Atheism and IQ

[Crow]

Really?  I didn't count up the questions, but I got the opposite impression.  I thought that there were more questions about Christianity than any other religion.  And that still doesn't explain why atheists get the best scores - in theory, if we are assuming that people won't know about religions other than their own, wouldn't we do the worst?  I think we just pay better attention. 

Yeah a lot of the questions were Christian but pretty much simple common knowledge questions that anybody living in a western society would be able to get as its rammed in our ears regularly. In theory any questions that were associated with another religion would only help the believers of those religions achieve a higher score. In the matter of atheists and agnostics getting better scores its probably because atheists and agnostics have usually absorbed a larger amount of information about various religions and is one of the reasons we/they get better average scores than the average christian.

[Whitney]

I think that getting a score above 30 means one is overly obsessive about religious mythologies.  

In my case it's because I retained most of what I learned back when I was a bit obsessive for the purposes of figuring things out for myself.  I think I quit actually caring over 4 years ago so any subsequent knowledge since then has been by accident from random forum posts.    I use to be able to answer most of those questions via fill in the blank...don't think I'd do so well now without choices to pick from (brain likes to give priority to important stuff that actually applies to life).

[xSilverPhinx]

I think that getting a score above 30 means one is overly obsessive about religious mythologies. 

In my case it's because I retained most of what I learned back when I was a bit obsessive for the purposes of figuring things out for myself.  I think I quit actually caring over 4 years ago so any subsequent knowledge since then has been by accident from random forum posts.    I use to be able to answer most of those questions via fill in the blank...don't think I'd do so well now without choices to pick from (brain likes to give priority to important stuff that actually applies to life).

In mine it's because it's knowledge that I pick up while talking with other atheists. Having never been religious myself, I never felt the need to research any of it with serious intent to see if any of it held any water.

Probably the fact that the secular and non religious don't shy away from information on religions also helps keep the average up whereas for Catholics for instance, where such things are more controlled and people kept dumbed down, knwledege is lower than average.

[Ali]

I'm pretty sure I pick up 95% of the things I know by sheer osmosis. 

[Traveler]

I got 29/32. I'm actually surprised, because I don't make a habit of studying religions. I guess I've absorbed a lot from being on these forums.

[Sweetdeath]

I'm pretty sure I pick up 95% of the things I know by sheer osmosis. 

LOL Maybe. The only "religious" things I read were Buddist, but I don't really consider Buddhism religious, and more of a philosophy.

[Tristan Jay]

I took the quiz, got 28 out of 32.  I had hoped for higher, yet I figure that's a respectable enough score; in the face of the craziness I put myself through.

I was given an IQ test a couple months ago, and I did pretty well with that, too.  I'm somewhere in the 90th percentile, and just one or two questions shy of whatever the next tier was (can't remember just now).

Sweetdeath, i think I'm liking Buddhism, too.  I'm exploring it more, a little bit at a time, just now. 

[Sandra Craft]

I took the quiz, got 28 out of 32.  I had hoped for higher, yet I figure that's a respectable enough score; in the face of the craziness I put myself through.

Still, that's much higher than the average, even for atheists (which I think was 20.8 ).  Given how high everyone who took it here scored, there must be some atheists out there who truly know nothing about religions in order to get that average.

[Sweetdeath]

I took the quiz, got 28 out of 32.  I had hoped for higher, yet I figure that's a respectable enough score; in the face of the craziness I put myself through.

I was given an IQ test a couple months ago, and I did pretty well with that, too.  I'm somewhere in the 90th percentile, and just one or two questions shy of whatever the next tier was (can't remember just now).

Sweetdeath, i think I'm liking Buddhism, too.  I'm exploring it more, a little bit at a time, just now. 

Buddhism is definitely wirth reading. It is very loving and lax. I have a few books I take on the metro with me. Siddhartha is wirth reading. It's only like 100 pages.

Buddhist hell is hardcore,but ignoring that and nirvana, the philosophies of Buddism are like a good book; like King Arthur or the Ugly Duckling.

[Crow]

LOL Maybe. The only "religious" things I read were Buddist, but I don't really consider Buddhism religious, and more of a philosophy.

Nah its full on religion, the teachings of Siddhartha contain a lot of spiritual talk and writings about there being a true path to follow and a right way of doing things but unlike practically every other religion it says if you don't believe it that's fine.

[Too Few Lions]

LOL Maybe. The only "religious" things I read were Buddist, but I don't really consider Buddhism religious, and more of a philosophy.

Nah its full on religion, the teachings of Siddhartha contain a lot of spiritual talk and writings about there being a true path to follow and a right way of doing things but unlike practically every other religion it says if you don't believe it that's fine.

the two aren't mutually exclusive, and were pretty intrinsically entwined in the past. We consider Plato as a philosopher, yet he taught that only someone who practiced his brand of philosophy could return to God after death, which sounds awfully like a religion.

[yepimonfire]

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=402381
http://articles.cnn.com/2010-02-26/health/liberals.atheists.sex.intelligence_1_sexual-behaviors-liberalism-exclusivity?_s=PM:HEALTH



I was hoping to get the temperature of the forum on this. Does intelligence = atheism. Or does a higher intellect at least create higher potential for atheism. I've heard that extremism follows the poor and uneducated, this is both religious and nationalist extremism/fundamentalism. I also heard in a lecture that religious officials and those most educated of theologians had the least literal interpretations of their faith. The above are a few articles that I found that mention the potential link of higher I.Q. to atheism.

Since I have joined this forum I have heard and seen postings of deep philosophical, logical and scientific merit. To me it seems like the atheist world view requires the ability to rationalize the environment and to understand complex scientific principles like deep time, evolution and the biochemistry of the human mind. There are occasionally the atheists that post here that have simply been driven from their faith by prejudice, but I think a greater volume of those of us that post here have a fundamental working knowledge of the history of the universe. So in short, is religion, particularly religious literalism and fundamentalism, a relic of a more primitive past, will intellectual evolution eventually leave religion behind. Also do you think that atheists are just plain smarter in general than those of deep religiosity.

Also any other articles or links to studies would be appreciated.

my grandma has an IQ of 160, my mom 140, and my dad 160, mine is 180. both parents and grandparents are theistic, and i was for the longest time too.

also, being poor and uneducated has nothing to do with intelligence. if i decided to drop out of school and never get a job, id still have an iq of 180. though more people who are uneducated tend to have lower iq's, it's correlation without causation. many people of average intelligence are educated and many people with average intelligence are uneducated and perhaps poor.

[Crow]

LOL Maybe. The only "religious" things I read were Buddist, but I don't really consider Buddhism religious, and more of a philosophy.

Nah its full on religion, the teachings of Siddhartha contain a lot of spiritual talk and writings about there being a true path to follow and a right way of doing things but unlike practically every other religion it says if you don't believe it that's fine.

the two aren't mutually exclusive, and were pretty intrinsically entwined in the past. We consider Plato as a philosopher, yet he taught that only someone who practiced his brand of philosophy could return to God after death, which sounds awfully like a religion.

That's true you can follow the philosophy of Islam or any other religion if one was inclined to but Buddhism is a religion from its fundamental premise, although philosophically speaking it is structured better than other religions for being used solely as a philosophy. I personally like a lot of what is said in Buddhism (i.e.my sig) but its hard to deny it being a religion. There are many religions that started out as philosophy that were later adopted as a religion however Buddhism isn't one of them, the concept of the sangha which is one of the three jewels helps distinguish Buddhism as a religion.