Do intellectual people believe in GOD?

Question

Does belief in God make a person less smart then a Atheist?

Both questions are the same, just asked differently.

What's the differences, between then and than anyways.

Answer 1

1) Yes, I know many intellectual people who believe in God. Intelligence has little to do with faith, though I believe there can be a propensity for intelligent people to rely too much on themselves and fear giving up control to a higher power.
2) No.

Answer 2

There are intellectual people who believe in God and there are intellectual people who don't believe in God.

Neither group has exclusive rights to intellectualism or stupidity, which is evident by answers across the board on Y!A

Someone will point out one MIT study showing Atheists have more education but that has been refuted by many other studies. Some even say coming from a religiously dense area leads to more education. Again no one has an exclusive hold on anything.

Answer 3

Good question posed by Ginger. I too feel myself in a similar place with regard to belief in God. However, just to comment on the quality of answers here on Yahoo. Apart from one or two useful answers, the rest are irrelevant very disappointing. It seems that the majority of people don't read the question properly. The original question asked if there were any intellectuals who believe in God. However, the majority of people appear to have answered a completely different question, i.e., Do you believe in God? This was not the question. If you are going to go to the trouble of posting an answer, then at least make sure you read the question properly in the first place rather than just using it as an opportunity to push your own personal, yet irrelevant, agenda.

Answer 4

An analysis of the General Social Survey (US Residents) suggests that there is an inverse relationship between religiosity and verbal IQ.

http://www.halfsigma.com/2006/06/religious_peopl.html

Please note that 'intellectual' and 'smart' are not necessarily interchangeable. One can be very smart without being intellectual and I know many intellectuals who couldn't program a washing machine (let alone a VCR)!

As with all of these generalisations, there are many notable exceptions and one needs to be careful not to draw the wrong conclusions from the data - notably that it is NOT necessarily true to say that a belief in God results in low intelligence or vice versa.

Answer 5

I do not believe so. There are many scientist that still believe in a GOD. Throughout History there have been many brilliant people who worship a god, or gods. I think problems stem from religions that do not incorporate new ideas into there beliefs and change with the times. They find themselves at odds with science.
Religion bases belief on Faith...Faith is to believe regardless of the lack of proof..."you have to have faith..." it does not open itself to scrutiny.
Science welcomes scrutiny and challenge of ideas and theory. It is in this way that Scientific theory stands the test of time...it is constantly challenged.
In order for religion to cope with Science, it needs to bend its believes to accept the possibilities of Scientific theory...or it will eventually perish.
Example would be that it was heresy to suggest that the earth was not the center of the Universe, as god made it special....it took some time, but Religion was forced to change its view....why, because Scientific theory was overwhelmingly conclusive.
I am sure you will see the same with evolution and creationisms within time.
Religion Offers the promise of an after life, an existance in some manner beyond this one. Science does not. It is the comfort that I feel will allow brilliant people to maintain a believe in religion. After all, who wishes it all to just abruptly end....it makes no sense....then why did we even live at all?
Religion gives people some meaning to answer these questions that science cannot.

Answer 6

It is not the belief that makes a person less smart. Your intelligence is completely separate from your beliefs. But it is your choice to use your intelligence to explore your beliefs and consider things that seem beyond your understanding. Religion evolves just like everything else. Science, society, the world has evolved so why not religion? Religion may have been created by God but it is run by men.

I am a lawyer, graduated top of her class, and a devout Catholic. But I don't believe everything the church believes. I question things they believe everyday. I also separate my religious beliefs from my political and social beliefs. How you use your intellect can be just as important as having it.

Answer 7

Nothing like a little flame-bait on a Monday!

To answer your questions: Many do, many do not. Intellect has little bearing on belief. Socialization has a greater effect. In many cases, people socialized in belief do come to a state of dis-belief through an intellectual process, but others have equal intellect but choose not to analyze their belief, preferring "Faith", which discourages rational inspection of dogma.

As to your second question: No. I have known many very intellegent individuals that were believers and an probably equal number that were NOT believers. Some of the individuals whose intellect I respect most are fairly devout in their chosen religion.

In short, one cannot make broad generalizations about intellect and belief. Partially because intellect has so little to DO with belief! Most churches, while outwardly encouraging intellectual pursuit, are dogmatically against it. One of the many contradictions of faith.

Answer 8

Sadly, most intellectual people disregard God.

Primarily, because they center themself around other intellectual people and believing in a God that they cannot see is similar to a fairy tale.
The above is very sad because the real problem is their lack of self-esteem, and they call themself an intellectual?

Oddly, when we approach a king or a queen of a Country we immediately bow or kneel.
However, most of us lay in our beds at night and pray on our back?
Here we have right before us a TRUE GOD and we do not have the respect to kneel and pray?

Does a king or a queen deserve more respect than Jesus?

Answer 9

I don't think belief in God causes a person have a smaller capacity for learning or intelligence than an Atheist. I think both Atheists and Theists have the same capacity for an over-inflated ego, selfishness, etc. because we are all human.

If a Christian properly trains his/her mind, there is nothing that separates a Christian from an Atheist.

The thing is, most scientists from ANY denomination/lack of belief (from Christianity to Islam to Judaism to Hinduism etc. etc. to Atheism), use SCIENCE to prove their BELIEF, which is wrong by any account. And there are definitely atheists who USE science to prove their own personal agendas, whether they be anti-theist or whatever.

Answer 10

There have been a number of studies that have found an inverse link between intelligence and religiosity - and a meta analysis of 43 such studies that drew this conclusion. And it is certianly the case that few eminent intellectuals are religious. Summaries of studies that lead to both these conclusions are given in Wikipedia.

However, other studies have found less of a link.

In either event, the causal effect would be the other way around - low IQ is indicated as making people susceptible to religious belief.