Are Atheists More Intelligent than Theists?

[jeff_franklin]

“elite scientists”

(rolls eyes!)

Hmmm! Where have I heard the term "elite" before?

Oh yeah! Cults! All Cults believe they are the 'ELITE'!

Here are the truly great, "elite" to use that term correctly, scientists of the world and what they believe:

ALBERT EINSTEIN

Nobel Laureate in Physics:

“I want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts, the rest are details.” (Einstein, as cited in Clark 1973, 33).


MAX PLANCK

Nobel Laureate in Physics

“Religion represents a bond of man to God. It consists in reverent awe before a supernatural Might to which human life is subordinated and which has in its power our welfare and misery.


WERNER HEISENBERG

Nobel Laureate in Physics:

Heisenberg wrote: “The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you .


ROBERT MILLIKA

Nobel Laureate in Physics:

“It pains me as much as it did Kelvin ‘to hear crudely atheistic views expressed by men who have never known the deeper side of existence.’ Let me, then, henceforth use the word God to describe that which is behind the mystery of existence and that which gives meaning to it. I think you will not misunderstand me, then, when I say that I have never known a thinking man who did not believe in God.”

“To me it is unthinkable that a real atheist could be a scientist.”


CHARLES TOWNES,

Nobel Laureate in Physics.

“I strongly believe in the existence of God, based on intuition, observations, logic, and also scientific knowledge.” (Townes 2002a).


ARTHUR SCHAWLOW

Nobel Laureate in Physics:

“Religion is founded on faith. It seems to me that when confronted with the marvels of life and the universe, one must ask why and not just how. The only possible answers are religious."


WILLIAM PHILLIPS

Nobel Laureate in Physics.

“I believe in God. In fact, I believe in a personal God who acts in and interacts with the creation. I believe that the observations about the orderliness of the physical universe, and the apparently exceptional fine-tuning of the conditions of the universe for the development of life suggest that an intelligent Creator is responsible. …I believe in God because of a personal faith, a faith that is consistent with what I know about science.”


SIR WILLIAM H. BRAGG

Nobel Laureate in Physics:

“What should be the principles of a nation? …Christ stated them in the form of two Commandments: ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart’, and ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.’ ” (Bragg, as cited in Caroe 1979, 111).


GUGLIELMO MARCONI

Nobel Laureate in Physics:

"Guglielmo Marconi wrote: “The more I work with the powers of Nature, the more I feel God’s benevolence to man; the closer I am to the great truth that everything is dependent on the Eternal Creator and Sustainer"


ARTHUR COMPTON

Nobel Laureate in Physics:

“For myself, faith begins with the realization that a supreme intelligence brought the universe into being and created man. It is not difficult for me to have this faith, for it is incontrovertible that where there is a plan there is intelligence. An orderly, unfolding universe testifies to the truth of the most majestic statement ever uttered - ‘In the beginning God.’


ARNO PENZIAS,

Nobel Laureate in Physics.

“The best data we have are exactly what I would have predicted, had I had nothing to go on but the five books of Moses, the Psalms, the Bible as a whole.” (Penzias, as cited in Bergman 1994.)

"To me it is unthinkable that a real atheist could be a scientist.”

[dodge]

Hi Franklin. That statistical pie chart shows that fifty-two percent of scientists are atheists, agnostics, or “nothing in particular,” as opposed to seventeen percent of the general population. This verifies that scientists are much less religious than non-scientists. Given that scientists with advanced degrees are more intelligent than the general population, wouldn’t that confirm what I was saying?

That’s a Pew Forum survey, but the link you posted isn’t working so I don’t know when it was conducted or the details. In a 2009 Pew survey on the religious beliefs of scientists, it says that “33% of scientists say they believe in God, while 18% believe in a universal spirit or higher power. By contrast, 95% of Americans believe in some form of deity or higher power.” This was a survey conducted in July of 2006. The results were that more than 83% of the general population say they believe in God and 12% believe in a universal spirit or higher power. Again, this confirms that the more education that one gets the less they believe in God. Right?

http://www.pewforum.org/Science-and-...nd-Belief.aspx

It looks like that were you got your pie charts.

[jeff_franklin]

http://www.pewforum.org/Science-and-...nd-Belief.aspx

You're splitting hairs with your agenda.

51% believe in a higher power, supreme being, creator, unseen universal intelligence. No sense trying to divide that number up to your advantage. This discussion is about Atheist scientists versus Theist, Deist, Polythiest... scientists. Atheist scientists is very small... 17% versus 2% general population who would reject belief in a higher power.

