Statistically, atheists have a higher IQ than people with religious faith. how do christians explain this?

Question

Statistically, atheists have a higher intelligence than people with a strong religious faith. The difference is 5.8 points, according to a new study by the Danish professor of developmental psychology, Helmuth Nyborg. The study was conducted at Aarhus University using data from more than 7000 subjects

*yes of course there are many smart christians and many dumb atheists, but a survey is about the average isnt it.
*yes there are other surveys that confirm this.
*5.8 IQ points over a survey of 7000 is definately statically significant.
*no, im not lying

My explanation is that people with a higher IQ are more likely to do further education after school. As they become more educated they learn how to think and become aware of what religion really is. The sort of person who wants to learn is also the sort of person who asks questions...... and will question the logic of religion.
And also of course someone with a lower IQ is more suseptable to believing something so flawed

Answer 1

And the correlation between higher IQ and education and a lower tolerance for mythology and religion, is also, undeniable.
(simply stated for you christians out there, the smarter you are, the less likely you are to fall for stories about a non-existent god)
How do they explain that?

Answer 2

I just think that maybe its because atheists have a hard time just excepting something. Religious people base there religion on faith and not fact. Atheists wont go the rout of saying OK I believe and that's that. They tend to ask why, and want proof. and personally I think people who ask why are more prone to try and find out the answer. I am a religious person, in fact I am Catholic, but I still grew up asking why. of course I got in trouble a lot for this but I understand the importance of this word. and it is this word that maybe separates these two kinds of different people.

Answer 3

We are the Nyborg...we will assimilate you. Site your source, buddy. This guy conducts studies based on gender and intelligence not religion. By the way...he lost his job because he claimed men were more intelligent than women...kinda like Cricks claim that black people were of inferior intelligence. These statistics you copy and pasted from several other atheist websites are bogus. There is no way to conduct a study or gage the varying types of intelligence even with a broad range of 7000 subjects. Why? Find me 3500 atheists? You're few and far between. The average person out there believes in some sort of god. While the faithless are growing in number and can be found mostly on secular universities not even the Danish University is going to waste time, money and resources to conduct such a frivolous study. If you can find me even the peer review of this study I would be suprized to see it...Love in Christ, ~J~

Answer 4

"The sort of person who wants to learn is also the sort of person who asks questions...... and will question the logic of religion."

Makes sense to me. But i wonder if the tests take in cultural backgrounds, temperaments etc as well as so-called 'intelligence'?

I am suspicious of intelligence tests as there are different ways to be 'intelligent'. eg 'people-smart' and algorithm smart are very different skills. physics smart and philosophical smart are too. I know a world-class engineer who knows enormous amounts about physics, yet he argues philosophy like a child and repeatedly tries to twist Islamic 'science' into a real-world format.

Back to the statistics...Often these test have an agenda at their core, like the so-called 'Bell Curve' results which American right-wing political/religious agitators still use to try and prove that (nominal) 'black-skinned' people are 'less intelligent'...

Admittedly 'beliefs' say more about an individual's mental makeup than does ethnicity.

I do agree that people who tend to be less inquisitive or more insecure would question less.

Answer 5

I happen to be an atheist, but it's not hard to find an answer to statistics like this. Apart from anything else, all this is is a correlation, and correlations often turn out to be spurious. Maybe intelligence misleads people. Or maybe education encourages people, wrongly, to disbelieve in God, and also increases IQ scores. So some people just don't respond to education, end up in a worse position on earth, but in a better one in the afterlife.

This wouldn't be my view. I don't think there is a god, and I think that more gullible and less well educated people are indeed more likely to believe in one. But that's not to say the correlation isn't spurious.

Answer 6

Iq tests are subjective

what 7000

what defines strong religious faith ?

Ever heard of Albert Einstein?

Sounds like a survey that had an answer in mind before it was taken and is directed to people with a low IQ in the first place

Answer 7

That would make sense. Interestingly enough, A survey proved that Daily Show/Colbert viewers were most knowledgable, while FOX/GOP-TV viewers rank lowest. A study by the Pew Research Study shows that viewers of the Daily Show and the Colbert Report have the highest knowledge of national and international affairs, while FOX/GOP-TV viewers rank nearly dead last.

The results about FOX/GOP-TV echo findings of previous surveys. In 2003, University of Maryland researchers studied the public’s belief in three false claims — that Iraq possessed WMD, that Iraq was involved in 9/11, and that there was international support for the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

The researchers stated, “The extent of Americans’ misperceptions vary significantly depending on their source of news. Those who receive most of their news from FOX/GOP-TV are more likely than average to have misperceptions.” FOX/GOP-TV viewers were “three times more likely than the next nearest network to hold all three misperceptions.”

Since most of FOX/GOP-TV viewers are Christians, I would agree that atheists are smarter than religious fanatics. The arrival of the FOX/GOP-TV Business News channel is to its backers comparable to the cavalry coming over the hill to save the business world, if not the capitalist system, from detractors if not from itself. Whereas Jesus sought to drive the moneychangers from the temple, FGOP's Roger Ailes has his sights on those subversive “liberals” who have wormed their way into posing as friends of the business world on CNBC. He has vowed to blow them away.

CNBC’s owner, General Electric, a company known for its corporate conservatism and its past patronage of Ronald Reagan, has to be amused to find itself on Rupert Murdoch’s enemies list. Regarding CNBC, Murdoch sounded like the Grinch of Christmas Past in hinting but never really spelling out his agenda to a British outlet last week: “They dwell too much on failures or scandals.”

A sense of optimism has been in retreat in almost every sense over the past few years. According to Rasmussen polls, just 21 percent of Americans believe the country is on the right track, a figure that has fallen by more than a half since the presidential election of 2004. Meanwhile only a third think the country’s best days are yet to come, as opposed to 43 percent who believe they have come and gone — again a steep decline on three years ago. These are not one-offs. In the past 18 months almost every poll that has asked Americans about their country’s direction has produced among the most pessimistic responses on record — a more extended period than anyone can remember since Watergate.

America, in short, is in a deep funk. Far from feeling hopeful, it appears fearful of the outside world and despondent about its own future. Not only do most believe tomorrow will be worse than today, they also feel that there is little that can be done about it.

Answer 8

This is because the educational system is humanistic. Humanism is actually a form of atheism. What would you expect? The whole world and the majority of the world's population is on the verge of extinction prophetically. Atheism cannot not contribute anything positive to stop this trend.

Answer 9

Jesus Christ had the Highest IQ known to man.
Solomon is a close second.
Paul in there,too.
Teacher-The Most High God.

All attended the University of the Spirit.

peace and love

Answer 10

Didn't Da Vinci say something like education is only learning someone else's ideas?
Intelligent people think for themselves.

Atheist.