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Smart people need our prayers, I guess
What’s the significance of a study that correlates high IQ with atheism?
In a forthcoming paper for the journal Intelligence, Richard Lynn, emeritus professor of psychology at the University of Ulster, will argue that there is a strong correlation between high IQ and lack of religious belief and that average intelligence predicts atheism rates across 137 countries.
The immediate suggestion is that more intelligent people choose atheism because they’re not idiots like the rest of us. Of course, this is not news. Ivan, the middle brother in The Brothers Karamazov, was clearly the most rational and intellectual brother, and he was the clear atheist. Alyosha, the youngest brother, had the faith of a child, but also more wisdom than his two brothers combined. And he was no idiot.
We could parse the study, too. Correlation doesn’t necessarily equal causation. And perhaps high IQ often leads to vanity, and vanity leads to pride, and pride goeth before atheism. Or something like that. I am sometimes intelligent, but I am also sometimes virtuous. I’m sure some of you will really have your way with this one.
back to top41 Comments to “Smart people need our prayers, I guess”
. . . Sure, why not . . . since intelligence, by default, is measured as knowledge of the world, those “of the world” or more deeply immersed in the world would logically score higher in such tests—would they not?
It is suggested that man has a spiritual side as well as a “fleshly” side to our composition. Wouldn’t suppression of the spiritual, be to the favor of the flesh or focus on the flesh, diminish or leave little interest in the spiritual?
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“God chooses the foolish things of this world to confound the wise.”
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Actually, Rond, intelligence is usually defined more as the ability to solve abstract problems and to reason.
My IQ is in the 130-140 range, and believe me, I have been tempted to be an atheist. I have wanted to be an atheist on occasion–to be more fashionable and to avoid being thought ignorant by my academic colleagues.
But then what would I do with all the evidence for God?
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Correlation doesn’t necessarily equal causation. And perhaps high IQ often leads to vanity…
Hang on a minute…
Atheism, which correlates with high IQ, isn’t necessarily caused by high IQ, but vanity, which isn’t shown to correlate with high IQ, may be caused by high IQ??
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My guesses;
1. People with high IQ’s are more self reliant and therefore are more likly to think they don’t need God.
2.Christians are more excepting and loving towards a low IQ person with other talents and are more likely to win such a person over than a bunch of stuck up, smart, atheist types.
3. Atheism doesn’t make sense and requires more complicated leaps o logic.
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Agreed to a point Kyle, but your ability to reason hangs greatly on your ability to recall and apply information about similar, or other, problems to the current one. It seems to me that study to acquire, or experience of, such information would be helpful in gaining and retaining. I don’t think it’s because your were born already fully loaded that you are more intelligent according to IQ tests.
As for evidence of God, a choice must be made whether or not such evidence is valid or worthy to consider, let alone apply. Perhaps that since God is spirit, the less the spiritual sense is involved with, or allowed to enter into, study of Him, the less “knowledge” about Him one acquires. You can’t study and learn about baseball by considering footballs.
Another thought. As two part creatures, wouldn’t it seem that a balance of the parts is ideal rather than having one or the other dominant?
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I have wanted to be an atheist on occasion–to be more fashionable and to avoid being thought ignorant by my academic colleagues.
Poor puppy.
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The good news is that Atheists also reject those ugly religions like Islam, Animism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Neo-paganism, Scientology, I guess that makes them pretty smart after all, just not “perfected”.
So why do people with a high IQ reject religion… hummm, great question. Perhaps because they can think more critically about things, because they understand logic and argument and evidence. Perhaps they understand that if they believe in themselves and their ability to do things that they don’t need a crutch to get them through life or through tough times. Perhaps they’re just stupid and the IQ test is a “Reverse” exam in gods eyes and that the lower your score the wiser you are. This biblical god can be tricky like that….she’s been known to hide million year old fossils in a 6000ish year old planet.
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The immediate suggestion is that more intelligent people choose atheism because they’re not idiots like the rest of us.
A few weeks ago, I posted in WV about the two types of faith I’ve seen: one the kind that accepts everything and gleans spiritual lessons from it, and one that asks theological questions it knows it won’t be able to answer. The first kind is often present in conservative churches; the other quite present on this blog among the traditional Christians. These types of faith can coexist and neither is bad.
