Intelligence and Religious Belief

Great Debates
1

In another thread, the poster Opus1 made the following post in comment to something I said to challenge someone who said the smartest people he knew were religious.

I often thought to myself that it was interesting that in older times, brilliant minds were naturally religious and dedicated their minds to studying their religions a lot of the time.

Whereas, to borrow my own comment wwhich sparked the post above, you don’t see many members of the clergy at a MENSA meeting.

Why is this?

Opus1 uses it as an affirmation that if the most intelligent of us do not believe in God, there must be something to it. What is the religious persons response to this? Surely God doesn’t want Heaven to be full of dummies, right? :wink:

Seriously. If God is so keen on being worshipped, you’d figure he’d be doing a better job reaching the intellectual among us, wouldn’t you?

Yer pal,
Satan

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2

  1. In olden times, pretty much everyone, brilliant or not, was religious.

  2. The works of the few non-religious have been filtered out, while the works of religious people have been given more emphasis and support.

  3. Frankly, these “brilliant” people seem by and large to be rather poor thinkers when it came to religion. From what I can tell, Aquinas and Anselm were idiots. Is the Uncaused Causer or Ontological Argument really the best theology can offer?

3

Simple. There’s no evidence for a God, so a rational, intelligent person just does not assume that God exists. They realize that God was invented by people to satisfy emotional needs.

A lot of religious types claim that “faith” is equal to “logic” or “science” as a way of arriving at truth, when in reality, faith pulls you away from truth. Logic brings you closer to it.

You’re exactly right. If there was a God, and it was very important that we believe and worship, this fact would be made eminently obvious. It isn’t. Therefore, no God. Or, if there is a God, he doesn’t much care whether we worship him or not.

4

Far be it from me to champion belief in god, but…

Ever heard of Pascal’s Wager?

In case you haven’t, it goes something like this;

There are two possible cases; 1. god exists. 2. god does not exist.

Each case has two sub-cases; 1. you believe. 2. you don’t.

If god does not exist, there is only a minimal cost in being wrong by believing in him. The benefits of being correct are also small.

However, if god does exist, the reward (heaven for eternity) and the punishment (hell for eternity) are, by definition, infinite, and thus outweigh by the greatest possible margin the outcomes in the other case.

Faced with the choice between being wrong (small bad) and eternal damnation (big bad) the betting man should choose god. But, he better not put any money on it (that’s a SIN).

5

E’dMann: I’m not quite sure how Pascal’s wager relates to this. Are you saying that intelligent people should believe in God because of Pascal’s wager? Personally, I consider this even more evidence for the non-existence of God. Assuming Pascal’s wager is valid, the fact that certain people still don’t believe indicates just how low of a probability they place upon his existence. Of course, Pascal’s wager is not valid, so it’s all moot anyway.

6

There are different types of intelligence. Supposedly Einstein couldn’t make change for a cab. I really don’t understand how you can decide that a high I. Q. score makes a person the reigning authority in every area of life.

7

Satan says:

You’ve obviously confused ‘intelligence’ with ‘I can do puzzles real good’.

…and from Tzel:

This is an example of “intelligence” and “rationality”? Spare me.

Same question.

Sniping out of the way, what about the actual surveys? One problem is not knowing what sort of questions were asked, or how they define their terms (intelligence, religiosity, etc etc), so it makes it a bit hard! But I’ll make some assumptions as I go through.

Student Bodies

  1. Is a measure of conservatism applicable?

  2. Tendency to be sympathetic is vague, but given the year, I suppose it is allowable.

  3. Allowable, depending on whatever the test actually was!

  4. Liberal v conservative again. N/A.

  5. Same

  6. So, this must be an outlier in the “numerous studies, ALL showing…” bit, then? Or did it slip through the editing process?

7.100 Students? Give me a break. What’s the margin of error here?

  1. Allowable.

  2. Irrelevant.

  3. Translation: we don’t like the result, so something must have gone wrong. Something that I am now free to apply willy-nilly.

  4. Allowable. Short on detail, though.

  5. Always some excuse, isn’t there?

  6. Allowable

  7. Don’t you just love the word ‘apostate’? Allowable.

  8. Small sample, but another ‘apostate’ of the bunch :smiley:

  9. Percentile bands would be better, I’m not sure what ‘good’ and ‘bad’ SAT’s are - there doesn’t look like much difference there, but I may be wrong.

  10. Yeah, what a sample size.

STUDENT BODY COMPARISONS

  1. So?

  2. So?

  3. So?

  4. Ah, organised religion. So?

**STUDIES OF VERY-HIGH IQ GROUPS **

Ahhhhhh, my favourite. IQ Tests.

