Religious people are less intelligent than non-believers

OH for the love of god, here we go again, you know religious and or spiritual people hold every kind of position on the planet from doctors to lawyers to politicians, to scientist, well scratch politicians.

I think it would be more accurate to say that people with lower intelligence are more likely to be religious, especially when living in a culture/society in which religious belief/activity is commonplace and socially acceptable. There is a difference between that and what the OP title states.
I don't think it is accurate to say that religious people are less intelligent than non-believers. Both sides have their equal share of absolute morons. Most people are obviously of only average intelligence, which to me is essentially mental retardation anyway.

reply to post by darkbake


Speaking of Catholics do you have any idea how educated catholic priest are, I didn't either until someone I knew looked into becoming one and what they require.

Originally posted by olaru12
They may be intelligent but I wish they would mind their own business and quit knocking on my door. I don't want to talk about Jesus and I don't want those magazines.

I think smart people would realize that proselytizing and trying to force their religion down other peoples throat is...

STUPID

I am so stupid i have dabbled in all beliefs, and am an ex JW not born into the faith, just found it interesting.

You can't imagine what I learned.

I think learning about the history of religion and understanding the nature of our spiritual side is as important as anything we learn.

and I believe in UFOs too not just believe, made contact.

ask me anything.

Originally posted by predator0187
Source

Religious people are less intelligent than non-believers, according to a new review of 63 scientific studies stretching back over decades.

A team led by Miron Zuckerman of the University of Rochester found “a reliable negative relation between intelligence and religiosity” in 53 out of 63 studies. Even in extreme old age, intelligent people are less likely to believe, the researchers found - and the reasons why people with high IQs shun religion may not be as simple as previously thought.

Previous studies have tended to assume that intelligent people simply “know better”, the researchers write - but the reasons may be more complex.

For instance, intelligent people are more likely to be married, and more likely to be successful in life - and this may mean they “need” religion less.

The studies used in Zuckerman's paper included a life-long analysis of the beliefs of a group of 1,500 gifted children - those with IQs over 135 - in a study which began in 1921 and continues today.

First and foremost, this is not my opinion, this is an article that has basis in scientific studies.

Secondly, as an atheist, I am not to sure how to take this article.

The term 'intelligence' is quite a subjective word. Atheists could be more open minded to learning new things and much more open to subjects as they do not contradict the 'words' of their God.

Also, I know plenty of religious people that can hold their own in in depth conversations about scientific subjects. I think the science completely contradicts the religion they believe in, and I believe religion is a way of explaining the world before we had science, but, hey, to each their own.

Anyway I thought I would bring it here just for the discussion aspect of the subject...

Any thoughts?

Pred...

edit on 12-8-2013 by predator0187 because: (no reason given)

My IQ is 138. I believe in God. So that blows a whole in that theory (arrived at by, oh yeah, scientists, who knew?)

Originally posted by TarzanBeta
reply to post by olaru12

 

You cannot be jewish and be non-religious. There is no nation of jews. There are Israelites from the modern country of Israel. But Jews are jews religiously. So therefore, you're not a jew, anymore than someone who claims to be Christian is a Christian.
...
Wrong.

And the perfect Jew, Jesus Christ, speaks against you.

A Jew is not he who is circumcised in the flesh, but a Jew is he who is circumcised in the heart. The gentiles were grafted into the tree of the Jews. That tree is rooted in Jesus Christ, the one for whom they await, and yet He has already come.

The real Jews, the real children of Israel, are the children of God, those who were first called Christians at Antioch, the Spirit-led believers in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Once again, another who speaks of that which they know nothing about, and also have never experienced. Experience is the key to understanding, for knowledge that is not manifested in experience is incomplete.

Which do you prefer? If you are injured and require surgery, would you prefer the man whose pastime was to read up on anatomy and surgery, or would you prefer the man whose career and experience was based in anatomy and surgery?