But the intelligent person is by nature geared more towards the second type, whereas the simpler person towards the first type. The simpler one, asking no questions, learns a spiritual lesson and moves on. Good for him. God meant him to do that. However, the intelligent person, interested in the second type, asks the questions, suddenly starts expecting answers and forgets he really can’t know everything and becomes an athiest.
The answer is humility: you can’t know everything, and sometimes it is good to ask the question and then accept the lack of a conclusive answer.
Be satisfied with So it is, O Man; for if you could have known the entire plan, Mary would not have had to bear a son.
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The answer is humility: you can’t know everything, and sometimes it is good to ask the question and then accept the lack of a conclusive answer.
It is? Where does one draw that line, beyond which one must settle for incomplete answers?
500 years ago people who accepted that impotency just somehow knew that the earth was the center of the universe. 250 years ago they settled for very fuzzy ideas about why there were epidemics.
In those cases and in millions of other cases men were not willing either to accept the dominant incorrect paradigm or to accept the lack of conclusive answers. Those who challenged the status quo were always accused of a lack of humility (or heresy and sin), yet in almost all such cases, nobody would argue that they haven’t made our lives better.
Indeed, Kimberley, if one believes that our goal on earth is to make men’s lives better, why would one EVER settle for inconclusive answers to important questions? And if one doesn’t believe that that is our goal, then why bother to do anything except pray.
And, incidentally, don’t theologians themselves always struggle for more complete answers? Doesn’t that evidence a lack of humility?
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500 years ago people who accepted that impotency just somehow knew that the earth was the center of the universe. 250 years ago they settled for very fuzzy ideas about why there were epidemics.
Good point, but there is still so much about science we don’t know the answers to. We keep looking, even if we don’t expect to understand it in our lifetime. Ptolemy studied the stars too, and Aristotle, and they didn’t expect all the answers either. Same thing with religious questions. You’ll notice I say, “It’s OK to look and to search and to think.” (which clears the hypothetical theologians).
Probably saying “accept the lack of a conclusive answer” was not good …. it gives the wrong impression. What we need to remember is it is OK to ask the questions, but tossing your faith out the window on the basis of one difficult or unanswered question is just plain silly.
I don’t understand how election and free will work together. I don’t understand what happens to people who have never heard of God. I don’t understand God’s righteous anger.
And I’m going to keep trying to understand. But when I don’t understand all the way, I shan’t suddenly stop being a Christian. That would be like getting a divorce because you don’t understand your spouse completely. Understand them better, but don’t throw up your hands in frustration. That’s only the coward’s way out.
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“500 years ago people who accepted that impotency just somehow knew that the earth was the center of the universe. 250 years ago they settled for very fuzzy ideas about why there were epidemics.”
Funny you should mention the secular Aristotelian fallacy that the Church adopted on a thread about atheism…
And I also recall that it was actually Christianity which promoted medicine….
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KBELLS:
1. People with high IQ’s are more self reliant and therefore are more likly to think they don’t need God.
Presumably, their intelligence makes them more competent and better able to recognize the tools and resources that can help them lead effective lives. If God is beneficial, a person would be smart to avail herself of God, regardless of self-reliance and need. On the other hand, if prayer doesn’t work wonders, a smart person might decide to stop praying.
2.Christians are more accepting and loving towards a low IQ person with other talents and are more likely to win such a person over than a bunch of stuck up, smart, atheist types.
Have you read Middlemarch or The Way of All Flesh?
3. Atheism doesn’t make sense and requires more complicated leaps of logic.
I agree with you that atheism doesn’t make common sense and requires reliance on logic.
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The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.”
Psalm 14:1a
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1. On the other hand, if prayer doesn’t work wonders, a smart person might decide to stop praying.
But if it does work wonders, what should a smart person do?
A smart person can only go as far as his intelligence will take him. A faithful person can go beyond that and do things he shouldn’t have been able to accomplish.
2. “Have you read Middlemarch or The Way of All Flesh?” No, but the best advice I got when I quit my job to stay home with my child was from a guy on the yard crew. He said trust God to provide. The 157 IQ middle manager friend told me the numbers didn’t add up and I would probably regret it. He was wrong. We have more savings and my husband is home more. Which one would you have listen to?