  1. ‘Inclination’ and ‘importance’. I’m convinced!

  2. Excuses excuses.

  3. 42? The meaning of life, perhaps? See the ‘Mensa’ comment above. They failed to report that “most of the Mensa members also said they were too busy calculating the arrival times of trains travelling in opposite directions on a Tuesday at different velocities” to be bothered going to church’.

STUDIES Of SCIENTISTS

I’ll ignore the underlying assumption that ‘scientist’ equals ‘more intelligent’ and proceed.

  1. Two points. First, HA HA HA HA HA. Second, scientists? Hello?

  2. Nearly acceptable. Perhaps. How not to do surveys: Don’t allow the surveyed to leave anything blank, because then you aren’t allowed to draw any conclusions. I’m also intrigued about the ‘Unitarian’ thing. Was this list put together by a Unitarian or something?

  3. How these were measured is unknown. No further comment required.

  4. Tiny sample again. Says nothing about ‘atheism’ per se, other than that it’s about as equally representative as ‘active in the church’ (which says nothing about beliefs, they may just be slumming it!).

  5. Acceptable.

  6. No comment, since I don’t understamd the results.

  7. Since when is ‘belief in an afterlife’ synonymous with ‘being religious’? You can be religious without that particular belief. Damn poor assumption, isn’t it?

I think that’s it. Now, I’m not saying anything in particular about whether there is, indeed, any correlation between “intelligence” and “religiosity”. But if anyone, from either side of the fence, or even on it, feels the need to bolster their comfort in their position based on a list of survey results, it’s time to re-examine.

Can’t see any reason for anyone to feel good about this - least of all the people doing these pointless surveys, and the people who put them in a list together with the kerygmatic utterances.

8

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Raptormeister *

You’ve obviously confused ‘intelligence’ with 'I can do puzzles real good’

[quote]

And how would you measure intelligence? People who don’t do puzzles real well? :rolleyes:

There are numerous testing methods, some more accurate than others, but regardless, allow me to answer in the manner a congressperson did when debating a working definition of pornography: I know intelligence when I see it.

Answer me this: When was the last time you heard someone described as “brilliant” and was also deeply religious? My fiancee camee up with Gandhi, but I don’t know if he was lauded as “brilliant” off the top of my head. Wonderful and Godly, yes. Not stupid? Certainly. Brilliant? I don’t recall.

In any event, he’s the only one we could even think of as a possibility.

Now, don’t get me wrong here. I think that there are some very intelligent, deeply religious people - most of the religious people in this forum I find to have above-average intelligence. And Lord knows, there are a lot of dumb atheists and agnostics.

But I do think it is safe to say that this is not the rule, but the exception, overall whether you want to look at statistics or just the experiences of most people.

And speaking about those statistics, all you seem to be doing is complaining about the methodology and/or accuracy of the citations provided, all with your own opinion that they are flawed in different ways.

How about some cites of your own then?

Yer pal,
Satan

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9

Are you referring to Gardner’s theory of different intelligences? He’s up to about 11 different ones now isn’t he? Or the guy with the theory of emotional intelligence? Goleman I think his name is. Or those people who wrote the virtually unreadable and almost totally devoid of intelligence Spiritual Intelligence? Man that was one turgid read.

What is frequently overlooked by people who tout these theories of ‘intelligences’ is that it is possible to score highly on a conventional intelligence test which measures general intelligence and also score highly on the other tests.

10

Before I get called on this sweeping generalization, (Actually, I already have, I think.) I’ll explain that this statement was made while in a moment of feeeling particularly contemptuous of religious beliefs, a regular state for me. Sure, there are some intelligent religious folks, but I contend that they are more the exception in the religious crowd. I also contend that the concept of religion in general arises when rationality is suspended, and religious beliefs tend to crumble under logical scrutiny.

11

Hmm, I guess this dichotomoy could be defended by itself, but from a perspective of religious beliefs, it would go more like this:

  1. No gods exist. 2. Yahweh exists, and Christ is not Messiah. 3. Yahweh exists, and Christ is Messiah. 4. Allah exists. 5. Baal exists. 6. Marduk exists. 7. Quetzalcoatl and Huitzilopochtli and their ilk exist. 8. Vishnu and couple hundred thousand other gods exist. 9…

You get the point.

Sure, except now you are actually limited to believing in one of the many gods and belief systems.

Depends on how you look at it. I would consider spending my life crusading for the Xian right and attending Christian Coalition meetings to be a very big cost. Not all believers in god act thusly, of course, but some do.