Agnostics admit they don't know so they are in the middle and can't be can't be counted in the those who reject belief in a higher power. And your statement about Jewish scientists who claim to be Jewish in a cultural sense but not religious I think you just pulled out of thin air, wishful thinking on your part.

You've just given us an example of how an agenda driven "scientific survey" is conducted. Twisting of what facts we do have.

No that does not confirm that the more education that one gets the less they believe in God.

We have only discussed scientists. Scientists are not the only ones with college degrees. Only a fraction of the whole. So your premise there is misleading us again down a rose laden path to nowhere. Nice try though. Got to give you credit for trying to pull the wool over our eyes and your persistence. lol!

Fact is the most intelligent people in the world do not have an accredited higher education. That is why the "studies" you started this topic with have no validity in the real world. Just a bunch of "elite" snobs looking down their noses at the rest of the world. God help them!

[easeltine]

I love this quote right here:

"In separate work at the University of Chicago, released in June, 76 percent of doctors said they believed in God and 59 percent believe in some sort of afterlife.""

I know that they do not believe in God the same way I do. That God is more a deist idea, and that God works through evolution.

Still, my dad and uncle reached the conclusion that God is real after their life work as Doctors.

76% of Doctors believe in God? That is a HUGE amount!!

What happened to only 27% of scientists believe in God, well...you didn't present the FACTS CORRECTLY! 51% Believe in God, or a "Higher Power," 41% don't believe in either, and 7% don't know. That means there are 58% of all Scientists that state that there is, or could be a God!

[jeff_franklin]

That gives me a lot more assurance when a family member or friend of mine is in the emergency room. Doctors who think that all humanity is no more than future worm food scares me. Life is sacred!

[dodge]

Those out-of-context quotes from scientists who won the Nobel Prize, especially Albert Einstein, are nothing but creationist quote mining. I happen to have one of Einstein’s books, “The World As I See It,” where he talks about God:

“I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the type of which we are conscious in ourselves. An individual who should survive his physical death is also beyond my comprehension, nor do I wish it otherwise; such notions are for the fears or absurd egoism of feeble souls.”

“The Jewish God is simply a negation of superstition, an imaginary result of its elimination. It is also an attempt to base the moral law on fear, a regrettable and discreditable attempt.”

Einstein described a “sort of intoxicated joy and amazement at the beauty and grandeur of this world, of which, man can just form a faint notion. It is the feeling from which true scientific research draws its spiritual sustenance, but which also seems to find expression in the song of birds. To tack this on to the idea of God seems mere childish absurdity.”

For Einstein God was merely a figure of speech. When Einstein spoke of God, he merely meant that the universe is under the sway of absolute, pervasive, and permanent laws; and his desire to glimpse the mind of God was merely his quaint way of expressing his quest for these laws.

The quote itself was a recollection by one of Einstein’s students from a letter he sent her in 1920, Esther Salaman, which she included in her book “A Talk with Einstein (1955).”

There’s a book called “The Ultimate Quotable Einstein” by Alice Calaprice (copyright 2011) by Princeton University Press that would be a good source for you to understand Einstein’s conception of God. One of the quotes comes from an answer to Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein, published in the New York Times in April of 1929:

“I believe in Spinoza’s God, Who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God who concerns himself with the fate and the doings of mankind.”
“Since our inner experiences consist of reproductions and combinations of sensory impressions, the concept of a soul without a body seems to me to be empty and devoid of meaning.”

“My comprehension of God comes from the deeply felt conviction of a superior intelligence that reveals itself in the knowable world. In common terms, one can describe it as ‘pantheistic’”

Taking an isolated quote and trying to make it look like Albert Einstein was a theist in the sense of Christianity is creationist propaganda through quote mining.

[easeltine]

Jeff,

When the chips are on the table there are very, very few Doctors that will refuse a suggestion of PRAYER!

Folks, THE TOTAL OF DOCTORS THAT BELIEVE IN GOD IS SO HIGH BECAUSE THEY HAVE SEEN PRAYER WORK, AND GOD HEAL!

I don't mean an immediate healing, but healings that surpass their medical knowledge.

You know Jeff, I am beginning to like this thread more and more! Thank you Dodge!

[dodge]

Easeltine -- I’m only quoting what is in the book that I was referring to, “Science & Religion,” by Elaine Howard Ecklund; a book that I have. There is no place in it where the author says that “58% of all scientists state that there is, or could be, a God.”

