Does anyone know of any studies that relate IQ or amount of education to religious beliefs? Thank you in advance. Paco
Not offhand, but I highly doubt the one has anything whatsoever to do with the other. If it means anything, though, about 40% of scientists believe in some sort of god.
I know of no studies. Now for the anecdotal.
I work with geologists and other geophysicists. The age of the Earth, and existence, is central to many strict creationists arguments as well as to an understanding of the geological processes that have given us the Earth and Universe as it is today. Almost all earth scientists, and certainly all those that I know, accept a 5-6 billion year old Earth, and are in the majority Christian.
You can probably find a study to say whatever you want it to say, Paco. If you want to prove that the those who are highly educated/those who have high IQs tend to be religious, you can probably find a “study” that suggests that. If you want to prove that only ignorant, uneducated people are religious, I’m sure there’s scores of “studies” out there claiming that as well.
It is wth some trepidation that I contradict the great Q.E.D. (although I will smugly mention that I have correctly solved one problem that Q.E.D. got wrong).
But if we recall the fact that the percentage of religous believers in the U.S. is much higher than 40%, then his first sentence is contradicted by his second. I.e., scientists, who we must assume to be more educated and intelligent than the general public, are less likely to believe in God.
I haven’t found a cite, but I’ve read several surveys published in Skeptical Inquirer and other skeptical publications that said that religious belief declines with education.
SnoopyFan: find us a study that shows a positive correlation between education/intelligence and religious belief. I haven’t seen one.
I would certainly consider the source when looking at such a study – especially since intelligence is difficult to pin down.
In all fairness, I don’t think Paco’s question was quite that slanted.
The answer to the OP is… sometimes yes, sometimes no.
The Amish, for instance, generally end education at 14 years of age. Although continued education is not forbidden it’s far from encouraged. I know of at least one Amish midwife who took college level courses for some sort of certification, but that was an exception to the usual cultural practice. But the Amish have individuals every bit as intelligent as those going to, say, MIT. It’s just that they don’t have a lot of formal education.
On the flip side, some religions, such as Judaism, encourage scholarship and “book learning”. The Catholic church runs entire universities, some of them quite prestigious.
And I’ve met some pretty stupid/uneducated atheists.
So, while there may be some statistical relationship between IQ, education, and religion there are so many cultural factors mixed in that I don’t think there is a cause and effect situation
I’ve known many scientists (biologists mostly) and they covered a wide range of religious beliefs: devout Catholics, observant Jews, evangelical Protestant, casual Hindus, and Muslims, as well as atheists and agnostics.
I have never discerned a very strong correlation between education level and intelligence, and I couldn’t begin to comment on a relationship between intelligence and religious belief.
Yeah. All those morons with PhDs. 
This is true, howver, it’s not a proper study, and the correlation cannot be properly defined in this case. Perhaps it is the case that agnostics and atheists are simply more likely to become scientists. Albert Einstein, arguably one of the smartest men who ever lived, believed in God and had no formal university training to be a scientist.
PhDs require a good work ethic, they don’t (IMO) require a high level of intelligence.
Ahhh, you’ve met them. I work with some every day.
The list of religions or lack thereof in my earlier post referred to scientists at the PhD level, BTW. Some even have multiple degrees.
I wouldn’t disagree with that, Skogcat. But that’s a slightly different argument than Laughing Lagomorph’s.
Anyway, as you can both probably judge from the “;)” at the end of the post, I’m not trying to get into a serious argument here.
There is currently a thread in GD which contains a link to a poll on the same subject. Religious belief is broken down by gender, race, age, and education level. It clearly shows that religious belief of all kinds decreases with education level.
I would also question the statistic of 40% of scientists believing in some sort of god. Most statistics I have seen put the figure at under 10%. Ahhh, I just found a link (an admittedly biased website, but I think it gives a fair presentation of the facts) that might show where the 40% figure comes from… a 1916 study!? The more recent (1997) survey showed 7% of responding scientists believe in a personal god.
This article contradicts that figure:
Looks like both sets of numbers are correct, but were taken from different samples. It seems the American Atheist site was referencing this follow-up study, which shows the lower numbers. In either case it is a much smaller percentage of believers than in the US population in general.
Yeah I could see that. I just wasn’t sure how far away from “Moron” you really think PhDs are.
LEADING SCIENTISTS STILL REJECT GOD
A survey in mid-1998 found that 93% of U.S. scientists do not profess belief in God, and 92.1 percent do not profess belief in immortality.
Cite: Nature, Vol. 394, No. 6691, p. 313 (1998) © Macmillan Publishers Ltd.