In the new testament, Jesus Christ, it is written, was sent to the lands of Israel ( then Judah) by the Lord God Of Israel aka The Father of all 12 tribes. Jesus was not a " Jew"...he was sent into the lands of the Jews/tribe of Judah by their own Godhead.

The term " Jew" originates in the Hebrew ( Late period Canaanite) language and derives from word "Yehudi" meaning "from the Tribe of Judah" - it was used exclusively to signify the LAND the people occupied " Of Judah" ( South of Jerusalem) not justified in the Torah as a term of religion exclusively and the term 'Jew' itself was not utilized socially in its English form, to describe as it does now, genetic, cultural or religious affiliation with the Tribe of Judah until 1917.

In the bible the term Jew as a singular word is used first in Jeremiah 34:9 - again it is used as a verb not a noun...that is to describe not to define. When the Northern lands fell, Judah occupied them and so, became the single tribe in authority at the time.Thus the Jewish people themselves via the occupation of the entire region and their commitment to monotheism and in their use of the Talmud they have claimed political and cultural dominance in the House of Israel owing to their crafted linkage of the title of Judah to the Tetragrammaton and the holy name of God....so basically..they too advantage of the fall of the Northern tribes and made themselves kings, and then found a way to make their tribes name "holy". Political actions, not religious.


Link

"In some places in the Talmud the word Israel(ite) refers to somebody who is Jewish but does not necessarily practice Judaism as a religion: "

So the Tribe of Judah is only one of 12 tribes of the " House" of Israel ( Though some suspect there were 13 ) and it is that House, The House Of Israel, collectively, that Jesus of Nazareth/ Jesus Christ today, is written to lead as Godhead -though many within the Tribe of Judah dismiss this idea outright.

What this says, is that there is not one tribe or one religious dogma within it that Jesus is written to subscribe to. In fact, and in refusing to adhere to the Sabbath, several times as is written in the new testament that he did, he demonstrated this separation from the worship of the religious laws of men quite clearly.

Even so, there are secular and non secular Jews, as there was then and are today and this is sanctioned in the Talmud and evident in simply opening your eyes in a predominantly Jewish city.

Why this is important as relates to Jesus Christ is that outside of his familial obligations, there was never any record that he was a religious Jew or practiced anything but the major feast days as ppl today celebrate Christmas even though they are not pagan or christian, in fact there is much evidence to support the opposite..he prayed in the garden and on hilltops not temples, flouted the sabbath, sat with the unclean and and drank wine..in full opposition to the tenets of Judaism as a religion. The only time it is written Jesus entered a Temple was to school those within it.

Beyond all of that, it is written God said he wanted " everyone" in his Kingdom, not one religion or group or 'type' of person..or peoples..e v e r y o n e.
So I'm sticking to that...Jew not Jew..religion or none, in this sense..it is all irrelevant to salvation and to Gods love, Grace and familial acceptance.



toodles.


Ro.

You do realize you can create studies to get the exact results you want. The old saying, "Figures lie and Liars figure" is often true. One study shows that school disciplinary action has fallen over the past year. Then when you find out that they stopped disciplining students for stealing or cheating you realize they created new set of rules to make a study work.

When I worked for the police, we had a statistical crime section. They made it appear burglaries arrests went down, when in fact the changed how they counted them. They used to count everyone involved in the crime. Then they just started counting them as 1 arrest for the group. Thus, the crime rate stats looked better.

My point is that I bet we can find studies that show religious people are far more productive members of society than non-religious people. Would it be true? I don't know, but I can find a study that shows it if I look hard enough. This OP seems to be just another in a long line of condemning populations that have faith in God.

I imagine this is much less a matter purely of intelligence, but rather of exposure. Intelligent people are more likely to receive higher education. I would wager that it is much more appropriate to say that religiosity is "educated" out of many people. Indoctrination towards a scientific and purely rational manner of thinking is rampant in higher education. The intensity of indoctrination increases as one's education level increases.