As far as what the author says “in a separate work,” that “76 percent of doctors believed in God and 59 percent believe in some sort of afterlife,” I know nothing about. You found that statistic in the article “Scientists’ Belief in God Varies Starkly by Discipline,” by Robert Roy Britt, published in the 11 AUG 2005 edition of Live Science. This was five years before Ecklund published her book. This was long before she conducted the survey that is the basis for her 2010 book.

Britt doesn’t give any links to the “separate work,” that was “released in June (2005).” Sloppy journalism. After a bit of research, I found a paper where Ecklund was a co-writer, called “The Spiritual and Religious Identities, Beliefs, and Practices of Academic Pediatricians in the United States.” The conclusion was that “compared with the American public, a notably smaller proportion of academic pediatricians reported a personal religious identity.” I don’t know if this is the paper that Britt was referring to, though the University of Chicago was mentioned, a 1998 General Social Survey.

http://www.wendycadge.com/assets/Cat...lfrank2008.pdf

I found a paper by Ecklund that was published in 2007 called “Religion and Spirituality among University Scientists,” written a few years before her book. It looks very similar though. She said she had 1,646 respondents, and 271 in-depth interviews. She said that when asked about their beliefs about God, “nearly 34 percent of academic scientists answered that they do not believe in God,” and about 30 percent answered that they “did not know if there is a God and there is no was to find out.” As Ecklund said, “This means that over 60 percent of professors in these natural and social science disciplines describe themselves as either atheist or agnostic.” This is in comparison with the general population’s 3 percent claim to be atheists and 5 percent agnostic.”

http://religion.ssrc.org/reforum/Ecklund.pdf

It looks to be an early release of the date she put into her 2010 book. No mention of doctors or physicians.

But, as Britt writes at the end of his article, “Ecklund and colleagues are now conducting longer interviews with some of the participants to try and figure it all out. The 2010 book is the result.

So, Easeltine, I can’t find any written work by Ecklund online that says “76 percent of doctors said they believed in God and 59 percent believe in some sort of afterlife.” I don’t know where Britt got that from. I’ll stick to what I can actually verify, and that’s what is in the book that I have.

In your last post you mentioned that the “total of doctors belief in God is so high because they have seen prayer work, and God heal.” What’s your evidence, sources, links? Saying it doesn’t make it so.

[easeltine]

"I found a paper by Ecklund that was published in 2007 called “Religion and Spirituality among University Scientists,” written a few years before her book. It looks very similar though. She said she had 1,646 respondents, and 271 in-depth interviews. She said that when asked about their beliefs about God, “nearly 34 percent of academic scientists answered that they do not believe in God,” and about 30 percent answered that they “did not know if there is a God and there is no was to find out.”"

I FIND THIS TO BE A MIRACLE! This is a poll of the Godless University Scientists - well known to be Left-wing, 1968ish, Godless instructors, (An American Carol w/ the teachers singing 1968-freaks). Of those polled from these Godless teachers, there is actually 30% that believe there is a God. Not only that another 30% admit that God may exist! That is 60% that either believe in God, or the possibility of God. Great News!

A University Instructor is a Special Breed of Scientist!

[dodge]

My non-belief in God puts me in the minority here in the United States. I’ve seen statistics that say the percentage of those who have no belief at all in a god (declared atheists) is less than two percent of the population (Pew Forum U.S. Religious Landscape Survey). Apparently, self-identified atheists tend to be white, non-Hispanic, or Asian, and less likely to be African American as compared to the general adult population in the United States.

In the United States, fifty-five percent of atheists are under 35, while 30 percent are 50 or over. Men are more likely to be atheists than women; and more intelligent (according to some researchers). One study indicates that levels of religiosity and creationism tend to decline as income levels rise (according to Phil Zuckerman in his book “Atheism and Secularity”). Not that I accept all of that, it's just what some researchers have concluded from data.

It’s odd, because I was born into a family with a very strong Catholic history going back hundreds of years all the way back to France in the 17th century. I attended Catholic Parochial School taught by Marian nuns, went to Catechism classes, confession every Saturday, and church every Sunday morning where I received communion. I said my prayers every night before going to bed, and lived in a house with images of Jesus, Mary, the Pope, and John F. Kennedy on the walls of my parents and grandparents houses. What happened?

