Are atheists more intelligent than religious believers? Study suggests such a correlation

[edit on 27-7-2009 by mooseinhisglory]

This study, to me, is just what happens when people fight about things they can't prove. Atheist scientists could prove that we evolved from chimps, which evolved from lesser primates, straight down to one-celled organisms, but will never actually disprove there is a god. The exact inverse goes for religious scientists. Once the frustration sets in, that no side will ever win that war, the next logical, although childish, thing to do is start calling names. Now they feel iff one could prove the other is "infererior," they will say "we're smarter, trust us. You suck."
The problem is, people are more complex than that. What of the buddhists and the hindus? They hold education as extremely important, stemming from their belief that to deny knowledge is to deny god (or that knowledge IS god in a sense depending on belief in a void or a god). Sure, I can see how the ignorant brand of creationists (the earth is 6,000 years old, blah blah blah) could have a lower IQ, but is this really the direction we want to go? More division? More finger-pointing?
Interesting post, man. Really gets me going lolz. Sorry if I ranted a bit.
Peace.

In terms of stereotype, I believe atheists have a better ability to think in the abstract. That is just a stereotype though, Einstein was religious and he is still regarded as one of the smartest men of the 20th century.

reply to post by makinho21


They really needed a study to come to that conclusion? I hope it was cheap.

One only needs to look at the statistics for religious belief among college/university educated scientists, engineers, etc. to see that atheism is adopted by a prodigious margin over theism. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to draw conclusions relating to IQ based upon those stats; unless you want to argue that there's a huge undiscovered pool of geniuses floating around with high school diplomas...

All this does is reaffirm those assumptions with a narrowed study. But of course every theist is going to dispute that, let the numbers stand on their own. Nice find

reply to post by MoothyKnight


Einstein wasn't religious. He was a deist, who believed in an cosmic kind of god which reveals itself in physics, geometry, laws of nature etc.

[edit on 28-7-2009 by Welfhard]

Atheists are smarter because they are more focused on science. The theists just say that the universe is not governed by randomness but by "God".

Originally posted by jonah0julian
Atheists are smarter because they are more focused on science. The theists just say that the universe is not governed by randomness but by "God".

Just because someone is more focused on one subject then another doesn't make them smarter over all.

Atheists aren't any smarter then someone who is a Christian.

reply to post by jonah0julian


The universe surely is not governed by randomness.

Originally posted by OmegaPoint
reply to post by jonah0julian

 

The universe surely is not governed by randomness.

Randomness is the atheists God.

They can't explain how it all started so instead of saying God did it they just say that it was a chain of random occurences.


Neither side can prove their theories.

reply to post by mooseinhisglory


I totally agree - my only response is this is a study from the US where the major religion is Christianity, so the study makes no note of other belief systems such as the 2 you listed. I imagine there would be a few Jews and maybe one or two Muslims in the bunch, but not many other faiths would be represented.
It works for me because I think Christianity is a joke...but that is separate and apart from this study.

reply to post by jd140


You are speaking out of ignorance and are attempting to portray that stupid argument "both sides require faith"...which is a truly and unbelievably ignorant thing to say. Atheists don't have a god; it is not "randomness" and we do not worship it.
I have already linked to this video a few times, but I suggest you watch it (but I bet you won't because you are too cool for school.):

www.youtube.com...

Maybe you'll open your eyes for once.
Also what purpose did your comment have regarding my OP? It seems you just wanted to do some bashing yourself. Good for you, let that theologian anger out!

reply to post by ImaginaryReality1984


It just makes me very sad, that's all, since I know something about the love made manifest in the image he mocks with his avatar. It makes me VERY sad indeed.

reply to post by Welfhard


Einstein wasn't a deist. He wasn't even a pantheist. He simply had an affinity for the poetic usage of the term god. Even in his time his usage of the word confused people, and when asked by Rabbi Goldstein in a telegram to clarify, Einstein responded;

"I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings."

... and even this was a stretch.

In his work, "The world as I see it":

A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which are only accessible to our reason in their most elementary forms—it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man.

... and he also at times made reference to himself as an agnostic.

I think it's fairly clear that, when taken as a collective whole, Einsteins statements suggest strongly that he did not believe in any gods of any kind. He merely revered the universe in the same manner in which a pious man reveres his scriptural savior. However, he stops short of worshiping the universe AS god. More in line with his views are modern lines of scientific pantheism.

A Deist supposes an apparently impersonal and distant "first mover" creator of the universe, whereas a Pantheist actually sees the universe as the "body and spirit" of god. IIRC, some modern scientific pantheists and deists are trying to marry the ideologies through technological singularity leading towards a purposeful shrinking and condensing of the universe leading to an Omega Point at which all time, matter, and space are one - as are all consciousnesses - thus creating "god", heaven, and all possibilities manifest as reality, all dead raised, etc. Thus, one creator being of the universe who also IS the universe.

