Why are religious people generally less intelligent?

I thought that this was an interesting article:

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog...ople-generally-less-intelligent?tr=MostViewed

I'm not going to paraphrase the article, but I did think it was interesting that perhaps intelligence and religiosity fulfill the same function.

 

I'm not convinced they are.

 

I don't think that this article is to be taken as a fact.. For all religions are just misinterpreted by humans who do so for their own benefits.. Which then leads to Religious wars and what not. Because the people are mislead by the false leaders of a church, mosque or temples... People are intelligent. And their leaders are the ones that lead them to ignorance!

 

Be nice if people in general were intelligent, but myself I think only a proportion, maybe a fifth or so are. The rest are pretty dumb. Whether that's because of nature or nurture has never been fully determined.

I don't think there's any validity in the idea that the non religious are more intelligent in general. And what about people who say they are 'spiritual' but not necessarily religious?

 

The religious who are the loudest tend to be less intelligent from my experience. But that's not to say that all or even a majority of religious people are like that. Its just that the loud minority gets the spotlight.

The loudest Athiests seem to lack empathy.

I don't think either has anything to do with their beliefs really, it's just the type of person they are and how they express their feelings.

 

Of course religious people are more intelligent than non-religious people. If you believe otherwise, that just shows how unreligious you are.

 

This isn't generalizing by any means. What a stupid post.

 

So did anyone actually read the article?
I'm guessing no.

I probably should have expected as much... but here's the text of the abstract for the study.

A meta-analysis of 63 studies showed a significant negative association between intelligence and religiosity. The association was stronger for college students and the general population than for participants younger than college age; it was also stronger for religious beliefs than religious behavior. For college students and the general population, means of weighted and unweighted correlations between intelligence and the strength of religious beliefs ranged from -.20 to -.25 (mean r = -.24).

Three possible interpretations were discussed.

First, intelligent people are less likely to conform and, thus, are more likely to resist religious dogma.

Second, intelligent people tend to adopt an analytic (as opposed to intuitive) thinking style, which has been shown to undermine religious beliefs.

Third, several functions of religiosity, including compensatory control, self-regulation, self-enhancement, and secure attachment, are also conferred by intelligence. Intelligent people may therefore have less need for religious beliefs and practices.

 

Yes, it is generalizing. The word 'generally' is in the title of the post.
So yes, I'm definitely the stupid one here.

 

There are so many different religious people practicing their faith in their own way it seems really quite useless to place such a conviction on them in general. A lot of them are just as pragmatic as you and not have problems with established facts at all... If you mean in your original post a specific kind of religious people (like the ones who do have issues with established facts, a minority it seems) you should have specified in the question/title. But you seem to mean in general indeed. Even with the arguments the article gives I am not convinced they are.
It's also typical some people seem to think that everyone who has doubts about the conviction that the religious generally are less intelligent must be a religious person themselves.

 

Have you compiled 63 different studies to prove this point, or are you just speaking intuitively here? It's kind of funny, because the study also suggests that intuitive thinking is more common among the less intelligent.

And this isn't about what I personally think, it's about a study that was done by the National Institute of Health. If you want to dispute the study by producing a study of your own, then that's fair... but disputing it because you don't like the way it makes you feel doesn't really strike me as worthwhile.

You can be less intelligent without being religious.

 

I just think it is really really hard to measure. That's why I have my doubts. I'm not saying the study or the question is stupid, but I am saying the conviction in the question is not conclusive enough proven for me. I'm just sharing what I think, as is the purpose of this thread I believe? It doesn't make me feel anything in particular since I'm not a follower of any religion.

 

- Seems to me Intelligence and Enlightenment are Two different things

 

Hey, I think it doesn't take intelligence to be enlightened about concrete economics; takes balls, and a clever wit to convert those balls into the process already owned by the authorities. But to be enlightened about intelligence itself it takes intelligence. One should ignore the fooling over the Will also.:daisy:

 

obviously many, including the most dominant, beam their appeal toward the intellectually lazy. but i really would caution against judging non-abrihamic beliefs on the basis of christianity and islam.