Those of great intelligence in our modern era are, in the vast majority, funneled into the sciences. While this can certainly be considered appropriate as the sciences are the area from which the most and highest materialistic achievements for mankind are obtained. To say so broadly that the religious are less intelligent is to ignore those of great faith (of all gods and God(s) included) both throughout history and today.

reply to post by UnifiedSerenity


It also brings to mind what was said of the different categories of lies "There are three kinds of lies, lies, damned lies, and statistics."

Originally posted by darkbake

I could see one reason behind this being that religious people do not have to think about cause-and-effect in their moral decision-making.

[color=6699FF]oh really?

What unmitigated balderdash!

Worshiping the ULTIMATE CAUSE

gives us a much KEENER appreciation for ALL HIS effects as well as all the effects He allows for His reasons.

However . . . G. B. Cutten in SPEAKING WITH TONGUES (New Haven, Conn: Yale University, 1927, sounded a lot like some of y'all. He was actually a Baptist minister and educator.

A paraphrase below:

He makes fairly extravagant statements about the gift of tongues being received only by non-verbal individuals of low mental ability in whom the capacity for rational thought, a comparatively recent human achievement according to Cutten was "under-developed." pp212, 213.

And this article:

Pentecostals are Stupid, Unitarians are Smart?

blogs.discovermagazine.com...

would likely be cheered by many hereon as quite accurate and obvious.

One interesting article in my scanning of such topics is this one--finding that the more spiritual sorts were likely to be less depressive, happier, more optimistic.:

cassiopaea.org...

In January 2005, the Petris Center at UC Berkeley released the results of a survey of mental health markers for the counties of California. Respondents were asked, among other questions, if they were "downhearted and sad". There is a correlation between counties with poor mental health as measured in this study, and counties with high margins of victory for Kerry. Similarly, there is a correlation of high mental health with high margin of victory for Bush. The two counties identified by the study as having the worst mental health, by their composite measure calibrated for economic circumstance, were also the two counties with the highest margins of victory for Kerry (68% in San Francisco County, and 51% in Alameda - those are margins, not totals!). The 18 counties sharing the highest health ranking were, with few exceptions, carried by Bush, most with a margin greater than 20%. Some of the exceptions tend to prove the rule. Sacramento is an urban core in a Kerry state that Bush came within a whisker of winning (Kerry by 285 votes, of 454310 total votes cast, a margin of .06%). Alpine (Kerry by 8 percentage points, of 699 total votes cast) and Mono (Kerry by 7 votes, of 5322 votes cast) counties may appear in the healthiest category only because they were aggregated with 5 counties all carried heavily by Bush. And it's highly significant that San Diego, the only major urban core in the healthiest category, was also the only major urban core in California won by Bush. Of the eight counties in the next-to-healthiest category, only Sonoma and Yolo were carried by Kerry, albeit in 36 and 21 point landslides respectively.

.

One would intuitively and logically expect that personal religion and a sense of a personal god, clearly comforting and affirming psychological influences, would be correlated with belief in a future wherein providence will be favorable -- in short, that theistic faith will be correlated with a lack of depressive psychological conditions. Likewise, one expects that a lack of personal religion and of a sense of a personal god would be correlated with doubt that the future will be providential, and so in affliction by depressive psychological conditions. As recounted above, this intuition is borne out by fairly decisive evidence. It is also inevitable that belief in a providential future correlates with fecundity, since children rely on future prosperity. This too is clearly borne out by the evidence, as discussed above. The negative sense is also amply evidenced. A recent (2005-Jan-22) headline in The Scotsman reads ``Self-doubt leaves French feeling down in the mouth''. France, indeed, has disastrously low fecundity, like the rest of Europe, and its secularization is rather advanced, as it is throughout Europe. Again, the exception tends to prove the rule: only the Muslim immigrant population in France (and elsewhere in Europe) has a high birth rate.