Sure, assuming that God takes all his believers to heaven and sends the unbelievers to hell. Perhaps God likes atheists that leave him alone and don’t harass him to change the happenings in the universe. Maybe he specifically designed the universe to not hold any evidence of his existence, and he will judge us on how well we interpreted the data and the consistency of our worldviews. Maybe there’s another being greater than God that created God in such a way as to make God think that God himself is the only supreme being, and the creator of God has hidden its existence. Then maybe this Overgod will punish all of God’s followers. We can dream up all sorts of situations where belief in God will not save you, and I don’t think any of them are much more unreasonable than thinking God would expect us to stake our eternity on a virtual void of evidence.

If God is a one-religion-man (or woman, or non-sexed being, as I would prefer if I believed in God), then you’re screwed anyway if you pick the wrong one. I would prefer to base my life on what I can logically deduce to be true, rather than ducking imagined punishment from some deity that never bothers to show itself.

12

What I think would be really stupid is attempting to use a question begging epistemology like reason to prove the existence or nonexistence of an Absolute, like God. Reason deals only with what we can perceive with our brains, that is, things made of atoms. Whoa, Nellie! What’s our brains made of? Whaddaya know … atoms!

Of course, I believe in God. Since most scientists do not, I must be stupid.

Hopefully one day, everybody will be scientists, and we can be rid of such nonthinking people as painters, sculptors, musicians, philosophers, and writers.

13

Although I don’t really consider myself a ‘scientist’ (images of Newton, Einstein, Pasteur, etc. always come to mind, and I would never presume to put myself in the same category), I do have a B.S. in zoology and a M.S. in marine biology, and have worked in the biological field for all of my adult life. I do consider myself above average in intelligence.

I also am ‘religious.’ I take my spiritual beliefs very seriously, to the extent that I consider myself a born-again Christian.

I don’t really have an additional point to make. I just thought I’d throw the example into the mix. Make of it what you will.

14

Aside from the rather obvious conclusion that intelligence probably exists in roughly equal proportions among the religious as among the general population . . .

J.S. Bach: You don’t think he was writing music to hit the Top 40, do you? He was writing to glorify his God, and in so doing presented Western culture with many of its greatest studies in harmony and counterpoint.

Isaac Newton: Performed his endless investigation of the natural universe in order to better understand and reveal the work of God.

Galileo Galilei: A faithful servant of the Catholic Church unto the very end.

C.S. Lewis: All considerations of his theological writing aside, a brilliant writer of children’s literature and capable of deeply insightful metaphor and allegory.

Bishop John Spong: Episcopal Bishop, Christian apologist, Fundamentalist critic and a damned good writer to boot.

Those are just five that I can think of off the top of my head. If I sat down and really gave it some effort, I could come up with a few dozen.

15

I understand how faith in a belief system could compromise one’s rationality if it insisted that a believer ignore aspects of the world around them (ie. Christians denying evolution, etc.). But my personal faith does not concern this reality at all. My beliefs do not in any way conflict with scientific theory. How can they make me less rational?
I don’t get it.

16

This has also been noted by one of this board’s scientists, edwino, from his own personal experience.

I would suggest that this is more prevalent among scientist than among other “intelligent” people. Scientist can become wedded to a “scientific” way of thinking, which may not be compatible with (or appropriate for) religion.

This may be a function of the fact that our society is mostly religious. The less intelligent people are less likely to question commonly held beliefs about anything. If our society was predominently athiest, it might be the other way around.

17

PL DEnnison quoted some heavy hitters on the Christian team, although it should be noted that Bishop Spong denies the divinity of Jesus and he says the Resurrection never happened, so he can’t be called a Christian.

I could also come up with some intelligent Christians:
[list]
[li]Henri Nouwen, a Christian theologian and apologist[/li][li]Thomas Merton, a brilliant thinker who wrote “The Seven-Storey Mountain”, a terrific autobiography[/li][li]Clarence Jordan, who founded an interracial Christian commune called Koininia Farm Georgia in the 40s, and who also translated the Gospels into a Southern metaphor as “The Cotton Patch Gospel.”[/li]
It is possible to reconcile Christian faith and intelligence. The American anti-intellectual tradition plus the fundamentalists’ rejection of reason in favor of experience and personal revelation have led to modern American Christianity being represented by a pack of thump-headed, backwoods yokels, and I can say that as a backwoods yokel myself.

Fundemantalist Christians have also lost sight of the central beliefs of the Atonement and the Resurrection. They behave like the Taliban, presenting their backward tribal beliefs as part of their religion, which cannot be justified by Scripture. Naturally, educated people will think that if these creationist gay-bashing hicks are representative of Christianity, then it must be a religion for morons.

