Studies Link High Intelligence With Atheism

[[-Erik-]]

How does one expect their main arguments to hold up during an argument when they can't provide proof of such? That is not a smart move.

 

[Lethkhar]

dl1371

Lethkhar

dl1371

Yes, atheists are smarter than religious people generally. Is this surprising? I think its generally assumed that if a group of people is right than they're smarter.
Anywho, the only reason we're smarter is because we're grounded in the material world, and intelligence is a material world concept. I'll bet if they did a study on who could read facial expressions better, religious people would kick our a**es.

Why?

Because religion focuses on feelings and love etc.
Atheism focuses on reality.
We know 'bout reality, they know about feelings and love, and all that great stuff.

Speak for yourself. I happen to know quite a bit about feelings and love. More than I do about "reality", anyway...  

[=X-Sparker + AquaKiller=]

I would say that intelligent people are more likely to be atheists. But I'm not saying that they will be.

After all, the way this professor defined intelligence is pretty vague. There are smart theists out there too, you know. Intelligence probably just gives an individual more courage to question authority and authenticity, including God's.

And besides, what will we gain from calling ourselves geniuses and theists dumb? Nothing. Would you take an eight year old kid seriously if he tells you he's smart because he's number one in his class? Probably not. Similarly, the world will not just suddenly start taking atheists seriously simply because we call ourselves smart. Arguing that atheists are smarter (or theists dumber) is more of a personal attack (Ad Hominem) and not a proposition that people can properly discuss/argue upon, and thus lacks the significance in societal usefulness. If we want to truly be known as intelligent people, we may have more luck writing articles that explain our atheism and reasons for our lack of beliefs.

 

[dl1371]

Lethkhar

dl1371

Lethkhar

dl1371

Yes, atheists are smarter than religious people generally. Is this surprising? I think its generally assumed that if a group of people is right than they're smarter.
Anywho, the only reason we're smarter is because we're grounded in the material world, and intelligence is a material world concept. I'll bet if they did a study on who could read facial expressions better, religious people would kick our a**es.

Why?

Because religion focuses on feelings and love etc.
Atheism focuses on reality.
We know 'bout reality, they know about feelings and love, and all that great stuff.

Speak for yourself. I happen to know quite a bit about feelings and love. More than I do about "reality", anyway...

But
a) Does the average atheist? There are several scientists who are Christians. and
b) My whole point was that GAU is getting WAY too stuck up, and this was just an example of how we should respect religious people too.  

[Edible Jennann]

brainnsoup

Im A Little Pea

I'm going to be the first Atheist who doesn't get an ego boost out of this.
I'm far from being an expert in psychology. The little I know, I know from high school psychology. But I've become aware of how biased intelligence tests are. They only reflect a very small aspect of your abilities and knowledge. It's easy for the person who's doing the research build the test in order to get the wanted data - that person doesn't have to do this consciously. It happens. You live in a certain environment, you learn certain things - when you're working on a test that's supposed to check people's abilities and knowledge, what you're going to cover is mostly what concerns you. It also concerns people with similar backgrounds. But for people who were exposed to different kinds of knowledge it wouldn't go as well.

They said this research was 'spanning 137 countries'. Don't you think a test that was probably written in England, that's matching the English system of education, would be easier for people growing up in it, than it would be for outsiders? Even though it is translated into their language, not all people learn the same things.

I don't think this is fair and I wouldn't get too excited over it.

This! The researcher also drew false conclusions by assuming that he actually proved anything by finding a correlation. Even if he did have some objective way of measuring intelligence and did prove that most intelligent people were atheists, there is no reason to assume that that is anything more than a coincidence.

I do believe that the average atheist is smarter than the average theist, but I think that is because most atheists are atheists because they have been forced to logically think about whether or not the religion they were raised with is valid. Only some theists have. A theist can go his whole life without ever having to question his reality. An atheist can't.

I tend to agree with brainnsoup here. Correlation does not equal causation. While I, and my ego, loved the article I still must acknowledge that "Most smart people choose to be atheists" doesn't automatically = "Most atheists are smart people."  

[LimeIzMyFaveColor]

Wow I found that I am ranked number 2 (salutatorian) underneath the Valedictorian. I'm so proud of myself. =]  

[D i v i n i t y]

It makes sense to me that more atheists would be a bit higher on the intelligence curve than religious folk since most of us became atheists because we used our critical thinking skills. Most theists just adopt the religion of their parents and don't really put that much thought into whether their religion is completely logical. I mean, there are plenty of intelligent religious people, as well as atheists. I'm not sure if there is any perfect way to make the conclusion that Atheists are smarter than Theists though since there could be many hidden variables that we can't really control, but I wouldn't say it is improbable. I just don't think there is any perfect way we could conclude that atheists are smarter than theists through perfect methods.  

[D i v i n i t y]

Edible Jennann

I tend to agree with brainnsoup here. Correlation does not equal causation. While I, and my ego, loved the article I still must acknowledge that "Most smart people choose to be atheists" doesn't automatically = "Most atheists are smart people."

NOOOOOO, Screw you, statistics class ;(  

[FuzzBall 005]

http://img192.imageshack.us/img192/8788/religiousness.png  

[Undecillion]

dl1371

Lethkhar

dl1371

Lethkhar

dl1371

Yes, atheists are smarter than religious people generally. Is this surprising? I think its generally assumed that if a group of people is right than they're smarter.
Anywho, the only reason we're smarter is because we're grounded in the material world, and intelligence is a material world concept. I'll bet if they did a study on who could read facial expressions better, religious people would kick our a**es.

Why?

Because religion focuses on feelings and love etc.
Atheism focuses on reality.
We know 'bout reality, they know about feelings and love, and all that great stuff.

Speak for yourself. I happen to know quite a bit about feelings and love. More than I do about "reality", anyway...

But
a) Does the average atheist? There are several scientists who are Christians. and
b) My whole point was that GAU is getting WAY too stuck up, and this was just an example of how we should respect religious people too.

"We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart."
- H. L. Mencken  

[dl1371]

Undecillion

dl1371

Lethkhar

dl1371

Lethkhar

dl1371

Yes, atheists are smarter than religious people generally. Is this surprising? I think its generally assumed that if a group of people is right than they're smarter.
Anywho, the only reason we're smarter is because we're grounded in the material world, and intelligence is a material world concept. I'll bet if they did a study on who could read facial expressions better, religious people would kick our a**es.

Why?

Because religion focuses on feelings and love etc.
Atheism focuses on reality.
We know 'bout reality, they know about feelings and love, and all that great stuff.

Speak for yourself. I happen to know quite a bit about feelings and love. More than I do about "reality", anyway...

But
a) Does the average atheist? There are several scientists who are Christians. and
b) My whole point was that GAU is getting WAY too stuck up, and this was just an example of how we should respect religious people too.

"We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart."
- H. L. Mencken

Well most people here don't even do that...