Today I ran across an article (here) which seems to think so. It discusses some research done recently tying a decline in religious observance over the last century to a rise in average intelligence.
The research was being conducted by Professor Richard Lynn, emeritus professor of psychology at Ulster University.
Apparently there was an additional survey done of Royal Society fellows which found that only 3.3% believed in God. Another poll done in the 90’s found only 7% of the American National Academy of Sciences believed in God.
Lynn said “Why should fewer academics believe in God than the general population? I believe it is simply a matter of the IQ. Academics have higher IQ’s than the general population. Several Gallup poll studies of the general population have shown that those with higher IQs tend not to believe in God.
I’m not sure intelligence is the right word, but perhaps education. Is this because as man becomes more educated they feel more self-sufficient, more superior, and as such, less prone to a belief wherein they rely on someone other than themselves – God?
Perhaps it’s that education relies on reason, proof, and logic, not faith, hope and trust… the thought that if it can’t be roved, then it’s not true.
Perahps the great apostasy, or falling away from the church of Christ, necessitating a full restoration of the gospel through Joseph Smith, was in part due to the natural effects of educational evolution over time.
But the goal, of course, is not to remain ignorant, but to remain humble. The ability to pursue intellectual increase while sustaining humility and testimony is one of the great challenges of life, because it is contrary to the tendency of the natural man.
In the article, Lynn said “… most primary school children believed in God, but as they entered adolescence – and their intelligence increased – many started to have doubts.”
No wonder the Lord so commonly counsels that we must be as little children, without malice, guile, or hypocrisy.
Rusty
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{ 17 comments… read them below or add one }
Sounds to me like Lynn is conflating “intelligence” with “education”.
So this study was just in America? I have a religion and politics class and a secularity and society class at the moment, and we’ve read all sorts of stuff about how the overall numbers of religious are going up in the world, but secularity is more accepted in the Western world, and that religion has become more individualized. Interesting stuff. Some suggested reading to anyone interested:
Lambert: Religion in American Politics
Jenkins: God’s Continent
Wuthnow: After the Baby Boomers
Norris and Inglehart: Sacred and Secular
Casanova: Public Religions in the Modern World
Hurd: The Politics of Secularism in International Relations
Taylor: A Secular Age
Berger: The Desecularization of the World
Hi there,
I’d like just to comment about this passage:
“No wonder the Lord so commonly counsels that we must be as little children, without malice, guile, or hypocrisy.”
If you have to be as a little child to believe in God, than you must love ignorance. Children are creatures that just accept whatever we say to them and have no power of analisys.
And more, little children are way more malicious, guiles and hypocrites than adults. They just think about their own, even when they give those little cute smiles to their parents. They’re always lying to their parents, to their colleagues, etc.
That said, I think you should try to find a better argument for us to believe in God than just saying all humankind should act like children.
Victor
do you describe the self-sufficiency felt by intellectuals based on your concept of yourself or your suppositions of others? i don’t mean to challenge you, not at all, but i’m an atheist and an intellectual, and i do not consider myself intellectually or emotionally “self-sufficient” in the slightest.
what i’m trying to get at, i suppose, is that i am not convinced with your distinction between intelligence and faith, if faith has to do with “hope and trust.”
i think the ultimate demonstration of intelligence is emotional intelligence. i do not believe the two are in any way mutually exclusive. theoretically emotional intelligent people will bridge the gaps between one man and the next and bring about true societal cooperation akin to what may well be the meaning of god. obviously that involves a certain level of academic intelligence, but it is nothing without an emotional intelligence to keep it in check.
just a thought!
Uh… way to try to spin the facts your way. Sorry to say I’m not convinced.
Intelligent people may or may not feel superior. Pride often has nothing to do with reality… and I don’t think is an effect of intelligence. If anything, intelligence makes one more aware of our chemical nature and how little responsibility or agency we actually have. A physicist who studies billions of galaxies is proud? I don’t think so… he knows how insignificant that collection of molecules which he calls his body is.
“If it can’t be proved, then it’s not true.” No. If it can’t be proved… then there’s no reason to believe it. And actually, even this statement is false too. It should be more like, “If it is not demonstrated to be statistically probable, there is no reason to believe it.” This is science and saves us from a milieu of mythologies.
I don’t believe in god even though I am a Humanities major and do not have a very science-oriented brain. I don’t believe in a god, but that doesn’t mean I am arrogant, that I have feelings of “superiority,” or that I am not humble. I don’t need to believe in a god to feel humble of my surroundings, humble about the vast, complex world around me. I don’t think humans are the superior species.
It seems to me that people who do believe in god judge those who don’t just as much as the other way around.
