Came across this interesting article in a recent issue of the journal Intelligence.

Lynn, Harvey, & Nyborg. (2009) Average intelligence predicts atheism rates across 137 nations. Intelligence, 37.

Abstract

Evidence is reviewed pointing to a negative relationship between intelligence and religious belief in the United States and Europe. It is shown that intelligence measured as psychometric g is negatively related to religious belief. We also examine whether this negative relationship between intelligence and religious belief is present between nations. We find that in a sample of 137 countries the correlation between national IQ and disbelief in God is 0.60.

That's a very strong correlation, and had p value of less than .001, meaning that results this strong will happen by chance less than .1% of the time. The relationship holds both within the U.S. and European populations they examined, and across all 137 countries.

Discuss.

IQ ratings are improved with schooling. ie..knowing a lot of stuff at an early age.

schools teach there is no God

therefore people who go to schools are more likely to be atheist when they first come out and haven't yet discovered that most of what they were taught in school is opinion.

equals slanting of said study.

you obviously didn't go to school in southwest virginia.


as to the bolded, it makes me slap my head. relativism's only good when it suits your needs, eh?

Well remember that IQ is not about knowledge. The tests are designed to measure "g" - intellectual ability independent of knowledge. It is possible that school is teaching them some critical thinking skills and that they use that to purge themselves of irrational beliefs. The study does also show a developmental change -- as adolescents get older their IQ goes up and their belief in religion goes down. The atheist kids scored 6 points higher than the religious kids on average.

Hell will be a bitch of a wake up call.

So I have to choose between stupidity and hell?

How'd you know that when I was thinking of how ignorant people who go to school are...


I was thinking of you?

hop on brother

this, and other BG posts are all the proof i'll ever need.

my understanding is that this was true to a point but again turned at the highest IQ levels.

so that generally people of below average intelligence and people with extraordinary intelligence have a belief in some sort of divinity. typically those of exceptional intelligence don't allow their search to be infringed upon by a specific dogma, but it should still be noted that atheists don't swarm the list of highest IQs.

where is said list?

i would tend to assume that university graduates have a higher proportion of atheist.

That's nice, except university graduates aren't flooding the lists of top IQ's.

...

No, actually the evidence is the other way.

It's one of the things they looked at in this paper. Among "intellectual elites" the rate of belief in religion is significantly lower than in the general population.

i believe he's right, that those with the very highest intelligences tend to shy away from academia. what's the point of learning from others who you're smarter than what you can better teach yourself?



belonging to the intellectual elites is WAY different than having a high intelligence quotient. it's apples and oranges.

i could have been more clear, i'm not saying those with 180+ IQs typically belong to a set religion, only that they don't dismiss the idea of theism. when i reference the highest IQs, i'm speaking of those that are around 1/30,000.

just as those who belong to a strict dogma have confined their search for "truth" by applying a subjective veil over the world, so to has the person who dismisses the idea of the divine. why let the misunderstandings of previous scholars limit your thinking?

I guess I could have been more clear too. The evidence presented here says that among the people with the highest IQ, there is a higher proportion of atheists.

Now I understand that the way the question is asked is important as well. For example if you (navybuttons) ask me what my answer is to the question I'm going to give a very different answer than if the average person asks the question, where I will have to basically just say no in order to reject the standard concepts that he is probably asking about.

Well since the new fad at FCP is per capita style relationships

I would point out that less than 4% of society is athiest

So if a whopping 5% of people who attended university denied the existance of God, that would be a 25% jump in percentages

But it's not really that big of a deal is it?

And besides, I've met too many college graduates who can't tie their shoes, let alone figure out their purpose of existance.

Heck they join MENSA for crying out loud.

I don't get your statistics. The correlation is between IQ and religious belief, not education level.

Also, you made up 4% and by "society" you are probably referring to Palm Desert. In the USA it's about 10%. But in many other countries the percentage is higher.