3. Logic has been used to defend all kinds atrocities, including by the church to excuse clearly unchristian behavior.
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I would join KBells observation that “[P]eople with high IQ’s are more self reliant and therefore are more likly to think they don’t need God.”
No one can be so totally self-reliant, so intelligent that they can handle every problem. I am mindful of the old judge I worked for, who was brilliant. If I ever met anyone who “knew” everything, this was the man. But for all his knowledge, he couldn’t stop a heart attack, he couldn’t cure his diabetes and resulting medical problems. God will find a way to humble the most brilliant among us. It is the intelligent person who is also WISE and humble who understands that he, too, has limitations. High IQ or not, we will all be faced with the question of humbling ourselves before our God. The heart will decide if we can do that, not our intelligence, which can be the greatest stumbling block of all.
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IQ tests are dumb. Some of the world’s most intelligent people believed in God. Atheists are such a minority.
However, atheists can be defined as people who believe they are superior to others. They gravitate toward intellectual pursuits to justify rejection of all else except their own intellects. Such a mindset would help you to score higher on IQ tests.
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Having read Augustine on more than a few occasions, I find his intellect astounding. It was precisely Augustine’s arrogance that was his stumbling block. Regardless of this guys findings, salvation is God’s prerogative.
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I wonder if it has more to do with cultural issues than with intelligence.
In some countries, Christian churches are not so revivalistic, and consequently attract those from more educated classes. In the US, many churches nurture an anti-intellectual subculture that is simply not attractive to most educated elites.
Maybe it’s not that smart people don’t choose church. It could be that churches don’t choose smart people.
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KBELLS 3. Logic has been used to defend all kinds atrocities
That’s casuistry. I was referring to good logic.
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Scoop, define “good logic”.
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In my own arrogant way, I use to wonder why God gave me a high enough IQ so as to disprove or question his existence. Either he doesn’t exist or he exists and purposely creates people smart enough not believe in him and thus be condemned to hell — the latter revealing a not so moral side of God.
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#22 HRW
Are all people with high IQs Atheists? My IQ is average or better. I only know that my US Army tests gave me a 132 for GT. Is that good? Well, I know plenty of people who are smart that believe pretty much what I do about God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit and salvation. We might have a person or two who who is as smart as you.
There is a way for you to find out if God is who He says He is, just ask Him. Tell him you don’t believe in him. Ask him to give you the gift of Faith. Ask Him for the gift of believing.
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I heard a recorded lecture of Paul Vitz about a year ago. He’s a professor of psychology at (I think) NYU. In the lecture, he claimed that though gallons of ink has been spilled by psychologists trying to explain religious belief, an odd silence exists regarding atheism. He also talked about his own experience. He was raised as a Christian, then easily abandoned it during (I think) graduate school. He said that the reason had nothing to do with the evidence or any arguments. It was purely social pressure. He was embarrassed of being a hick from the midwest. It was only later one when he did start to think that he went back to the faith of his youth.
I suspect that the high IQ-atheism connection exists for a lot of reasons, but probably a big factor in a lot of cases is the type of social pressure Vitz identified in his own life. That is, it’s correlation. The explanation is that people with high IQs are more likely to work in fields where religious belief is considered naive and ignorant.
I think another big factor might be a basic lack of imagination, in a manner of speaking. We are living in a time when the basic presuppositions of most people – a mechanistic universe, a naive empiricism, etc – are not conducive to belief in God, and smart people are more likely to work out that connection for themselves. To avoid tension, either the presuppositions have to be reconsidered or God has to go.
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It was only later one when he did start to think that he went back to the faith of his youth.
Suggesting that perhaps this ‘faith of youth’ was never really abandoned anyway.
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KBELLS, good logic is wise use of dialectical reasoning, which usually requires training and education. Short of that, I suppose logic requires at minimum a defensive ability to think of alternatives to the kinds of persuasion we’re subjected to all the time. Good logic, according to my biases, tends more toward skepticism than certainty. Good logic isn’t like math, which requires agreement to its conclusions. You and I can respect each other’s logic while disagreeing with each other’s judgment. In math, we can’t respect each other’s reasoning if we disagree about an answer.
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#17 “However, atheists can be defined as people who believe they are superior to others. They gravitate toward intellectual pursuits to justify rejection of all else except their own intellects. Such a mindset would help you to score higher on IQ tests.”
