Religious Belief and IQ

quote:

---

The animated figure to the right shows the correlation of religion vs. IQ along side the correlation of GDP per capita vs. IQ.3 Since the slopes of the two curves are virtually identical, one would be hard pressed to claim that one factor or another was actually responsible for the prevalence of religion around the world. By the way, there is an outlier country in all this - the United States. People from the U.S. rate religion as being very important, although they have one of the highest IQ's. However, they also have the highest GDP per capita, which seems to be a more significant factor influencing IQ than religious involvement. In general, one could speculate that those who have a full belly would be less likely to consider their need for God. Why does the United States buck that trend, even though it was founded with a secular form of government? That's another story...

---

quote:

---

Paraphrased and summarized from The Effect of Intelligence on Religious Faith, Burnham P. Beckwith, Free Inquiry, Spring 1986:

​

1. Thomas Howells, 1927
Study of 461 students showed religiously conversative students "are, in general, relatively inferior in intellectual ability."

​

2. Hilding Carlsojn, 1933
Study of 215 students showed that "there is a tendency for the more intelligent undergraduate to be sympathetic toward ... atheism."

​

3. Abraham Franzblau, 1934
Confirming Howells and Carlson, tested 354 Jewish children, 10-16. Negative correlation between religiosity and Terman intelligence test.

​

4. Thomas Symington, 1935
Tested 400 young people in colleges and church groups. He reported, "there is a constant positive relation in all the groups between liberal religious thinking and mental ability...There is also a constant positive relation between liberal scores and intelligence..."

​

5. Vernon Jones, 1938
Tested 381 stydents, concluding "a slight tendency for intelligence and liberal attitudes to go together."

​

6. A. R. Gilliland, 1940
At variance with all other studies, found "little or no relationship between intelligence and attitude toward god."

​

7. Donald Gragg, 1942
Reported an inverse correlation between 100 ACE freshman test scores and Thurstone "reality of god" scores.

​

8. Brown and Love, 1951
At U. of Denver, tested 613 male and female students. Mean test scores of non-believers = 119, believers = 100. Percentile NBs = 80, BBs = 50. Their findings "strongly corroborate those of Howells."

​

9. Michael Argyle, 1958
Concluded that "although intelligent children grasp religious concepts earlier, they are also the first to doubt the truth of religion, and intelligent students are much less likely to accept orthodox beliefs."

​

10. Jeffrey Hadden, 1963
Found no correlation between intelligence and grades. This was an anomalous finding, since GPA corresponds closely with intelligence. Other factors may have influenced the results at the U. of Wisconsin.

​

11. Young, Dustin and Holtzman, 1966
Average religiosity decreased as GPA rose.

​

12. James Trent, 1967
Polled 1400 college seniors. Found little difference, but high-ability students in his sample group were over-represented.

​

13. C. Plant and E. Minium, 1967
The more intelligent students were less religious, both before entering college and after 2 years of college.

​

14. Robert Wuthnow, 1978
Of 532 students, 37% of christians, 58% of apostates, and 53 percent of non-religious scored above average on SATs.

​

15. Hastings and Hoge, 1967, 1974
Polled 200 college students and found no significant correlations.

​

16. Norman Poythress, 1975
Mean SATs for strongly antireligious (1148), moderately anti-religious (1119), slightly antireligious (1108), and religious (1022).

​

17. Wiebe and Fleck, 1980
Studied 158 male and female Canadian university students. The reported "nonreligious S's tended to be strongly intelligent" and "more intelligent than religious S's.

---

quote:

---

A widely researched index or classification of intelligence among scientists is Intelligence Quotient (I.Q.). I.Q. is a summary index, calculated by testing individuals' abilities in a variety of tasks and producing a composite score to represent overall ability, e.g., Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale. It is used to predict educational outcomes and other variables of interest.

​

Others have attempted to measure intelligence indirectly by looking at individuals' or group's educational attainment, although this risks bias from other demographic factors, such as age, income, gender and cultural background, all of which can affect educational attainment.[8]

​

Differences in educational attainment by religious groups in the U.S., 2001 data.

​

Dissatisfaction with traditional IQ tests has led to the development of alternative theories. In 1983, Howard Gardner proposed the theory of multiple intelligences, which broadens the conventional definition of intelligence, since the cognitive or mental capacity of an individual logically includes all forms of mental qualities, not simply the ones most transparent to standardized I.Q. tests. The categories of intelligences Gardner proposes are logical, linguistic, spatial, musical, kinesthetic, naturalist, intrapersonal and interpersonal intelligences.[10]

​

In a 2013 meta-analysis, led by Professor Miron Zuckerman, of 63 scientific studies about IQ and religiosity, a negative relation between intelligence and religiosity was found in 53, and a positive relation in the remaining ten. Controlling for other factors, they can only confidently show strong negative correlation between intelligence and religiosity among American Protestants.[1][2]

​

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.[11] The study analysed 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.

​

Secondly, the authors investigated the link between religiosity and intelligence on a country level. Among the sample of 137 countries, only 23 (17%) had more than 20% of atheists, which constituted virtually all... higher IQ countries. The authors reported a correlation of 0.60 between atheism rates and level of intelligence, which was determined to be highly statistically significant.[11]

​

The relationship between countries' belief in a god and average Intelligence Quotient, measured by Lynn, Harvey & Nyborg.[11]

---