{"id":153,"date":"2008-06-19T12:47:36","date_gmt":"2008-06-19T16:47:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/2008\/06\/19\/are-atheists-smarter-than-religous-people\/"},"modified":"2008-06-19T12:47:39","modified_gmt":"2008-06-19T16:47:39","slug":"are-atheists-smarter-than-religous-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/are-atheists-smarter-than-religous-people\/","title":{"rendered":"Are Atheists Smarter Than Religous People?"},"content":{"rendered":"

According to this <\/a>article by Professor Richard Lynn, emeritus professor of psychology at Ulster University, the smarter a person is, the less likely they are to believe in a god <\/p>\n

Lynn makes quite a few assumptions in his paper, which compares belief among academics to the general population. The idea that academics are smarter than the general population isn’t necessarily valid – not only are some academics completely incompetent, some who are brilliant in their field are complete dunces outside a classroom. A proper study would include a large sample size and carefully adjust for counfounders like as age, income level, and religious upbringing.<\/p>\n

Then we have to consider if IQ is a valid way to measure intelligence. I like the theory that there are a lot of different kinds of intelligence. There are the obvious ones, like Math IQ and Language IQ, but there is also Music IQ, Social IQ, Physical IQ, and so on. I think there is even a Freedom IQ, which is marked by a disdain for authority and a lack of the all too common human tendency to bend at the knee. <\/p>\n

But with all that in mind, I think the premise is sound, based on my own experience: I have never met a stupid atheist. They may have other undesirable personality traits, but stupid? Never.<\/p>\n

It takes something special to become an Atheist in the US. Although we’re all born atheists, from the first moments we become aware of the world our culture bombards us with god stuff. God is in our music, our government, our art, on our money and in our pledge. You can’t even sneeze in public without someone automaticaly mentioning god. Theism infests our culture at every level. <\/p>\n

It takes a certain kind of intelligence, and lots of it, to really look skeptically at what most of the country takes for granted. And concluding that the Christian god is no more real than the Greek or Roman or Viking gods takes more than just intelligence – it takes guts to deal with the inevitable fallout. Many people who need a sky-daddy to be good can’t even conceive of someone being moral without the threat of eternal torture. The result is Atheists are despised and distrusted by the ignorant, and there are a lot <\/i>of ignorant sucking up oxygen. Admitting your atheism can cost you friends, it can cost a promotion (or even your job) and it often costs you your family. In the past twenty years I’ve spoken with my father, in total, for about 45 minutes. I left his cult when I was a young man, and so he is forbidden to speak with me. His god, Jehovah, is a nasty prick. <\/p>\n

I’m not saying all religious people are stupid – I know some truly brilliant theists. But the number of mouth breathing atheists is approximately none and a substantial percentage of the very religious are blithering idiots, so when you average out the numbers atheists are going to be on the top of the heap.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

According to this article by Professor Richard Lynn, emeritus professor of psychology at Ulster University, the smarter a person is, the less likely they are to believe in a god Lynn makes quite a few assumptions in his paper, which compares belief among academics to the general population. The idea that academics are smarter than […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[22,3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}