I can’t speak for anyone else, but I can’t imagine gravitating toward intellectual pursuits (as a long-term tendency, not just a short-term attempt to appear smart) as a means to an end. I love intellectual pursuits because my intellect wants the stimulation of thinking about things. I love learning about all kinds of things, I love words and wordplay, I love solving puzzles.
I do think that people with higher IQ’s are more likely to want to understand things and less likely to take someone’s word for something without some kind of corroboration. I am a Christian, not an atheist (when I was in middle school I considered myself an agnostic, but I can’t imagine claiming the certainty of atheism) but I continue to wonder about some aspects of my faith, whether I have understood things properly, whether I have trusted the right people as my teachers about what to believe.
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HRW, this is one of the most arrogant things you have ever said: “Either he doesn’t exist or he exists and purposely creates people smart enough not believe in him and thus be condemned to hell — the latter revealing a not so moral side of God.”
Read those questions in Job, i.e., “where were you when I…..”
God gives you a choice, Jesus gives you a choice. You are so hung up on what your mind “thinks” rather than the condition of your heart and soul, that you even blame God for your lack of understanding. You’re missing the point entirely.
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There are those who believe God has given them a high IQ only to turn around and question IF GOD exists? — that is just about the most ignorant idea I’ve heard in a long time, so much for a high IQ -
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So first some fundamentals: intelligence (are we going to equate this unequivocally with high IQ?) is a human talent. Just like athletic ability, artistic sense, and mechanical aptitude.
From a religious perspective it is a gift from God.
And then when I read this material which apparently is derogatory towards intelligence, I wonder at the lack of tolerance sometimes demonstrated in this blog. It is as if I were tro sneer at someone because they cn fix a car or sing a song.
So let me pose an alternatie: much of what is typically considered Christianity has a high level of illogic to it. An intelligent person typically has the ability to manipulate abstract concepts logically, and will ask, if it doesn’t make sense, why?
I note that when an intelligent person does look at religious ideas, thiinks about them critically, and construct a model which does appear reasonable to their senses, well the usual response from cerain segments of the religious community is typically something of the form “heretic”.
Somehow I find it puzzling that God would intend anyone to make derogatory comments about his gifts.
I also suggest that if the religious can not tolerate questioning and alternate approaches and thoughts, well then of course those who ask questions and pose alternate apppoaches will consider religion unfriendly and will go searching for more accepting climes (academia perhaps?).
So perhaps those who are intolerantly religious should perhaps look inward and ask what they have done to make an intellgent questioning person welcome in their religion.
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#29
You have the sequence wrong so let me rephrase; its the problem of free will — using our intellect we can determine that the existence of God is not a necessary fact. After we reach this conclusion we can then properly question why God would create a being that would not believe him and hence be condemned to hell.
#28 NJL — a battle between the mind and the heart is a poetic description of the internal intellectual challenge religion may pose but the autistic in me has difficulty in taking the heart over the mind.
Bob — we have similar IQs but IQ is a limited descriptor — if we look at what types of intelligence atheists/agnostics have in comparision to theists/Christians who also have high IQs we could have a better handle on whether unbelief is deterministic or merely a result of socialization. (like all such simplistic either/ors the correct answer is probably a little of both)
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Musing, — ‘I also suggest that if the religious can not tolerate questioning and alternate approaches and thoughts, well then of course those who ask questions and pose alternate apppoaches will consider religion unfriendly and will go searching for more accepting climes’
Are you including the religious evolutionists who ‘can not tolerate questioning and alternate approaches and thoughts’ as well? Or is this just work if it’s anti-Christian?
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fuzzyface post 32,
ah what an interesting point.
Certainly questions are good. You didn’t read my post, apparently because an intelligent person is typically manipulating abstract ideas logically.
Now I have discussed YEC with a number of p[eople here. None of the discussions have been logically based AND the YEC tends to get a bit upset when I challenge their assumptions.
By contrast the small number of old earth creationists can present quite reasonable and logical arguments: an intelligent person I suggest may find these discussions interesting.
So can you address the evolution question with logical and reasonable thought? If so the intelligent person may find the discussion fun.