My scanning of sources in the ballpark of the OP will continue in another post to follow, hopefully, shortly.

TO BE CONTINUED

reply to post by BO XIAN


CONTINUED Scan of sources related to the OP . . .

another quote from:

cassiopaea.org...

A SURPRISING FINDING--it was NOT the snake handlers!

The Psychology of Religion

« Reply #1 on: March 02, 2007, 05:27:12
.

Many years ago, a team of researchers at the department of anthropology at the University of Minnesota decided to put this association to the test. They studied certain fringe religious groups, such as fundamentalist Baptists, Pentecostalists and the snake-handlers of West Virginia, to see if they showed the particular type of psychopathology associated with mental illness. Members of mainstream Protestant churches from a similar social and financial background provided a good control group for comparison. Some of the wilder fundamentalists prayed with what can only be described as great and transcendental ecstasy, but there was no obvious sign of any particular psychopathology among most of the people studied. After further analysis, however, there appeared a tendency to what can only be described as mental instability in one particular group. The study was blinded, so that most of the research team involved with questionnaires did not have access to the final data. When they were asked which group they thought would show the most disturbed psychopathology, the whole team identified the snake-handlers. But when the data were revealed, the reverse was true: there was more mental illness among the conventional Protestant churchgoers - the "extrinsically" religious - than among the fervently committed.

.

A Harvard psychologist named Gordon Allport did some key research in the 1950s on various kinds of human prejudice and came up with a definition of religiosity that is still in use today. He suggested that there were two types of religious commitment - extrinsic and intrinsic. Extrinsic religiosity he defined as religious self-centredness. Such a person goes to church or synagogue as a means to an end - for what they can get out of it. They might go to church to be seen, because it is the social norm in their society, conferring respectability or social advancement. Going to church (or synagogue) becomes a social convention.

.

Allport thought that intrinsic religiosity was different. He identified a group of people who were intrinsically religious, seeing their religion as an end in itself. They tended to be more deeply committed; religion became the organising principle of their lives, a central and personal experience. In support of his research, Allport found that prejudice was more common in those individuals who scored highly for extrinsic religion.

.

The evidence generally is that intrinsic religiosity seems to be associated with lower levels of anxiety and stress, freedom from guilt, better adjustment in society and less depression. On the other hand, extrinsic religious feelings - where religion is used as a way to belong to and prosper within a group - seem to be associated with increased tendencies to guilt, worry and anxiety.

That link is a very interesting set of long articles by various people. It's a LONG scroll down but has a lot of gems in it. . . .

Here's an interesting map of IQ plotted by countries with varying degrees of religiosity:

www.calamitiesofnature.com...

= = = =

www.thefreelibrary.com...

Psychologists are starting to recognize the role that religion and spirituality can play in emotional well-being. Psychology has traditionally held a negative view of spirituality. Psychologists and psychiatrists from Freud to Ellis have viewed religious orientation as "irrational" and as a "crutch for people who can't handle life" (Clay, 1996, p. 1). However, this view is changing. Research has shown that spirituality and religion may actually enhance mental health in many cases. Spirituality has been shown to be associated with several positive psychological outcomes including subjective well-being (Witter, Stock, Okun, & Haring, 1985), self-esteem (Falbo & Shepperd, 1986), physical health (Gottlieb & Green, 1984) and marital satisfaction (Glenn & Weaver, 1978). Lack of spirituality has been associated with several negative behavioral and psychological outcomes including depression (Wright, Frost, and Wisecarver, 1993), substance abuse (Maton & Zimmerman, 1992), and suicide and anxiety (Baker & Gorsuch, 1982; Gartner, Larson, & Allen, 1991; Sturgeon & Hamley, 1979).

.

Frankl (1984) recognized that the personal belief that one's life fulfills some higher purpose and serves some higher power is of enormous psychogenic value,
. . .

