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Check it out: Wikipedia's "Religiousness and intelligence" articleWhat do people think about this? I'm particularly interested in how religious people would explain why intelligent people are so much more likely to be secular than the average person. The "Interpretations" section of the article gives some explanations for this trend, but none of
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As far as the topic in question... I'm a Christian, and though I'm probably not in the "highly intelligent" or "genius" category (say, IQ of 150+), maybe I can help explain a different side of things... maybe not.
I certainly wouldn't dispute the findings of the studies. I think they are merely proving something that is pretty obvious. I had another thought, though: What might the percentage of "ignorant" people that are atheists, versus agnostics, versus religious be? In the older studies sections it says that the SAT scores were inversely related to religiousness, but it didn't list any specifics... not that specifics would make it more credible, I'm just curious. Maybe you would see a similar percentage of nonreligious to religious people regardless of intellectual level (or maybe a more conclusive study would find results that would be a bit more even). That was just a quick thought that I had.
As far as interpretations go... Let's see. One thing that I can think of here that might account for the difference between religiousness in intellectuals and non-intellectuals is the Christian idea of surrender. Some background so you can understand what I mean: Christians believe that God caused the earth and humans to come into existence (side note: I know people that believe that God caused evolution to happen... there are a lot of different takes on the book of Genesis' creation account as far as how literal or metaphorical it is). God created people to fit into the way the earth was at that time. Living in the garden of Eden, there was one rule... don't eat fruit from the tree in the middle of the garden. Of course, they did eat it, God gets mad at them, and kicks them out of the garden. A lot of people think that the sin here was eating the fruit, but the thing that they did wrong was to disobey God. In the act of eating the fruit, they were choosing, in effect, to place themselves as gods above the true God, that their judgement was better and more right than His. This "self-deification" was the original sin, and is one that is certainly still around and prominent in our culture (not to mention, unfortuantely, many Christians' lives). The reason I say all of that is this: In Christianity there is an element of sacrifice and commitment of one's life to God. There is the idea that when one becomes a Christian God, who is far more intelligent and powerful than he/she is, is given control. Not like... turning all Christians into little robots or zombies or anything, but just the idea that we as Christians can look to God for guidance for situations or when faced with a decision to do ... I can't believe I'm saying this, "What Jesus would do." =P So there is the element of surrender of one's life and sacrifice of one's own desires.
What this means for intelligent people, I believe, is this. People that "have it all together" are much less likely to regard another being as superior to them. More than considering God as superior to them is the idea of giving their life over to something/someone else. I think that this can be really hard for smarter people.
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When they say "inversely related" they mean that as intelligence goes up, religiousness goes down. Thus, at lower levels of intelligence they found relatively higher levels of religiousness. I suspect the studies found that the overall proportion of religious-to-secular was as described at the top of the article where it says:
"A 1996 Gallup poll in the US found that 96% of adults believe in God or a higher being, 90% believe in an afterlife, and 87% say religion plays a very important role in their lives. These statistics are comparable to those found in other studies."
People that "have it all together" are much less likely to regard another being as superior to them. More than considering God as superior to them is the idea of giving their life over to something/someone else.
That's an interesting point. I can't speak for others, but I would be overjoyed if I could find reason to believe in a God, an afterlife, and an absolute system of morality. These things would probably bring a great sense of purpose and happiness to my life. Unfortunately, I find the evidence against a (near-)literal interpretation of the Bible to be more convincing than the evidence in favor of it. This is the main factor for me.
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My biggest problem with religion in general (aside from extremists of any kind), on which I'm hoping someone can provide some insight, is how a good portion of people can regard the bible as the word of God and then choose not to believe certain parts. For example, I am a non-religious student attending California Lutheran University (I know what I was getting into), which is affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America. The ELCA has an ordained minister who is openly lesbian and in a committed relationship. CLU also has a gay pride week every year in which a great deal of the school participates. If the bible, in so many words, states that homosexuality is wrong then why can that be disregarded by some? As that non-religious guy, I think this is a great start for promoting tolerance and equal rights, but for a Lutheran or a Christian, why is it ok to say, “God is infallible, the bible is his word, but we don’t like this part so we’ll just pretend like it doesn’t say that.” It seems that if reading the bible as the word of God, it should be all or nothing.
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And by the way, Grant, I agree with nearly everything you said.
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