Are you by contrast illogically rejecting the data, evidence and logical structure which leads to the conclusion of an ancient earth? Then I suggest yhour logical arguments may be weak and need refinement.
By the way, Christinas believe in evolution with no difficulties. So evolution is not a Christian issue, but rather it is typically an issue for those who insist on a rigid reading of the Bible.
So lets run the experiment.
Are you a young earth of old earth creationist?
Or are you neither? If not what is your model here?
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Maybe your arrogance (as shown in your answer towards YEC) is why I haven’t seen logical arguments against the YEC position. I’ll admit that some (maybe most) of the posts by YEC have little substance either, but I’ve seen nothing to convince a logical skeptic of evolution that you are necessarily correct in your evolutionary theory.
I really don’t come to WMB regularly, since I don’t usually have the time, so I may miss some things. One of the things I came here for a few weeks (or maybe months) ago was to see if there was any scientific evidence for catastrophic global warming. I found that the links from the skeptics of global warming had logical arguments and data, while the links from the proponents of global warming had no data and seldom even any logical arguments – just rhetoric. I tried google searches as well with the same result.
On one blog a few weeks ago the last comment that made it before the cutoff was a response by you with links to information of ice cores. A few days later I did get a chance to read them and they were very informative. But they didn’t really answer my questions – and even raised other ones.
Have they checked ice cores over time with enough accuracy that it is certain that there is no change over time of the gases in the older strata ice?
One of the links mentioned the expansion of ice in cores from lower depths do to the reduced pressure. What would keep current gases from entering the ice during this process? There was no indication in the article that this possibility was considered.
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fuzzyface post 34,
whether my comments on YEC are arrogance OR are a recital of the actual arguments can be readily resolved objectviely.
The key issue with YEC is the young. As typically understood this means that the earth is less than 10,000 years old.
By contrast the scientific data is as follows:
1) heat transfer: greater than 100 million years old
2) continental drift: greater than about 250 million years old
3) radiological dating (at least three separate procedures: greater than 1 billion years old
4) atomic phycis models of soilar evolution: Sun is greater than 4 billion years old
- planet evolution models require planets to form quite quickly after the star forms
We also have the observation that Radio-carbon dating has been calibrated against historical materials back in excess of 4,000 years old and is finding evidence of man which is in excess of 20,000 years.
So the hypothesis is: the earth is less than 10,000 years old.
We have at least five separate sources which refute it and typically they refute the hypothesis by factors of 10,000X or more, so this is not siple computational round off error.
So what isytour data for a Young earth, that is an earth less than 10,000 years old.
And your thoughts?
P.S. in principle one can compute observations 1 and 2 yourself. Observation 2 can be approximated by noting the rate of continental drift and noting that India has moved from approximately Madagascar to its present location in Asia. Simple computations here yield an age of many tens of millions of years.
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fuzzyface post 34,
so amusingly one of the key pieces of data used by both those arguing for global warming and those arguing against it is the Vostok ice core data:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/icecore/antarctica/vostok/vostok.html
A review of the temperature and CO2 results from analyzing this data can be found at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vostok,_Antarctica
and
http://www.daviesand.com/Choices/Precautionary_Planning/New_Data/
Now the disagreements over interpretation of this data seem to come from whether one reviews the data on short time scales or long time scales. The long time scale data shows the CO2/Temperature correlations which are of the form seen in “an inconvenient truth”. The short term analysis yields the cyclic behaviors often argued by those saying yes we have global warming bu it is from natural causes.
The following seems to not be in serious doubt among the majority of scientist:
1) CO2 is increasing (no one argues this point)
2) Global temperatures seem to be rising
The challenge comes in determining what if any of this rise comes from CO2 levels.
The long term Vostok data suggests strong correlation between CO2 levels and temperature, however, which suggests that as a minimum the CO2 levels are a strong signal of rapidly increasing temperature: if we see large CO2 rise we will see large temperature rises and historically they have come quite quickly.
The data does not in itself, however, resolve causality. Causlity is concluded based on short term historic observation of the atmosphere AND models extended from experiments in heat transfer with various gases.
Increasingly, a rational approach to the question seems to be:
1) the earth is warming
2) if this is due to man made CO2 then there is a very high risk potential justifying care(standard (risk X probability of risk) approaches)
3) in any event fossil fuel is running out, causes serious pollution, and we need to move to non-fossil based fuesl rapidly anyway
In short, global warming is only one of the drivers which should cause us to take rapid action to reduce use of fossil fuels.