TO BE CONTINUED

reply to post by Josephus


continued scan of sources related to the OP:

Here's an interesting article about reasonable doubts comparing those with higher conventional religiosity vs those more opposite in the normal conceptions of such:

Consider these two statements: 1) “we are all, religious and nonreligious alike, prone to cognitive and group biases”; 2) “Religious people are more prone to cognitive and group biases”. Randall is saying only #1 is true, when the evidence presented in GTLY indicates that both are true. That is, although atheists as well as the religious may prefer members of “their own kind”, in fact religious people are MORE ingroupy and discriminate against others than do atheists.

We also know that although everyone is prone to cognitive biases in preferring information more favorable to one’s own views, that religious people are less willing to give up their views upon contradictory information because they are more dogmatic

These are extraordinarily strong claims. Note, for example, that they aren’t specified to members of specific social groups. Nor are they specified to a geographic region. Luke makes these claims without qualification. He did not restrict his claims to the United States, or North America, or some other geographic region. So whether you are in sub-Saharan Africa or Sydney, Australia, religious people are statistically going to be more “prone to cognitive and group bias”.

The following article shows that the OP's assertions are not quite as reliably simplistic or accurate as many might suppose:

www.academia.edu... l_Academic_Competition

Review of Literature

At the close of the 20th century, the literature concerning the relationship betweenreligiosity and academic performance remained largely underdeveloped (Trusty & Watts,p.1999). However, since that time, several studies have been conducted examining the role of religiosity in the academic achievement of students. Religiosity is a complex concept thatcomprises various aspects of belief, behavior, and intelligence (Holdcroft, p. 2006). WhileNyborg (2009) demonstrated that IQ negatively correlated with the reported denominational
affiliation of students, several other studies have demonstrated that religiosity and academicachievement are positively correlated. Researchers have found that religiosity is positivelycorrelated with grade point average (Zern 1989; Walker & Dixon, 2002).Jeynes (2002a) reported that “religious schooling and religious commitment each have apositive effect on academic achievement and school-related behavior” (p. 27). Further, Jeynes(2003) found that urban high school students reporting high religiosity achieved higherperformance on standardized academic measures, including reading and mathematics tests.Jeynes (2002b) also suggested that religiously-affiliated schools inherently promote academicachievement more than their public school counterparts by reporting that “religious schools dodiffer favorably from non-religious schools on a number of measures that would seem to supportan environment of high academic achievement” (p. 16). Similarly, Regenerus & Elder (2003)reported that students reporting high religiosity attained higher scores on standardizedmathematics and reading tests than did students who reported no religious commitment.Moreover, Loury (2004) found that more religiously committed students performed better onmost academic measures than did their less religious counterparts. In like manner, Mooney(2005) found that two separate measures of religiosity correlated with academic achievement.Other factors, including family influence on religiosity and academic achievement havealso been studied. McKune & Hoffmann (2006) found that high academic achievement can bepredicted when parents and adolescents report similar levels of religiosity. McKune & Hoffmannalso found that when parents report high religiosity and adolescents report low religiosity, lowacademic achievement can be predicted. Comparisons of academic achievement levels in publicand private schools have become a subject of interest among researchers not because of religious implications alone, but because of increasing public voucher availability to private schools(Lubienski, Crane, & Lubienski, 2008).

TO BE CONTINUED

reply to post by BO XIAN


A continued scan of various sources related to the OP:

I won't quote much from this article to save time . . . but I think he has some good points.

www.dbking.net...

One being that spirituality is different from religiosity.

And, he notes that INTELLIGENCE HAS MANY ASPECTS:

Even in a narrow aspect of IQ there's:

A number of common criteria can be derived from the current body of intelligence theory and research. Generally, an intelligence should:

(1) include a set of interrelated mental abilities (distinct from behaviours, experiences, etc.).
(2) develop over the lifespan (from birth to old age).
(3) facilitate adaptation and problem-solving in a particular environmental context.
(4) allow an individual to reason abstractly and make appropriate judgements.
(5) demonstrate a biological component or foundation in the brain.

