that I belong to.

Please don't be misled.

P.S. I'm a scientist and I have a Master's degree. And I'm a devout member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. (I don't actually know my IQ.)

(If you'd like to discuss the research design of the studies that you've listed, feel free. I have serious issues with studies about intelligence that only use college undergraduates as research subjects. As a scientist, I know that college undergraduates are a convenient research population, but there are some serious flaws with this design for a study like this.)

Answer 2

More intelligent people can recognize illusions that deceive less intelligent people. Religion is (and always has been) based on metaphysical illusions, so the researchers' findings aren't all that surprising.

But there are cleverer illusions nowadays than religion. The most difficult ones to penetrate are those that are currently promoted by the mass media as "science." The illusion of racial equality is a good example: lots of liberals have been deceived by that one.

Drshorty wrote: "Many similar studies have tried to show that black people are less intelligent than white people, for example."

Those studies didn't "try" to show anything in particular. They set out to determine what the truth is in regard to racial differences in IQ, and they succeeded in identifying the major relevant trends. Dr. Arthur Jensen's famous article, "How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement," published in the Harvard Educational Review in 1969, cites dozens of such studies... all of them peer reviewed in the most proper scientific fashion. You can find the list in the article's bibliography.

Furthermore, those studies are supported year after year, in every high school and university in the United States, as every time without fail the races line up in terms of IQ in the very same order. First come either the Whites or the Asians, with the other of those running a close second place. Far behind in third place come the Mestizos, the "Hispanics" of Mexico, Puerto Rico, and Central/South America. And behind them, bringing up the rear, are the Blacks - dead last, every time.

And it doesn't matter which test you pick. It can be a Mensa IQ test, or a Stanford Binet. It can be the SAT, or the ACT, or the Stanford 9TA. It can be the Air Force Officer's Qualifying Test (AFOQT) or the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB). The same race order results regardless of which test is used.

Certain races DO have lower IQs than certain others; that is, the average for one race is lower than the average for another. That's TRUE. It's not bigotry. It's ignorance when someone declares that there are no racial differences in intelligence. The scientific data proves otherwise.

Answer 3

No, this is just as bigoted as saying that a certain race has lower IQs. I am agnostic myself and believe that organized religion has harmed untold numbers of people, but believing that religious people are stupid is just too easy. My dad used to say that everyone had an impenetrable black box in their heads wherein religion existed. It was separate from all thoughts and intelligence in the rest of the brain and allowed intelligent people to believe things they would never believe if presented in any other form. It's as good a theory as any!

PS - Look at how old your data is. If you're pulling back that far you can also "prove" a lot of stuff about "racial intelligence". And statistically Jews are among the very most well educated people on the face of the earth.

Answer 4

1) IQ tests are designed for rich, white, people from the US.
2) Generally, people from poorer areas test lower as well.
3) IQ tests are not guarantees on intelligence.
4) Common sense is not something you can measure.
I come from a lower class family. I have struggled and supported myself since I was sixteen. I graduated from High school at sixteen. When I decided to go back three years ago, I pretty much bailed on the entrance exam, but I forged ahead. I have refused to take any basic classes, and each time my adviser has told me that I will fail. I am 4.0 GPA, and a member of National Honor Society.
I consider myself very spiritual and a Christian.
Sociologists have shown that is the poorer class that usually scores lower on IQ exams, and I feel that the surveys listed above, with the misspelled names, were conducted with bias and without taking other factors into consideration.

Answer 5

Yes there has been a recorded negative correlation between THE IMPORTANCE of religion in a subjects life and their IQ score but that is not the same as the characterization of IQ scores of religious vs non-religious as entire populations as your question implies.

What does IQ measure? Why and for whom were these tests created? The classic IQ score has very little to do with global mental superiority and everything to do with ________________
(Fill in the blank...I know YOU know the answer).

Shame on you for those citations.

Answer 6

You just listed a bunch of bunk.
Children attending Christian Schools have the best grades Nation Wide. And they have the highest SAT scores.
Just in case you might have noticed, they also rule the top ten percent in spelling contests.
Of course that just means Christian Schools have better teachers than our public schools do.
I don't think that believing in God, makes a person dumb.
Is that what you are implying?

Answer 7

I think religious people that display in public are just depending on a father figure with absolute power for guidance and comfort from fears instead of we are all in this together. Once you believe in one thing your brain is shut out to any ideas and you will attack any evidence that shows question. Also the human has a hard time just saying we don`t know.

Answer 8

My son has a very high IQ and is extremely anti-religion. I think that really intelligent people tend to think with a much more scientific thought process and inturn this tends to rule out anything "higher". But I don't think religous people necessarily have lower IQ's tho.

Answer 9

1951? That's the latest study? Because we are almost is 2007, I would think that a fresh study needs to be done. And this time maybe a double blind test? No telling what methods they used.

Answer 10

Anyone with any intelligence knows that intelligence cannot be pigeon holed and further more, studies are all subjective to the agenda of those directing the study. Anyone with any common sense and knowledge of statistics knows this.