Do Atheists Have Higher Iq's Than Religious Folk In The Western World Today

Hi everyone, i was thinking that it is not the most logical thing to believe in a god or gods when when we have so much science that disproves large parts of it. I understand that in some parts of the world people may not have the same access to knowledge etc... so i would like to keep this to within the western world(sorry to any asians or africans etc... who are well educated and have the internet and librarys etc....).
I would also like to ask if people could not use religious geniuses form the past as i am only talking about people who are alive today and please do not include someone who is simply good at playing the piano or a good dancer as i am looking for answers based on iq.

also can we please not have any bible quotations claiming that all non believers or non repenters will burn in hell or anything along those lines.

No. Intelligence and religious beliefs are two different things. No one philosophizes about the theory of god while doing a math problem, do they? Religion and atheism are belief systems while intelligence vary into specific types and levels. There is no proof that atheists are smarter than religious people or have a higher IQ. There are many mathematicians who are Jewish (practicing Jews I mean), Christians, Muslims, etc.

This question is no different than relating intelligence to political beliefs or beliefs in regards to sex.

Although I'm not a "man of faith", more an agnostic than an atheist, I dont think you can relate religion with IQ. I'm sure that in some situations like the "deep interior" of a country where people are illiterate, less informed, like some farmers, people that live off the land and have less or none contact with the more "sophisticated" world, are more prone to be more drawn to a religion without questioning things behind it.

But we're talking about different spheres of culture. If we take a look at religious people inserted in a very educated circle, we can find science and religion walking side by side - specially on the medical field. Even the vatican has its "science projects" involving religion... I mean, religion is not a sign of lack of intelligence.

I just think its very narrow to associate religion with low IQ.

i dont associate a low iq with religion and i understand that your upbringing can push thoughts upon, but what i am thinking about is people with very high iq's. i have a religious family and have some very intelligent people when it comes to english, memory, knowledge of history etc.... but i am the only one who has great logic skills although i seem forgetfull and a bit not with it at times, i am also the one with the highest iq and the only one to not believe in a god.
i also understand that the older someone is the more likely they are going to be religious as science improves through the years and people do not always adjust to new found technologys etc....

please may i add that i am not trying to offend anyone and i understand that people on a web site like this will have a higher average iq than the general public so we may have some very intelligent people of faith reading.
I also understand that near death experiences and bad life experiences can push someone one way or another.
i am just wondering about an average.

There seems to be a negative correlation between religiosity and IQ. Wikipedia even has an entry on it. There was also a recent poll carried out that showed that liberalism, atheism, and sexual exclusivity were linked to higher IQs in males.

However, at this point it seems that we just have some raw data, and that the causation is yet to be determined. I'm not going to say that atheists are necessarily more intelligent, but they do score higher on the tests for some reason.

On average, atheists score about 6% higher on IQ tests than believers.

In 2008, intelligence researcher Helmuth Nyborg examined whether IQ relates to denomination and income, using representative data from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth, which includes intelligence tests on a representative selection of white American youth, where they have also replied to questions about religious belief. His results, published in the scientific journal Intelligence demonstrated that on average, Atheists scored 1.95 IQ points higher than Agnostics, 3.82 points higher than Liberal persuasions, and 5.89 IQ points higher than Dogmatic persuasions. [4] "I'm not saying that believing in God makes you dumber. My hypothesis is that people with a low intelligence are more easily drawn toward religions, which give answers that are certain, while people with a high intelligence are more skeptical," says the professor.

Source

I don't think being an atheist means you're smarter, but I do think more intelligent people are more skeptical, questioning and think more logically, therefore more intelligent people tend to be atheists.

I think Atheist's have higher IQs because they are better at taking IQ tests ie. more inclined to retake tests, do research into what kind of questions are on a IQ test, buy IQ boosting material. If there's two things an Atheist hates(besides God), it's to look stupid.

reply to post by satron


i am not sure about this as i have taken 3 or 4 myself and some of those have been very different from others. one included memory and i scored a relatively low score while the others where different but similar in some ways. many questions are to do with math and logic so i suppose someone who is currently in education may score higher depending on what he/she is currently learning.
i do understand that i have taken more than one so that may put me in your catagory but it wasnt a low score that made me try different ones.

madness and heretic i must give you both my thanks for adding facts to my thoughts, i kind of thought that it would be a small difference and 6 points, although small is actually slightly bigger than what i expected.

Well intellect is a good thing obviously. It has its uses. Testing it is somewhat problematic because there are many different kinds of 'intelligence' as has already been pointed out.

But Wisdom, I proffer, is the highest-form of intellect. It is, I think, 'spiritual intellect' and supercedes a mere 'High IQ.' I know some really humble mountain folk, Bible believers, great neighbors, relatively un-educated in the modern sense, but put many an academic to shame in what they do know.