Needless to say, there will always exist certain individuals who demonstrate superior or inferior performance on a particular set of abilities. Empirical support from either psychometrics or experimental tasks is, of course, highly valuable as well, as was emphasized by Howard Gardner (1983).

It is considered now that there are several types of INTELLIGENCE:

e.g.

VERBAL,
KINESTHETIC
MUSIC
MATHEMATICAL
etc.

It seems to me that the proponents jumping on the bandwagon that religionists are dumber are ignoring

SOME CONFOUNDING VARIABLES in the research.

The populations scoring higher tend to include folks for whom verbal IQ skills and similar intellectual pursuits are almost a RELIGION unto themselves for such individuals.

Compared to those for whom spirituality is a higher priority, it is logical that their vocabularies and mental constructs would be more in keeping with what most IQ tests measure. A huge percentage of most conventional IQ tests is largely vocabulary.

So saying that individuals who have a religious level of attraction to being more verbally skilled and robust will score higher on measures of being more verbally skilled and robust is


!DOH! REDUNDANT! and rather absurd.

reply to post by BO XIAN


A continued scan of various sources related to the OP:

I won't quote much from this article to save time . . . but I think he has some good points.

www.dbking.net...

One being that spirituality is different from religiosity.

And, he notes that INTELLIGENCE HAS MANY ASPECTS:

Even in a narrow aspect of IQ there's:

A number of common criteria can be derived from the current body of intelligence theory and research. Generally, an intelligence should:

(1) include a set of interrelated mental abilities (distinct from behaviours, experiences, etc.).
(2) develop over the lifespan (from birth to old age).
(3) facilitate adaptation and problem-solving in a particular environmental context.
(4) allow an individual to reason abstractly and make appropriate judgements.
(5) demonstrate a biological component or foundation in the brain.

Needless to say, there will always exist certain individuals who demonstrate superior or inferior performance on a particular set of abilities. Empirical support from either psychometrics or experimental tasks is, of course, highly valuable as well, as was emphasized by Howard Gardner (1983).

It is considered now that there are several types of INTELLIGENCE:

e.g.

VERBAL,
KINESTHETIC
MUSIC
MATHEMATICAL
etc.

It seems to me that the proponents jumping on the bandwagon that religionists are dumber are ignoring

SOME CONFOUNDING VARIABLES in the research.

The populations scoring higher tend to include folks for whom verbal IQ skills and similar intellectual pursuits are almost a RELIGION unto themselves for such individuals.

Compared to those for whom spirituality is a higher priority, it is logical that their vocabularies and mental constructs would be more in keeping with what most IQ tests measure. A huge percentage of most conventional IQ tests is largely vocabulary.

So saying that individuals who have a religious level of attraction to being more verbally skilled and robust will score higher on measures of being more verbally skilled and robust is


!DOH! REDUNDANT! and rather absurd.

Originally posted by AfterInfinity
reply to post by predator0187

 

I wouldn't say less intelligent. There are plenty of religious people, including a very good buddy of mine, who both believe in a god and are thoroughly, thoroughly capable of applying their knowledge and experience in amazing ways.

So no, I don't agree with the article.

I don't agree with the article in the sense that I have grown to respect religion from judging it as a child. The more I know, I learn that it may as well have been god for me to be here, because the other story is just as crazy and improbable.

The more I know the less I judge. I think Jesus said something about that.. It's a circle really.

Besides most religion is really speaking on psychology and astrology which are very real.

"Do unto others as you would like done to you."
I like religion in that sense.

btw.. My best test for intelligence is the use or non use of sweeping statements.

Blanket concepts are not smart, kinda like this:
"Religious people are less intelligent than non-believers"
Smart people have to much extra information coming in.. So many more variables that you can't just state giant facts like that. The smartest person ever may know that he knows nothing at all.. Maybe in that way faith is unintelligent... Maybe..