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fuzzyface post 34,
so the rel;iability of the ice core approach for measuring data is discussed in:
http://www.daviesand.com/Choices/Precautionary_Planning/New_Data/
The procedure has been refined since at least since the 1960s and seems to be a well established scientific procedure.
You are right contamination is a concenr and as I understand the process great care is used in collecting the samples.
If you think about it, however, if the core is contaminated by modern gases then we would lose the variations: it would all look like the air of today.
Since we are seeing large variations it provides a simple test to suggest that the data may be valid.
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fuzzyface post 34,
and for the last thoughts this morning.
People who argue against evolution from a YEC perspective always intrigue me. As shown in post 35, the scientific data is overwhelmingly against the young part of the theory and the discussion usually ends there.
There are, however, some interesting arguments going on with respect to evolution itself, and some of these are quite complex and fascinating.
However, if the arguer insists on asserting the young, then the only evidence for young produced so far is the Bible, and, by the nature of the argument, this is no longer a science discussion, but rather it is a religious discussion. And the mechanisms of evolutionary theory is a science topic not religious topic.
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Musing #35:
Accepting the Biblical account of creation, consider this situation:
God created Adam from dust and Eve from Adam’s rib. In doing so He used a process other than the one currently being used for the creation of humans. In other words, God created mankind using certain means, but allowed for reproduction by other means. This is the case,I would claim, not only for humans but also for everything God created – animal and plant life, as well as physical features such as rocks, mountains, and even planets.
Now in the case of Adam, all the evidence we have from the Bible indicates that God created him as a fully grown man. Developmentally, Adam would be the equivalent of say, a 30 year old man. Objectively, though, he would be quite young – perhaps he was only a few days old when God gave him the command to name all the animals. So in the case of Adam, we have a situation where there is a discrepancy between his apparent age and his actual age.
Could this not be the case with other parts of God’s creation? Just as our God-given process of reproduction takes us much more time than it took God to create Adam, would it not make sense that the other processes by which things are created also take longer than it took God? If God had decided to create the universe using the physical laws that he created to govern creation, it would no doubt have taken the millions and billions of years required for star and planet formation and such things. However God was not bound by those laws and chose instead to create in six days a universe that by many accounts appears to be much older.
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JBH post 39,
an interesting hypothesis.
What you are proposing is somewhat akin to what has been called “Last Thursdayism”: that is everything was actually created last Thursday but it looks like it has great age.
This has a paradoxical aspect if we consider that the appearance of age was created perfectly. If it was perfect, then all predictions and observations will behave as if the world was old. Under these conditions, from a scientific or objective position the world is old: THERE IS NO EVIDENCE TO SHOW OTHERWISE.
Now you can believe the young model as a religious construct, but because of your model of perfect appearance of old, from a practical perspective it is old.
And when I ask you to demonstrate objectively that it is young, you could not do this.
You have captured nicely the difference between a religious construct and what is typically termed an objective construct. You can hold your belief as true and work with it to sustain your religious and theological perspectives. You can explore its impact on how you act.
But without objective evidence that it was created young, you can not argue that objectviely it is young.
And I advocate such an approach in general: argue for religious beliefs as religious constructs which can not and should not be viewed as objective constructs. And argue objective constructs based on the objective data and evidence.
And if one is very rigorous here, one can remain true to the objective and scientific data while still maintaining one’s religious beliefs.
I will add one after thought: assumptions are expensive and difficult to sustain. Add only the assumptions required to support those theological positions you consider truly essential. Anything else is fundamentally a waste of effort.
Thanks for the post!
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Musings #40 –
I’m not quite sure what you are getting at. You say, “argue for religious beliefs as religious constructs which can not and should not be viewed as objective constructs,” which would lead me to respond “If they are not objective constructs, what is the point of having them?” Yet I do not think that is quite the point you are getting at. Perhaps you could clarify this.
Also, it seems that we are both using the word “objective” to argue our points. From my point of view, the earth is objectively young because only 10,000 years or so have passed since its creation. From your point of view, the earth is objectively old because the scientific evidence indicates it is billions of years old.
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