Plus, you should see some of the amazing contraptions these old timers around here can build/fabricate. They is natural engineers I tell ya and can best you tradin' too so watch out

Intellect: Cool! Wisdom: Coolest!!

IQ?

Or applied IQ?

Strictly anecdotal...

In Mensa (98 percentile) meetings there appear to be about 25% of the gathered being religious. Some quite arrogantly.

In Intertel (99 percentile) meetings, I've never met anyone who professes faith in imaginary friends in the sky.

I have an IQ of 159. no idea where that stands on scales, but im pretty sure its above average. I believe in God, and i like to think im pretty smart, despite being a self-proclaimed idiot. Edit: thought i would add that this IQ test was taken relatively recently (

...i've never believed in the existence of deities or any of the stuff that comes with them (angels, devils, demons, etc)... even when i was a little kid and heard religious stories, i figured they were just make-believe and you werent supposed to believe the fairy tale part of it... you were supposed "to get" the lesson / moral that was being taught...

...i was quite shocked to discover that some folks expected me to believe ALL of it but relentless repetition has a way of dulling shock and teaching the very young how to spot a predator...

...i've known super smart atheists, religious folk, non-religious but spiritually minded people and some that didnt give a damn one way or the other... stupid can be found in every group, although some groups do seem to have a higher percentage...

...about iq... i've known a few real geniuses but some were somewhat socially retarded and very retarded in common sense areas... this one guy i know is so smart that i cant understand what he's talking about most of the time but, for the last 40yrs, he repeatedly runs out of gas cuz he simply cannot incorporate that basic function into his too busy brain...

...my parents were told that my iq score was exceptionally high "for a female"... i was tested in the 6th grade - in the 60s... back then, a lot of schools encouraged parents not to disclose high scores to female children cuz it might make them arrogant and hard to handle... apparently, it was okay to tell female children if they scored at basic moron level...

...i had always been hard to handle (they claimed), so i wasnt told until after i was an adult and out on my own... didnt change anything for me because i remembered taking the stupid test and guessing at a lot of it... iow - all that test score proved was that i could read and i got lucky...

...iq is a worthless assessment and i dont care how many times they re-work the testing... if you have to take an iq test for your job, be assured, its so they know which pigeon hole to stick you in...

...on another note - its 2011, people... we were supposed to be living like the jetsons by now... what the hell happened?... i'm gonna blame iq tests...

I've always been a theist, but I couldn't get a score from my first IQ test because I aced it.

It was quite funny, because the pig of a teacher at our little country school had announced to the class that this IQ test was going to prove how stupid I was. The bitter incompetant had way back declared a war on me that he couldn't win.

When the results came back he opened them in front of the class, chortling his head off because my name was nowhere to be seen. Every now and then, reading the results from top to bottom, he'd stop and laugh some more, pointing out my name had still not come up.

Finally he got to the bottom and read, going white, that I was requested to attend for further testing as getting everything correct meant they could not score me.

Then the rest of the kids laughed at him. - Except for the moderately clever class favourite who had got the top score. Btw, she was an atheist.

Yeah - I always got the "your scores put you in the top 3rd of the nation - - why are you getting Cs and below?"

Because I am bored out of my mind - what else.

I tried to be Christian - I tried to accept it to fit in. But it never really made any sense to me.

I think maybe Atheists just question everything and because of that are curious - - and try to find real answers.

reply to post by Annee

Annee, some people are born with silver spoons in their mouths, some, such as yourself, are born wearing joggers and backpacks. Life has been quite a journey, one way or the other.

Originally posted by Kailassa
I've always been a theist, but I couldn't get a score from my first IQ test because I aced it.

It was quite funny, because the pig of a teacher at our little country school had announced to the class that this IQ test was going to prove how stupid I was. The bitter incompetant had way back declared a war on me that he couldn't win.

When the results came back he opened them in front of the class, chortling his head off because my name was nowhere to be seen. Every now and then, reading the results from top to bottom, he'd stop and laugh some more, pointing out my name had still not come up.

Finally he got to the bottom and read, going white, that I was requested to attend for further testing as getting everything correct meant they could not score me.

Im just curious, what kind of test did you actually take?

By the nature of IQ tests, im not really sure you can get all the answers "correct." And i cant imagine a scenario where it could not be scored, unless the results themselves were lost or somehow destroyed. I just dont know a ton about them, honestly, but it sounds like some other kind of test, and not necessarily IQ? Makes me wonder what it was, given the stated scenario

reply to post by sinohptik

It had various sections, but all had multiple choice answers.
When you score an IQ test, you don't give a score out of 100, or whatever the total score is. The score is adjusted in relation and age and whatever to give an I.Q. score.
As there is no such thing as a 100% I.Q., a 100% correct test does not give a meaningful result measuring I.Q..
It can only tell you your I.Q. is above the amount measured by that particular test, and you need to do a higher level test to get a more accurate I.Q. measurement. That's why the report requested I got further testing. - Which my parents did not allow.