Disclaimer: I am not religious, but I did talk to Jesus once. Hahaha oh me, oh my life.

reply to post by predator0187


These were probably some of the studies they gathered data from.

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 atheists scored an average of 1.95 IQ points higher than agnostics, 3.82 points higher than liberal persuasions, and 5.89 IQ points higher than dogmatic persuasions.

Nyborg also co-authored a study with Richard Lynn, emeritus professor of psychology at the University of Ulster, which compared religious belief and average national IQs in 137 countries. The study analyzed the issue from several viewpoints. Firstly, using data from a U.S. study of 6,825 adolescents, the authors found that atheists scored 6 IQ points higher than non-atheists.

Several Gallup poll studies of the general population have shown that those with higher IQs tend not to believe in God. "A study published in Social Psychology Quarterly in March 2010 also stated that "atheism ...correlate[s] with higher intelligence".

link


There is a lot said about why that may be both social and economic reasons but it makes me wonder why he didn’t use the other 10 studies mentioned.

On a personal note both my father and grandfather both had genius level IQs. My father didn't believe in god but my grandfather did though I never saw him try to push it on anyone he would just say grace at the table.

reply to post by Stormdancer777


While the title may be a quote of the article, the more appropriate headline is probably a different one:

A higher percentage of people with lower IQs were found to be religious than people with higher IQs. Which specifically does not mean religious people are less intelligent. The original title is pompist trolling, nothing more and nothing less.

There are no details provided nor a link to the actual study, so it's difficult to say if the study is biased or not. The usual first step is to review all the studies and throw out all the biased and flawed studies. There is no indication that was done. There is also no indication that any of the prior studies reviewed were without serious flaws and biases.

A bias in a study like these could arise subtly: for example, people who are identified with higher IQs may have their parents or schools counseled to provide an education which inadvertently teaches them to be less religious. In this case, a finding could potentially have nothing to do with IQ per se and everything to do with their education. Another bias source which is very likely is to have chosen two groups to contrast: for example a poor and highly religious population might be contrasted with a wealthy, well-educated population that is not overtly religious -- if both sets are given IQ tests a finding may be due to the way the populations were chosen if IQ tends to be higher in wealthy families.

The devil is in the details, and no details are given. Read it with a corrected title and file it away as "no data provided."

reply to post by BayesLike


Not disagreeing with you except on faulting the OP for the title.

He titled the thread directly from the very first sentence of the source which is a shorter form of the source title.

reply to post by predator0187


Maybe the word religion has been corrupted and used as a means to control, gods and its priests derive their position from those who bow for it.
We give it away because we believe them, and 'them' is the outer, the world of thought.
If this is not the case, the article holds truth, then religion is the rituals, the churches, vestments, you are a sinner, you are not good and you have to live according to the doctrine which means gods creation wasn't so perfect.
And sinners are to be punished, shall we talk about devil expulsion, abuse in churches or what is happening in the muslim world?
That is religion at play, and fight to kill the invidel, you are obligated to spread religion, ohh and kill those that believe otherwise to, os course your religion is the truthful one.

So what does religion mean really, if it is the above than i shall die as a sinner, but if not and the word religion has indeed been corrupted, than those who follow are driven away from the divine creation and drawn into an illusion.
And in that illusion violence is a means to convert and control people, love is absent.

I think the religious mind is a sacred mind, give meaning to life, one with divine creation which continues with each moment.
I doubt that intelligence is subjective, we should not mistake it for intellect.
To me intelligence means to feel, to care, to see our relation to the whole, our responsibility in life.
That is not destroying and killing, to submit others to a doctrine.

Don't listen to me, my IQ is below 60

Probably a fair comment but in no way does it suggest all Christians are inferior.
Most people who turn to Jesus have suffered in life and Christ offers unconditional love.


From a Christian perspective I believe Jesus answers the question nicely

Mark 2:17
New International Version
On hearing this, Jesus said to them, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.