As it is now, I have absolutely no belief in any gods or other supernatural beings, heaven or hell, angels, demons, or Christ and Satan; and, in all honesty I don’t understand how anyone could believe such things that seem to me to be imaginary and mythological. It really baffles me. It’s like I’m living in an alternative reality where people around me are having conversations with invisible creatures and are surprised that I can’t see them. It seems insane to me. What’s going on?

[jeff_franklin]

I have no problem with anyone who does not believe in God, or is not sure if God exists. Free country, freedom of speech, freedom of religion. Free will that God gives everyone to accept or reject Him.

I have many friends, acquaintances who are agnostics, some one would call atheists. I don't get into arguments or heated exchanges with them. It's no big deal. They seem to respect my beliefs and I respect theirs.

But it is the militancy, arrogance and intolerance of atheists that one encounters on the internet, ones who would not dare to utter such insulting rhetoric to me face to face but have no problem sitting behind a remote computer screen denigrating believers in God that I have a problem with. They represent the one of the many Cults of Atheism.

I can respect and be tolerant of someone who says they have no belief in a God. But I can not respect or be tolerant of someone who says that someone who believes in a God is stupid or insane.

[dodge]

Hi Jeff. You say that you believe in freedom of speech. Wouldn’t that include the freedom to express the opinion that those who believe in angels, demons, heaven and hell, the Garden of Eden, and a virgin birth are less intelligent that those who reject what to them is imaginary biblical mythology?

Is it “arrogant” and “militant” to speak one’s mind openly and honestly about what they feel concerning religion? You said that they “would not dare” to express their opinions in front of you. What would you do, punch them out? Do you generally do that with people who don’t share your beliefs and are vocal about it? What happened to the right to speak freely? Isn't your attitude quite intolerant?

[jeff_franklin]

No, my attitude is not intolerant at all. But yours is.

Sure freedom of speech can go beyond the bounds of common human decency and respect. A man wrote on the internet that someone ought to kill Obama and his family, using racist slurs. That is free speech for you. That I do not tolerate nor should anyone else. Because Americans have the greatest amount of liberty when it comes to freedom of speech does not make all the speech that is spoken or written freely commendable, respectful or considerate of other American's rights to life and dignity.

While I can't take you to civil court for libeling all believers in God as being insane and stupid we sure can rebuke and shame you publicly for being such a obnoxious, arrogant, inconsiderate rude boob!

When someone slanders a group of people as you do, small or large, this time 90% of the world's population, then yes that is “arrogant” and rabid “militant” and worse.

Po' wittle dodge has no respect for anyone else's belief but demands respect for his own. '0'

Point is YOU would not say to my face what you write. Not out of fear you will get punched, I haven't hit or been hit by someone since me and my older brother's spat when we were teenagers. But because normal people do not go around being so insulting to people face to face . Unless they have a gun in their hands like in Cuba, Iran or China. Face to face people try to get along. Online, bullies, trolls prowl for their prey.

You do have the right to speak freely and so do I. You are insulting people who have done nothing to harm you, but have worked, fought and died so that you shall have that freedom. And that's the thanks you give. You call them stupid and insane.

Was it stupid and insane that Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu soldiers, sailors, airman died for you so that you might call them stupid and insane?

I am telling you that not only are you rude, obnoxious, intolerant, militant, arrogant but you show no gratitude to the people who believe in God who worked, defended, built, invented, discovered and preserve this great nation that gives you the most freedom that any human beings have ever enjoyed in history.

Your problem is with your family. Those who raised you to be a Christian. You resent the way they raised you. Leave us alone. Go to them and tell your family elders you think they are insane and stupid for believing in God. Hope they take you to the woodshed for a better education. You need it! :-o

[Kestrel]

It seems there is some strong evidence that the more intelligent a person is the less he/she believes in the existence of God. In a study done by the psychology department at the University of Edinburgh last year, Gary J. Lewis, Stuart J. Ritchie, and Timothy C. Bates looked at links between lower levels of intelligence and high levels of religiosity.

http://www.midus.wisc.edu/findings/pdfs/1197.pdf

Their findings showed that intelligence was significantly and negatively associated with measures of religion, especially fundamentalism. What was demonstrated was that those with greater cognitive skills are able to form more open-minded (antiauthoritarian) attitudes than those with lesser cognitive abilities. In other words, greater intelligence leads to more open mindedness and individualism; resulting in an intellectual conflict with the arguments made by religious scripture and leaders. This is particularly true with fundamentalism’s literalistic interpretation of scripture.

