Do you believe those who are religious

[Toobluntt]

have lower intelligence, in general because they believe in a God, than non believers/non religious people?

I ask because I saw a comment as such on another thread in AIBU, and it's something I've heard/read before, that some people (obviously non-believers) question the intelligence of those who believe in God, or follow an organised religion.

I am not saying this is what I believe, I'm just genuinely interested to know if this is a commonly held view, or not, and if so, why you think this way.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religiosity_and_intelligence

There are a few studies discussed and linked in this article. The main jist is the smarter you are, the less religious you are likely to be. That is true scaled up too; the poorer a country is, the more religious it is likely to be.

Fides quaerens intellectum
Or
Faith seeking understanding

Religion leads many to philosophical thought. Following a faith can be a lifelong study for many.

The nice thing is you can also be religious and lacking intelligence. It's a broad church.

Some people really don't understand how faithful people view the teachings of their church and religious texts. You are aware that the bible was written by men a very long time ago and has been translated and has to be interpreted in that light?. Helps to have a bit of brain power for that.

I see this thread is trotting out a few tired tropes about religious people including a false dichotomy between faith and logic. It's pretty illogical to believe that given the very exact conditions required for both creation and survival of life on earth, and the sheer complexity of biological design and human ingenuity, that all of this came about randomly. That's some leap.

In my case I'm more like doubting Thomas because God showed me what I needed to get back to a life of faith. Happy are those who have not seen and still believe.

I was just answering OPs question honestly and not claiming I’m necessarily right.

My husband came from a Christian family and became atheist in his teens which is something I respect about him because most people don’t question it & don’t change. If you were born into a Muslim family you would probably be Muslim right now, same with most Christians & yes I concede the point, most atheists.

It's pretty illogical to believe that given the very exact conditions required for both creation and survival of life on earth and the sheer complexity of biological design and human ingenuity that all of this came about randomly. That's some leap.

Maybe, but 'came about randomly' seems a lot less of a bonkers leap than 'was created by one of the hundreds or maybe thousands of divine beings made up (and usually eventually abandoned) by different cultures around the world throughout human history'. I guess it's slightly less bonkers if you think that all those deities are just cultural interpretations of a universal, nebulous 'higher power', but then it seems pretty odd to adopt the version invented by whichever culture you happen to have been born into, rather than just believing in a nebulous higher power.

See I'd put many atheists on par with people who come from religious backgrounds if I used that reasoning though. Because many people are atheist just because they were raised without religion. So they give it no thought.

Just because someone was brought up in a non-religious family, that doesn't mean they've never thought about it. It's not as if they won't have met religious people, or come across religion-related issues in the news etc. I imagine pretty much everyone has thought at least a bit about whether they believe and why they do or don't, and why other people do or don't. I certainly wouldn't assume many religious people had never questioned their faith.

Quite the opposite in my view. Step into any City Centre church in Oxford or Cambridge to see

"We assume we make our decisions using ration and logic, but we evolved as a social species and mostly seek out consensus from others to validate our beliefs."

That could very well be how most of the majority live, but that is not the norm for people with high intelligence (IQ 130 and above).

Plenty of unthinking atheists out there. I know many clever religious people. I'm a Christian and live in what Mumsnet would call a naice area so my church is packed with doctors, lawyers and other professionals. I'm a professor in a Russell Group university (nothing to do with theology).

I do wonder how people still believe but I don’t question their intelligence.

I think people who believe in religions that subjugate women must be lacking some critical thinking skills. And I think people who go to war for religion clearly are.

No one is denying that atheists can be unintelligent or theists can be intelligent.

The question asked referred to “in general” so individual examples are not that useful in answering the question posed by @Toobluntt

The fact that you think evoloution is "random" demonstrates that you don't understand it. Genetic mutation is random - evoloution is not.

No!
Not at all!
I am curious about them and their thinking.

I know only one person who is a “born again Christian “, he is a deep thinker, very interesting. I actually don’t know anyone who is religious other than him.

Its never crossed my mind to question intelligence associated with religious beliefs.

Meadowbird, I agree with your post - especially in the UK, cultural Christianity does play a role. I know several people who attend church but don't know their motivation for doing so, whether they have a deep faith or something more cultural. They are all intelligent people.

