Atheists are more intelligent?

Question

In the book “The God Delusion” Dawkins speaks of two polls taken among the scientific community that show that more scientist are atheist than not. Also the scientists with the highest educations were all Atheists. He also speaks of another study taken in the US with the general public where it showed most people with higher education were Atheists and those with lower educational achievements were associated with some form of religion.

Question 1. Where can I find this study to read the questions asked and more detailed results.

Question 2. Do you believe there studies hold water?

Good point I'm sure they were done by Atheists.
Just like the poll conducted by Christians that had an overwhelming result that Atheists were the least trusted group in America. They called people to take their poll that they knew were Christians.

I was looking for the study conducted on the general public, He doesn't list that one in his book or on his webpage.

Answer 1

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 effected 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 alumnis 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 numerous."

Ament confirmed Little's conclusion. He noted that Unitarians, the least religious, were more than 40 times as numerous 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 _W'sW_ 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 others 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
Questionaired 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
Questionaired 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

Not sure of where to find the studies, but if you do, please pass them along. I would love to read them, also.

As for whether they hold water, I would have to say probably. While there is always an inherent sense of bias in any study, the fact that what you mentioned showed not marginal but large discrepancies in the intellegence quotient would suggest that they are fairly accurate.

As for the statement made by thariq_s2004, I have to take up some issues. First off, the Quran writings you mentioned are, in fact, copies of even earlier writings. The Quran did NOT give new information, they mearly appropriated it from the Sumerians, who wrote the original (and most detailed, I might add) cuneiform writings concerning the origin of humans, the knowledge of the makeup of the world and universe, and many other things.

They even make direct mention of Test Tube children......did you know that? Point is, the Quran, the Bible, and every other basic piece of literature that religion is based on is, for the most part, based on other writings that came before it. This means one of 2 things.........
1) that they accepted those explanations, and wanted to make them their own, or
2) that, while not accepting it as a whole, they had no other explanations, and needed to present some form of reasoning for the world's existence.

The truth is out there, friend. Just don't expect to find it in any book about religion. Any intellegent person will tell you the same thing.

Answer 3

Intelligence and education are not the same thing. Intelligence is how fast and efficiently one can process information.
Education is a piece of paper that proves you graduated from a certain field of study. (I am in no way trying to say education is wrong...on the contrary)

1.I don't know

2. I think Atheism and education are very commonly found to be intertwined. That doesn't make them more intelligent, it makes them more educated. Also I think wisdom and Atheism are two very separate traits.

What is education? Just because some professor at a college says something... does it make it true? Absolutely not.
Today's education is so filled with opinion that it's very hard not to be mis-educated. Most Atheists are the students who blindly and pridefully take everything their professor says to be true. If you've been to college you know what I'm talking about.

Yes, to a point...On the whole Atheists are more educated, not more intelligent.

Answer 4

No I don't think they hold water. I think they are probably true. But many highly educated people are still religious. There are many religious people with collage educations. And most people do have a lower educations than scientist so it would be natural that more would be religious. I am an Atheist but I find your pole to be a little ridiculous. I have known some Atheist to be pretty damn dumb. Especially those Hate mongers who keep spouting off on this very page.

Answer 5

#1 try wikipedia - there is a very thorough discussion of the demographics of atheism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_atheism

#2 Yes. That doesn't mean that there are not plenty of smart people who are religious. It often just means they have not really thought about religion, or that they have personal reasons for believing in a god. Ironically, many people have found that studying for the ministry is a sure path to atheism.

Answer 6

Well, it does use terms such as generally, most, more, etc... There are always exceptions.
And, you have to keep in mind, some aspects of an individuals brain may be more developed in one area than in another. I.E.-Einstein was great at math but couldn't tie his shoe.
Beethoven wrote incredible music but never could function well socially.
Bart Ehrman (author of Misquoting Jesus) and Billy Graham went to the same school and ended up with different ideologies.
With an idividual, you never know...generally speaking, I've heard that before.

Answer 7

You can design a study to prove any point that you want to prove. Dawkins is an atheist. What would you expect him to prove? I had a fantastic English Professor at a Community College that said he could write a proof that Mother Goose was a dirt old woman and make it impossible for you to prove otherwise. HE could do so. I knew him very well and he never made a statement that he could not back up. I am a Christian and I know a number of brilliant scientists who are also Christians. I would never place them above or below another scientists intellect just because he/she was an atheis. I believe the two are mutually exclusive. I understand Dawkin's point of view, I just do not agree with him in this point. I ma sure that the material is available but I am not interested in looking it up. Have a great day.
Thanks,
Eds, Non-Denominational Christian

Answer 8

this wikipedia article links to a lot of the sources Dawkins mentioned:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religiosity_and_intelligence

as for your other question, I know many intelligent people who believe in god(s). Maybe there is a difference in the types of jobs they look for? I would like to see a broader study. But there seems to be some correlation between scientist and atheist.

Answer 9

I had a religion teacher tell me that science and religion are both playing old maid without of full deck! Just wanted to share. I'll side with religion on this one. All studies and polls can be skewed to make the information say what the collectors want it to.

Answer 10

Almost all prominent scientists are either Atheist or Agnostic. Virtually all top scientists recognize evolution, I can only think of one with top credentials who doesn't, Dr. Kurt Wise, but he already showed he has a closed mind in a popular quote and discredited himself.

Answer 11

I think it may hold a gallon or two, but then again, many religious people are very aware and intelligent in the sciences. Some scientists do believe in God. (these are the people that we need to pay attention to.) they are seeing the 'whole pic' - and not admitting to knowing it all.