Rusty, I think you have struck a nerve with this post! I suspect it is the nerve directly connected to the human “pride” zone.
The people who ran this study obviously have never met or spoken with scholarly religious giants such as Neal A. Maxwell, Truman Madsen, C.S. Lewis, and millions more with IQs off the charts and solid religious faith! Your post made me think of my recent post “Mormon Temple Study” which includes the video documentary “Between Heaven and Earth”. In this documentary renown world religious scholars and intellectuals were interviewed such as Frank Moore Cross (Harvard Divinity School), Krister Stendahl (Emeritus Lutheran Bishop of Stockholm), Lawrence Schiffman (Hebrew Studies NYU), John Lundquist, Truman Madsen, President Boyd K. Packer, and Elder Jeffrey R. Holland (LDS), among others. All of these persons possess amazing minds and high IQs, and are also capable of intense spirituality. In fact, intelligence enhances belief in God when coupled with the principle of humility.
I think that the key interpretation of “becoming childlike” or being “humble” means to allow ourselves to be honest with who we really are; the whole package of our capabilities coupled with our limitations. A person of sound reason accepts that we do not know all things, we can never know all things (at least in this life – for one thing there isn’t enough time!), and that we actually need help from a higher power to know anything! After all, we should give credit where credit is due. We each are a living, breathing, thinking, reasoning being that exists separately from our own power – with a brain that is not of our own invention – and not humanly possible to recreate. We have physical and intellectual gifts that scientists can imitate to a degree but never replicate exactly nor completely. In fact, scientists and medical professionals who spend their lives studying this one singular biological miracle (the brain) will be the first to acknowledge nothing short of reverence for its design and capacity. Therefore, I submit that “exercising faith in”, or at least accepting that there is a powerful force at work in our universe is a logical acknowledgment. This becomes the highest form of intellectual reason and choice one can make.
Something to ponder: My opinion is that if one decides there is no God, and closes the door on the possibility of God, then one does not allow themselves to learn anything further in the intellectual realm of our spiritual discovery. Those who truly seek to learn as much as possible would want to keep all doors of their mind open and seeking.
Interesting that the study looked at belief in God, rather than belief in organized religion, general spirituality, or a host of other indicators. That’d be an interesting read.
Wouldn’t it be a wonderful thing if everyone’s mind and heart were open to all truth? But to be able to discern truth from falsehood, one would certainly need to be in tune with the source of all truth, that is, Our Heavenly Father.
Frankly, I believe the more intelligent people are, the more they give wonderings on an all knowing, omnipresent God. Or perhaps you’ve not been ganged up on by a league of morons.
Never the less, we’re all in trouble.
Tricky term you got there, intelligent people are less likely to believe in God. Well to me, it’s suppossed tobe ‘intelligents beat hell out of unintellectual Church dogmas’.
People with high IQ levels do preserve the notion of god’s existence and its importance, they just happen not to believe what you refer to as a true god is the righteous god.
Please do check my ‘God’s Spoken’ post and the comments. Significantly.
i agree with using ‘education’ rather than ‘intelligence’. I know people much more intelligent than me, but no college education (i have some, mind you),
check out Total Truth by Nancy Pearcy
I am ready it currently and find it to be really interesting.
It is related to your post.
When people think they are intelligent they are actually challenging the Universe which was made by God. The universe is so vast that no one can even predict or guess if it has an end. Even on Earth, there are so many things like microbes to macrobes that people know little to nothing about. And so, mankind has said so many things in this life and in the past that has been “proven” wrong by himself that he has a lot of nerve considering himself intelligent. The real stupidity of man is to arogantly fade away from the real God, Who needs not be arogant because he is intellilgent and everything else in the universe. and the Heavens.
As someone who has spent the majority of my life in academia (Bachelors degree, J.D., Masters, and completing my Ph.D.) I have known more than a few of my professors quite well. Several were atheists but the majority described themselves as Christian. Perhaps there is a signficant difference between the humanities and the “hard” sciences.
“The people who ran this study obviously have never met or spoken with scholarly religious giants such as Neal A. Maxwell, Truman Madsen, C.S. Lewis, and millions more with IQs off the charts and solid religious faith!”
Respectfully, this is again a misunderstanding of the way science works. Just because there are a few people who score well on an IQ test and also call themselves religious does not disprove that intelligent tend not to be religious.
Let’s couple the findings of this study with the obvious statement that intelligent people more correctly understand the state of the universe (that seems to be what intelligence is), and you have a clear interpretation of these facts. No “I am superior to intelligent atheists because I can twist this study to say what I want” required.