 

Problems with the article and assumptions made concerning religiosity and intelligence;

1) It only really presents the authors opinions and interpretations of the study(s) in question. The link to the main source material only provides access to an abstract and not the full study documents, so unable to form my own assessment of the study and am forced to only consider the conclusions as presented. Big problem for me as I tend to not just accept someone else's interpretation of such research. I often find flaws in the methodolgy in such research.

2) All linked words and 90% of resources linked simply go to another Psychology Today page, so not too convincing concerning the source materials and is actually the same mentality of verification the Bible thumpers are accused of, using their own material to validate their own material. or you need log-in rights to view the source material.

3) Operates under a number of assumptions concerning what religious persons believe and from that have made the assumptive leap that "religious people are not very intelligent", but what is that actually based on?
A couple of hundred years ago people thought electricity was the realm of magic and mystery, now we don't give it a second thought.
Man flying was the subject of myth and fantasy, yet today we can fly anywhere in the world.

My point is that this study makes the conclusion that religious persons lack intelligence primarily based on what they believe in accordance with their religious convictions, but as with my examples, isn't it really more a matter of human knowledge and understanding, science, hasn't gotten to the point of understanding and explanation of some of the beliefs held by religious persons?


and finally, dude, your quoting friggin' Psychology Today, the tabloid of the psychology

 

If you want to hear more about it and make a comment, google 'religious people are less intelligent' and you'll get 33 million hits.

Here's a Christian site where someone comments on the study (obviously they don't argue in favor of them being less intelligent):

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct...ains-and-belief-arent-mutually-exclusive.html

It's not some conspiracy or some one-off opinion piece... it's 63 different studies. That's pretty thorough if you ask me. I really don't think there are too many different ways to frame a study aimed at determining whether religious people are generally more or less intelligent as being something less than objective. That's what it was.

The quoted information/linked to other sites containing actual studies, and ALL of the links to their own site were to simple definitions of the terms. It's not like they're trying to impart absolute truths to anyone, they're simply explaining the meanings of these words. And if you don't like their explanations, just use a dictionary.

I can't believe you would compare that kind of thing to some idiot going off on a rant about how anyone who doesn't agree is going to burn in hell because look at this verse.

It's not an 'assumption', it's (once again) 63 different studies. These are people who self-identify as religious.

And I really don't think that science is playing catchup with religion... they are fundamentally different. Science is supposed to be about saying 'hey, I don't know about this', and then taking steps to come to the most likely conclusion... whereas religion says 'hey, I know everything' and then you need to make the leaps and bounds in order to reach that conclusion, and if you ever question that perhaps the conclusion may be false, you are shunned or excluded from that religion. Please don't give me the 'oh but they're the same' thing-- the ideal scientist is open to consider every possibility and would never just blindly believe in anything.

The worst argument that religious people make is that 'science is playing catchup', as if predicting things based on a 'gut feeling' and then getting them right makes you intelligent. This is the same trick economists pull-- always be predicting doom so if it doesn't happen, people will just ignore you but if it does happen, they'll say OMG he was right I'm going to buy his book for $24.95!

It's not hard to say 'In the future, we'll have faster trains'... or making some ambiguous statements that might be interpreted as metaphors for future events... the hard part is knowing HOW to make the train faster, or the specific details of future inventions.

They didn't do the study... but I suppose if I had said something that made everyone feel good yet provided no sources, everything would have been perfectly fine.

 

No, younger people and older people were also included.
And it's not the only study that reached the same conclusion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religiosity_and_intelligence#Studies_comparing_religious_belief_and_I.Q.

 

And sorry it's from the same 'tabloid' site that apparently isn't up to some people's extremely high standards, but here's an article from the same biased, manipulative and obviously intellectually corrupt site that tries to explain why the studies may have come to this conclusion, and it's actually charitable enough for everyone to not feel so horrible for actually thinking about it instead of just dismissing it because it doesn't fit your PC view of the world:

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-human-beast/201005/the-real-reason-atheists-have-higher-iqs

Sorry, I mean since your ridiculously shallow misinterpretation of it doesn't fit your PC view of the world.