Some countries where disbelief in god is high:

Japan 65%
Sweden 64%
UK 42%
Netherlands 42%

For balance, some countries where disbelief is low:

Somalia .5%
Afghanistan .5%
Bangladesh .5%
Botswana .5%
Haiti .5%

Are you...serious? I mean...you aren't, right? You actually think that people with the highest levels of intelligence don't spend a lot of time in academia?

We're not talking CEO types that have business smarts and don't need college to get ahead. We're talking IQ.

The vast vast vast majority of people with abnormally high IQ ratings who have access to higher educations absolutely do avail themselves of those resources. I'm not saying they all have a dozen initials after their names, but they certainly attend college and usually beyond undergrad.

As much as you might wish that geniuses were like Will Hunting, it was just a movie.

A new study shows religion on the decline in the U.S.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29585222/

A wide-ranging study on American religious life found that the Roman Catholic population has been shifting out of the Northeast to the Southwest, the percentage of Christians in the nation has declined and more people say they have no religion at all.

Fifteen percent of respondents said they had no religion, an increase from 14.2 percent in 2001 and 8.2 percent in 1990, according to the American Religious Identification Survey.

Northern New England surpassed the Pacific Northwest as the least religious region, with Vermont reporting the highest share of those claiming no religion, at 34 percent. Still, the study found that the numbers of Americans with no religion rose in every state. "No other religious bloc has kept such a pace in every state," the study's authors said.

I was just coming here to post this. Isn't it amazing that athiests actually outnumber many influential minority groups, including racial minorities like blacks? Especially given the expicit marginalization of athiests, I find these statistics to be staggering.

Yes, but from another perspective it is staggering that so many people still believe in religion. The U.S. is still an outlier compared with other developed nations in this regard.

Atheists aren't influential as atheists because, almost by definition, they don't consider that designation to define them. With few exceptions (such as random forums and the occasional "be good for goodness sake" ad), atheists don't try to band together to impose their beliefs on other people. Though sometimes they have to let their voices be heard when others try to impose their beliefs on everyone.

I know, I mean denying God worked so well for Russia as a country

Well you and speedz are at odds.

I would say that if you took the smartest person in the world as a child, put them in a backwards civilization, and test them, their IQ would be in the retard level.

IQ ratings really just mean how much schooling have you recieved relative to your age.

That's why those of us with high ones, don't give them much credit

Then why do you mention your high IQ? brag post? I thought you didn't go to college so how could it be high
given your statement?

BG, just come to the realization that you are just comfortable being a follower and going along with the crowd
without having to think to hard about anything and are able to just sit back and stare at the pretty colored balloons.

Looked like a joke to me. BG sometimes makes 'em.

I don't know many followers who start and run their own successful business.

Only if you have a bad IQ test.

That's why you don't hear about any nuclear physicists from the South.

Uhhh...Jethro Oppenheimer?

Well you are the first person who I've considered smart to think IQ tests were anything but flawed ways to quantify something we can't really quantify

Plenty of studies have shown that athiests as a group

• Have higher IQs
• Commit crime at a much lower rate
• Are less likely to get divorced
• Interfere with altar boys less
• Smell better

when compared to theists.

(The last two are made up - thought I better point that out to our theistic friends as they can be a little slow)

INACCURATE

Surely no test is without flaw, but if your test finds that the smartest person in the world is a retard, I'd say it isn't measuring intelligence at all.

So since all tests are flawed, we can ignore their flaws?

obviously not. you dont ignore a flaw, you understand it. you factor it in when calculating the relevance of the test.

when I factor in your flaws all I get is ;


obviously not. you dont ignore a flaw, you understand it. you factor it in when calculating the relevance of the test.

looking pretty pathetic, balloon man.

Wasn't he a jew? He can't be from the south.



FALSE



oohhhhh

I also eat farts.

in Just-
spring when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame balloonman
whistles far and wee

and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it's
spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

the queer
old balloonman whistles
far and wee
and bettyanddisbel come dancing

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

it's
spring
and
the

goat-footed

balloonMan whistles
far
and
wee

- e.e. cummings

That's because, in the South, they're called "nucular physicists."