Why Atheists Are More Intelligent Than the Religious

[Toramana]

It is natural to believe in God, so more intelligent individuals are more likely to be atheists.
Religion is a cultural universal, and its practice is observed in every known human society. However, as I explain in earlier posts (Why do we believe in God? Part I, Part II), recent evolutionary psychological theories suggest that religiosity may not be an adaptation in itself but may be a byproduct of other evolved psychological mechanisms variously called the “animistic bias” or the “agency-detector mechanisms.”

These theories contend that the human brain has been selected to overinfer agency – personal, animate, and intentional forces – behind otherwise natural phenomena whose exact causes cannot be known. This is because overinferring agency – and making a Type I error of false positive – makes you a bit paranoid, but being paranoid is often conducive to survival. In contrast, underinferring agency – and making a Type II error of false negative – can result in being killed and maimed by predators and enemies that were incorrectly assumed not to exist. So, evolutionarily speaking, it’s good to be a bit paranoid, because being paranoid can often save your life. Religiosity – belief in higher powers – may be a byproduct of such overinference of agency and intentional forces behind natural ...

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/...-the-religious

[Toramana]

Liberals and Atheists Smarter? Intelligent People Have Values Novel in Human Evolutionary History, Study Finds

ScienceDaily (Feb. 24, 2010) — More intelligent people are statistically significantly more likely to exhibit social values and religious and political preferences that are novel to the human species in evolutionary history. Specifically, liberalism and atheism, and for men (but not women), preference for sexual exclusivity correlate with higher intelligence, a new study finds.

The study, published in the March 2010 issue of the peer-reviewed scientific journal Social Psychology Quarterly, advances a new theory to explain why people form particular preferences and values. The theory suggests that more intelligent people are more likely than less intelligent people to adopt evolutionarily novel preferences and values, but intelligence does not correlate with preferences and values that are old enough to have been shaped by evolution over millions of years."
"Evolutionarily novel" preferences and values are those that humans are not biologically designed to have and our ancestors probably did not possess. In contrast, those that our ancestors had for millions of years are "evolutionarily familiar."
"General intelligence, the ability to think and reason, endowed our ancestors with advantages in solving evolutionarily novel problems for which they did not have innate solutions," says Satoshi Kanazawa, an evolutionary psychologist at the London School of Economics and Political Science. "As a result, more intelligent people are more likely to recognize and understand such novel entities and situations than less intelligent people, and some of these entities and situations are preferences, values, and lifestyles."
An earlier study by Kanazawa found that more intelligent individuals were more nocturnal, waking up and staying up later than less intelligent individuals. Because our ancestors lacked artificial light, they tended to wake up shortly before dawn and go to sleep shortly after dusk. Being nocturnal is evolutionarily novel.
In the current study, Kanazawa argues that humans are evolutionarily designed to be conservative, caring mostly about their family and friends, and being liberal, caring about an indefinite number of genetically unrelated strangers they never meet or interact with, is evolutionarily novel. So more intelligent children may be more likely to grow up to be liberals.

Data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) support Kanazawa's hypothesis. Young adults who subjectively identify themselves as "very liberal" have an average IQ of 106 during adolescence while those who identify themselves as "very conservative" have an average IQ of 95 during adolescence.

Similarly, religion is a byproduct of humans' tendency to perceive agency and intention as causes of events, to see "the hands of God" at work behind otherwise natural phenomena. "Humans are evolutionarily designed to be paranoid, and they believe in God because they are paranoid," says Kanazawa. This innate bias toward paranoia served humans well when self-preservation and protection of their families and clans depended on extreme vigilance to all potential dangers. "So, more intelligent children are more likely to grow up to go against their natural evolutionary tendency to believe in God, and they become atheists."

Young adults who identify themselves as "not at all religious" have an average IQ of 103 during adolescence, while those who identify themselves as "very religious" have an average IQ of 97 during adolescence.

In addition, humans have always been mildly polygynous in evolutionary history. Men in polygynous marriages were not expected to be sexually exclusive to one mate, whereas men in monogamous marriages were. In sharp contrast, whether they are in a monogamous or polygynous marriage, women were always expected to be sexually exclusive to one mate. So being sexually exclusive is evolutionarily novel for men, but not for women. And the theory predicts that more intelligent men are more likely to value sexual exclusivity than less intelligent men, but general intelligence makes no difference for women's value on sexual exclusivity. Kanazawa's analysis of Add Health data supports these sex-specific predictions as well.

One intriguing but theoretically predicted finding of the study is that more intelligent people are no more or no less likely to value such evolutionarily familiar entities as marriage, family, children, and friends.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0224132655.htm

[al-arab]

Well in my opinion atheists are just as bad as religous people (if we say that religion is bad, which I STRONGLY disagree with) because they have a crusade against religious people and want to convince people that their "theory" is the right one. So basically atheism is a religion itself if you can call it that and it have an impact on atheists lifes on many fronts.

I also wonder how atheists think they can prove that God does not exist. How? I would like a atheist to answer me this easy question (if they are convinced themselves). Is it because God is to great and that it is to hard for them to imagine that?

My own experience is (and I admit that I do not know many atheists) that they are not so tolerant people and that they are very sellfish and egoistic people.

Religion in it's pure form is in my opinion the best solution. Even most of Western society is based on Christianity but the atheist in Western countries will not regocnize this.

There will be anarchy the day people think they are God's themselves. Especially in a time where people thing that nothing can beat them (if you know what I mean).

And please no insults about (arabs) because you disagree, Toramana, insult me instead if that is what you want.

[Toramana]

Professor Richard Lynn, emeritus professor of psychology at Ulster University, said many more members of the "intellectual elite" considered themselves atheists than the national average.

A decline in religious observance over the last century was directly linked to a rise in average intelligence, he claimed.

But the conclusions - in a paper for the academic journal Intelligence - have been branded "simplistic" by critics.

Professor Lynn, who has provoked controversy in the past with research linking

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukne...ve-in-God.html

[randolph85]

not to toot my own horn but id say i am a little more intelligent than say

[sanman]

not to toot my own horn but id say i am a little more intelligent than say

But you haven't told us which you are

[randolph85]

haven't figured it out by now?

btw, does that picture scream "religious" to u?

[Toramana]

not to toot my own horn but id say i am a little more intelligent than say

So who fares better ? you or this guy?

[emkhan]

Toramana, you tell about yourself. Which category do you fall in ?

[randolph85]

So who fares better ? you or this guy?

financially? we both know the answer to that.

that said, a stripper probably makes more in a night than the average college educated man in his 30s.

i know money is important to u guys, [---EDIT---].

do u find the likes of britney spears or any other run of the mill skank with money of more worth than one the "less intelligent" believing women in ur family?

[akbarkhan]

Whoever has said "science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind" must have been a very dumb person then?

[Afghanistan2010]

Atheism itself is a religion.

They "believe" that there is no God.

[AFG21]

Ateheists belief there is nog God but they don't push others to become atheist, what religious peopel do really often.
And I don't think religious peopel are dumber, in my class there was an morocan girl she was the best in our class and she was a strict muslim. Your intelegence is not determined by your belief or lack of it.

[akbarkhan]

Ateheists belief there is nog God but they don't push others to become atheist, what religious peopel do really often.

Perhaps you are not fully aware of Richard Dawkin's campaigns in the UK?

[akbarkhan]

Whoever has said "science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind" must have been a very dumb person then?

btw for those of you intelligent atheists, the above is a famous quote of Albert Einstein - yes he is not intelligent at all. </sarcasm>