Fundamental Christians in the US - not so sure.........

Agree with @Meadowbird earlier. I suspect a large proportion of attendees at churches and temples and mosques etc don't actively believe. Their faith comes from their upbringing and is fixed. It's less hard work to just carry on with it, keep the peace, follow traditions around marriage etc. That can be an intelligent logical choice. The same applies to people brought up in non-religious households

Re greater happiness etc for those who are religious. I can believe that as you have a ready made wider community to slot into. A support group. And if you're religious-lite (which I think most "religious" people are) you get the friendship etc without getting too bogged down in the illogicalities of "faith". You made that decision at some point and don't feel the need to keep revisiting it.

I was raised in a religious household, I don't believe any more but lots of my wider family still do and they are pretty intelligent. I think it's simply a comfort and tradition thing for a lot of people.

It's ironic the folk on here who don't understand the difference between data and anecdata. And the fact they won't understand what I just wrote. Hint: your cousin being intelligent and religious proves nothing about the population as a whole.

There's a difference betweeen intelligence and education.

Also: Alabama. (Textbooks mentioning evolution are banned)

Do I think Creationists (who literally think the world was created 6,000 years ago or whatever, and that God hid fossils in rocks to fool people) are less intelligent?

I think they are gullible idiots.

(and no, I'm not an atheist)

hth

Yes this is what Ibthink. I woukd say I was agnostic, but I married into a very atheistic family who, if I'm honest, are quite patronising towards religious people- call them stupid, how it's beyond belief that people can believe in God etc etc. I have religious family. They are part of a community that they can call on if they need, they help others, and seem far happier and with far fewer mental health problems than DH's family. I've come to the conclusion that man made God to help him get through life in a way that provides ritual, community, meditation, therapy, a way of connecting people of different backgrounds and ages and a way of helping others. I think some atheists are less intelligent and narrow-minded ( and judgmental) as they either dont see the value in any of that. As in all things, fundamentalism ( in religion and atheism) is hugely damaging but people just going to church/ mosque/ whatever is not stupid if it means that you are happier as a result.

Perhaps there is a dichotomy between those that profess to belief in a religion and their intellect.
For a person to be judged to be 'intelligent' they will have to have thought for themselves.
But belief in a religion, or sect, absolutely restricts the person from free thinking. They have to believe the teachings of the 'guru / bishop / rabbi / sacred text' or whoever
Maybe some just want to be told to do whatever as it is easier than thinking for yourself all the time or want to join in a group.

Yes, an inverse relationship between religious belief and intelligence has been established in lots of studies.

Some links here — the first is just a research digest, but will have details on the studies for those interested.

In the Daws and Hampshire study, 63,000 people were surveyed and had to complete cognitive tasks that tested reasoning, planning, attention and working memory — and after controlling for factors like age and education, atheists outperformed believers. Also including a long Wiki entry which links to discussions of the issues, cultural factors, ways of measuring intelligence and religiosity etc.

https://www.bps.org.uk/research-digest/are-religious-people-really-less-smart-average-atheists

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.02191/full

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religiosity_and_intelligence#:~:text=The%20correlation%20was%20suggested%20to,levels%20of%20atheism%20in%20society.

This covers it absolutely 💯

I dony know. Intelligence is not self-awareness. Perhaps the question (that I ponder) is Do religious people have more emotional intelligence? My mother is religious and feels better than me for that reason. She has decided what reality is and I can only be in a relationship with her if I collude with her distorted reality.

Intelligence and religious belief are not relatable concepts. The terms of this question betray an unquestioned acceptance of a very particular definition of intelligence, that is to say Western rationalistic Enlightenment thought. Furthermore, the thread so far seems largely to conflate academic and professional success with intelligence, which is both reductive and depressing.
There is also no attempt to define a pretty clumsy term 'religious belief', which is pertinent to the question.
The question is as ridiculous and pointless as asking whether 'being an atheist means you are stupid'.
There are fundamentalists in any walk of life; there are sensitive, thoughtful and humble humans across global faith/non faith divides. The sooner people stop framing the debate in terms of science vs faith arguments, the better.

And yet, numerous wide-reaching studies have established an inverse relationship between intelligence and religious belief over and over again.

See previous post.