Atheists are more intelligent than Religious people

I agree, religions like evolution and church religion are based solely on faith and their preachers and teachers demand that their congregations stay dumb and unquestioning.Only honesty and a search for truth can break somebody out of the church system and the false science system of evolution. Its a tough battle, as the church system and biological system are based on intimidation. Nevertheless via facts, math, via experiences and as mentioned an honest search, it is possible.For any man lack wisdom let him ask of the Lord, who giveth to all men liberally, if they ask. Ask and you shall receive, if you do your part and search. SEEK and ye shall FIND.SEE EvolutionisareligionEdited by Davidjay, : No reason given.

I'm going to take this with a grain of salt.If someone had done a similar survey, say 200 years ago, they would have come up with very different results.Intelligent people are generally able to be successful in society. If the society is such that religion is important to getting ahead, then intelligent people will tend to be religious. And that's the basis for my comment about 200 year ago.I'm taking the studies with a grain of salt, because I see it as dependent on too many factors.

Why not take them as they are? 200 years ago you'd be hard pressed to find any atheists to study. But today we're finding that intelligent people tend to be atheists. 200 years ago isn't relevant It is what it is - a series of studies that find the same thing. In another, less contentious, area we'd just nod and say ok.

Differ greatly... intelligent people do not get along with society. Real intelligent people buck the status quo and have the faith to go beyond the norm whether scientifically or intellectually or spiritually.They are pioneers, they are leaders and not mere followers. They dont care if none go with them... they are like Jesus, and go it alone if need be.They are not groupies and they need not the support of a group of whimps.... they are individuals just as Jesus was an individual.... and individually decided to go all the way for humanity.He KNEW the consequences and yet the pain but decided to go through with it anyway and all the way.Real thinkers are not fooder for society, like the universities of today produce. They are intelligent enough not to follow group mentality.Please rearrange your thinking. ThanksFacelessHordes

But they're all based on the same premise - that intelligence can be measured in some meaningful way.

They might be controversial but they measure intelligence in the way we define it.

The fear of the Lord, is the beginning of wisdom and knowledge....(Look it up)Intelligence does not come from luck and chance.

Well, one of the ways that "we" define intelligence is, "the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills." But the ability to acquire knowledge depends very much on one's culture and environment. How would you compare the intelligence of an illiterate tribesman in Ethiopia with the intelligence of a person in suburban USA?

No they aren't, and no they don't. The studies did not all set out to test either religiosity or intelligence. Some were explicitly discussing the idea, but many were not. The requirement for inclusion in the metastudy was simply that it included a measure of something the authors considered to be a correlate of religiosity and something they consider to be a correlate of intelligence; and the necessary information to look at correlation between the two.So 16 of the 63 measured performance on university entrance exams, for example, one looked at membership of Mensa.Nor do they all measure religiosity in the same way. A few are based on declared religious affiliation, which is an obvious problem since we know from surveys that more people are self-professed Christians than believe in God (in Europe, at least). Most are based on a survey of beliefs, but they're not all asking the same questions; so it's not clear if they're directly comparable. On EvC? I'd be surprised and disappointed.When something publishes something which confirms your prejudices in an area that's contentious because it's very difficult to measure, nodding and saying 'ok' is not the right approach if you're actually interested in the subject. Looking at what they did and considering whether it actually provides any strong support for your prejudices would be better.Found the pdf here.Edited by caffeine, : No reason given.

I wouldn't. And neither did the studies we're talking about.

Thanks for finding the actual paper.I'm not at all clear what point you are making.All the studies had some form of measurement of intelligence and some form of measurement of religiosity. Of course they're not all the same but that's not an argument to dismiss them, simply a limitation to note. It could just as easily be a strength - different methods producing similar results can indicate robustness. Oh come on! None of us have time to read and analyse the source material for every article we come across in our musings - most here don't even have access to the base papers. I lost my access 12 months ago when my last period of study ended. The best we can often do is point to an article that has made it into the general media and leave it at that. Of course if it becomes contentious, then we look further.I have so far only skim read the paper that you found but it has all the hallmarks of being pretty thorough and it's published in a decent enough publication. The researchers found "a reliable negative relation between intelligence and religiosity". I'm not seeing any reason to throw away the overall conclusions.Edited by Tangle, : No reason given.

So what difference does it make how many studies agree if they're all comparing apples with apples?

They compare intelligence - measured in various ways - with religiosity and find a negative correlation.

Religiousity in the church system is the same as evolutionism in the biological systems of this world. No difference, exactly the same, as it uses force and intimidation to indocrinate and subdue the thinking of its congregations.... it stops people from looking for truths and getting intelligent and out of their clutches...Mystery solved,

That doesn't answer the question. If all of the "various ways" assume that they can measure intelligence, why wouldn't they all agree?What intelligence tests actually measure is the ability to take tests. That may be useful in choosing candidates for employment or further education, but I don't see how it's useful in determining whether one group is "smarter" than another.Who is more intelligent, an artist or an academic? The academic is likely to do better on tests because that's what his background is. Similarly, a white guy from the suburbs is likely to do better than a black guy from the inner city because that's what his background is.