Faith comes from grace, and grace comes as the gift of God through repentance and a contrite heart.(I’m a heathen, but I’m not an ignorant heathen.) There is no inherent contradiction between faith and reason, as long as you recognize the boundaries of each. All things work together for the good of those who love God, and that includes the works of the head and the heart.

Lib, as I posted in another thread, reason is a heuristic tool to help you sort out valid claims from invalid claims.
And if you think that being a scientist keeps you from aesthetic appreciation of beauty and the arts, well, you need to read up on some biographies of scientists. Sheesh.

Just because I don’t share your faith doesn’t mean I don’t understand it, and, in some ways, sympathize with it.

18

Name an epistemology that is not question begging. And what do you mean by “Absolute”?

You’re joking right? Do you seriously believe that reason cannot be used mathematically? Last I checked, numbers were not made of atoms.

I wouldn’t say that, but I would guess that you’re not a scientists. :wink:

Um … what? I don’t think any claimed that writers, philosophers, etc. were nonthinking. Indeed, many scientists are also writers, painters, musicians, etc.

19

Satan said:

My bolding, just as a reminder that Satan, at least, isn’t arguing that the religious are stupid.

Centers of learning have changed.

It used to be that the Church was a major center of learning and teaching- students would go to Monasteries and religious Universities in order to learn the three R’s and for higher studies. Churches were seen as centers of knowledge and repositories of accumulated learning. Ergo, those who felt a desire to learn and develop new knowledge turned to the Church as the major faciliator of their pursuits.

Consider also the lack of options. In Renaissance Europe there was Christianity. And that’s about it, unless you were born into the Jewish faith or one of the remote few who actually knew a Muslim. For most people, then, religion was not a matter of “Christianity vs. Islam vs. Buddhist vs. Hinduism” but a matter of “Christianity or nothing.”

Finally, consider the basic scientific knowledge of most people of those times. It was perfectly plausible for Newton to believe in the literalism of the Bible; much of the scientific data which pushes those items into metaphorical terms (how the world was created, how long ago it was created, whether the Sun revolved around the Earth or vice-versa) was not determined until a much later point. Science had not disproved the the Earth was created in Six Days, ergo, it was perfectly fine for one to be a determined intellectual and scientist and still believe absolutely that Genesis was a factual account.
Today, most children are schooled in secular environments, with religious schooling generally being specifically about the religion; choosing a religion is a matter of weighing a good dozen major religions rather than “Christ or nothing”; and religious beliefs need to be reconciled with scientific knowledge. Ergo, those who are more educated and intelligent are people who have spent more time in a strictly secular learning environment, must reconcile their knowledge with the beliefs of the major religions, and have a wider array of religions from which one must be divined as “true”. Thus, modern intelligent people are less likely to be able to ahere and devote to a specific religion.

God, as most true Christians would portray him, wants everyone to be in Heaven, so kicking out the ‘dummies’ would be awfully immoral of him.

As for God not appealing to the intelligent- I think it depends upon your view of God. Those who view God as a loving Father who opens Heaven to all of those who do well by their fellows see intelligent moral people as gaining Heaven regardless of worship or adherence to a strict specific religion. Those who view God as limiting entry only to those who accept the sacrifice of His Son, well, they’ve got a very limited Heaven anyways, so what’s a few more people?

I cannot attribute motives or logic to God. Sorry. He’s all beyond my comprehension, and trying to determine his nature to an absolute seems to me the mental equivalent of nailing jelly to the wall.

20

There is no clear line between stupidity and intelligence. What’s more, people tend to excell in some areas while doing poorely in others. Would any of us like to sit down with a pad a pencil and define which qualities and tallents constitute intelligence and which do not?

What I have recently learned for myself is that intelligent people do not judge others on matters of personal faith any more than they would judge a person on preferance of a particular colour. They certainly don’t make sweeping judgements on whether a person is smarter because he is a scientist rather than a musician.

Face it folks. Stupidity is human nature and it is overly abundant in society. Stupidity does not need to take the form of a Jerry Springer guest or fan, nor is it as obvious as a Darwin award winner. Some seemingly well educated people are as dumb as a bag of hammers and we all know at least a dozen such people from encounters with them in our every day lives.

Stupidity, as I have discovered, is the inability to admit one’s own fallibility and the presumption that one’s opinions are absolute truths which must be forced down everyone else’s throats. Religious faith, or lack of it, has precious little to do with intelligence.