I can't see Einstein supporting such a concept.

Originally posted by Welfhard
reply to post by MoothyKnight

 

Einstein wasn't religious. He was a deist, who believed in an cosmic kind of god who reveals itself in physicals and the laws of nature.

Thank you I was hoping someone would point that out! He rejected the idea of a "personal" god, though Christian apologists often still cite him as one of their own for some reason

reply to post by Lasheic


Thank you as well for this information. I wish it was more widely known to people, but religion doesn't like to be opposed or dissected, so I doubt many people acknowledge this.
Good work!

reply to post by OmegaPoint


It is and it isn't.

Nothing happens by sheer chance. There is always a clear line of cause and effect, of multiple interactions of energy or matter on the smaller end of the scale creating the interactions of the next layer above it - giving rise to emergence. There is no such thing as chaos and all interactions of matter can be modeled and explained.

Practically, however, we can never fully understand the interactions of our universe or model them. To build a system capable of modeling every single minute sub-atomic interaction of energy and particles would itself require more energy than is available in the universe... and because space is expanding, we cannot perfectly model any particular section without first modeling the adjacent and prior interactions leading up to that present state. It's all or nothing.

So while we can theoretically build "near perfect" models on almost every scale of interaction, this "unknown" will always add the element of chance to our equations - however small.

In short; The Universe does not rely on random chance in any capacity. Our understanding of the universe, however, does - and always will.

reply to post by john124


John this is one of the best posts I've read - and I totally totally agree. Belief in an afterlife and worship of a god to make sure you get to paradise or any other heaven-type sanctuary is a waste of one's life.
Not believing in a god and salvation, for me, makes life immeasurably more beautiful and means our actions and treatment of others is that much more important - we only get one chance to do things right. What good is that some would ask? Well you hope that by treating others with respect, dignity and care that they propagate those same attitudes out to their circle of friends and so on. We only have one life to do things right, and by acting graciously and kindly, I would hope others do the same. It's not about instant gratification - it is about lying down the foundation for a society that cares and helps one another.
Call it universal cooperation.
And ofcourse there is no cop out for when you do things wrong - you can not simply be "forgiven" and on your way, or pretend you'll apologize for your mistakes in the afterlife - people have to take responsibility for their actions because those are what carry over to others.

Originally posted by makinho21
reply to post by jd140

 

You are speaking out of ignorance and are attempting to portray that stupid argument "both sides require faith"...which is a truly and unbelievably ignorant thing to say. Atheists don't have a god; it is not "randomness" and we do not worship it.
I have already linked to this video a few times, but I suggest you watch it (but I bet you won't because you are too cool for school.):

www.youtube.com...

Maybe you'll open your eyes for once.
Also what purpose did your comment have regarding my OP? It seems you just wanted to do some bashing yourself. Good for you, let that theologian anger out!

I don't see where I was bashing anyone.

I watched your video and it didn't explain to me anything that I haven't heard from atheists before.

My eyes are wide open thank you very much. That is why I don't follow any religion. That includes Atheism, which is very much a religion. I never said you worship randomness.

There is that rudeness atheists have rearing its ugly head again. I thought we moved past that on page one. As far as my off topic posts, I would ask that you see that I was merely replying to another post. One that you must have mistakenly skipped over or the posts that Republican08 and I shared on pages 1 and 2 that you seemed to not have a problem with.

I know it is very nice and attractive, but I must ask you to get off my butt.

reply to post by Lasheic


Thanks for pointing that out bud, you beat me to it

Einstein has been a personal hero of mine for as long as I can remember. I despise theists who have no knowledge of this great man's life and the beliefs which he held, who hijack his good name in an attempt to appeal to authority. No doubt he churns in his grave every time some ignorant theist misrepresents him so egregiously.

Originally posted by makinho21
reply to post by john124

 

John this is one of the best posts I've read - and I totally totally agree. Belief in an afterlife and worship of a god to make sure you get to paradise or any other heaven-type sanctuary is a waste of one's life.
Not believing in a god and salvation, for me, makes life immeasurably more beautiful and means our actions and treatment of others is that much more important - we only get one chance to do things right. What good is that some would ask? Well you hope that by treating others with respect, dignity and care that they propagate those same attitudes out to their circle of friends and so on. We only have one life to do things right, and by acting graciously and kindly, I would hope others do the same. It's not about instant gratification - it is about lying down the foundation for a society that cares and helps one another.
Call it universal cooperation.
And ofcourse there is no cop out for when you do things wrong - you can not simply be "forgiven" and on your way, or pretend you'll apologize for your mistakes in the afterlife - people have to take responsibility for their actions because those are what carry over to others.

Don't accuse me of being off topic from you original post about a study that shows atheists being smarter and then post an off topic post, such as this, yourself.