In another study done three years ago, Average Intelligence Predicts Atheism Rates Across 137 Nations, by Richard Lynn, John Harvey, and Helmuth Nyborg, the authors reviewed evidence pointing to a negative relationship between intelligence and religious belief in the U.S. and Europe.

http://davesource.com/Fringe/Fringe/...Lynn-et-al.pdf

The factors included not only evidence pointing to a negative relationship between intelligence and religious belief; but also lower percentages of those who are extremely intelligent holding religious beliefs compared with the general population, a decline of religious belief with age among children and adolescents as their cognitive abilities increase, and the decline of religious belief during the course of the twentieth century as the intelligence of populations has increased.

The authors mention 38 other studies that found a negative correlation between intelligence and religious belief; and a study in the Netherlands that reported agnostics scored 4 IQ points higher than believers. In another study it was demonstrated that those who responded to “not religious at all” had the highest IQ.

In the 1990s, a study of members of the American National Academy of Sciences reported that seven percent believed in the existence of God, as compared with approximately ninety percent found in the general population. In Britain, it was found that 3.3 percent of Fellow of the Royal Society believed in the existence of God, while 78.8 percent did not believe.

It seems clear from these studies that intelligence/cognitive abilities determine one’s acceptance of religious mythology.

---

Could this not also be qualitative evidence that:

a) intelligence is highly subjective, and in many cases over rated.
b) humans in general incline towards the misuse of resources.
c) intelligence is highly nuanced like dimensions, although it's incapable coherently bridging time and space.
d) intelligence cannot study itself.
e) there a million studies out there, take your pick.
f) intellectuals are tunnel visioned.

[Kestrel]

“elite scientists”

(rolls eyes!)

Hmmm! Where have I heard the term "elite" before?

Oh yeah! Cults! All Cults believe they are the 'ELITE'!

Here are the truly great, "elite" to use that term correctly, scientists of the world and what they believe:

ALBERT EINSTEIN

Nobel Laureate in Physics:

“I want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts, the rest are details.” (Einstein, as cited in Clark 1973, 33).


MAX PLANCK

Nobel Laureate in Physics

“Religion represents a bond of man to God. It consists in reverent awe before a supernatural Might to which human life is subordinated and which has in its power our welfare and misery.


WERNER HEISENBERG

Nobel Laureate in Physics:

Heisenberg wrote: “The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you .


ROBERT MILLIKA

Nobel Laureate in Physics:

“It pains me as much as it did Kelvin ‘to hear crudely atheistic views expressed by men who have never known the deeper side of existence.’ Let me, then, henceforth use the word God to describe that which is behind the mystery of existence and that which gives meaning to it. I think you will not misunderstand me, then, when I say that I have never known a thinking man who did not believe in God.”

“To me it is unthinkable that a real atheist could be a scientist.”


CHARLES TOWNES,

Nobel Laureate in Physics.

“I strongly believe in the existence of God, based on intuition, observations, logic, and also scientific knowledge.” (Townes 2002a).


ARTHUR SCHAWLOW

Nobel Laureate in Physics:

“Religion is founded on faith. It seems to me that when confronted with the marvels of life and the universe, one must ask why and not just how. The only possible answers are religious."


WILLIAM PHILLIPS

Nobel Laureate in Physics.

“I believe in God. In fact, I believe in a personal God who acts in and interacts with the creation. I believe that the observations about the orderliness of the physical universe, and the apparently exceptional fine-tuning of the conditions of the universe for the development of life suggest that an intelligent Creator is responsible. …I believe in God because of a personal faith, a faith that is consistent with what I know about science.”


SIR WILLIAM H. BRAGG

Nobel Laureate in Physics:

“What should be the principles of a nation? …Christ stated them in the form of two Commandments: ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart’, and ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.’ ” (Bragg, as cited in Caroe 1979, 111).


GUGLIELMO MARCONI

Nobel Laureate in Physics:

"Guglielmo Marconi wrote: “The more I work with the powers of Nature, the more I feel God’s benevolence to man; the closer I am to the great truth that everything is dependent on the Eternal Creator and Sustainer"


ARTHUR COMPTON

Nobel Laureate in Physics:

“For myself, faith begins with the realization that a supreme intelligence brought the universe into being and created man. It is not difficult for me to have this faith, for it is incontrovertible that where there is a plan there is intelligence. An orderly, unfolding universe testifies to the truth of the most majestic statement ever uttered - ‘In the beginning God.’


ARNO PENZIAS,

Nobel Laureate in Physics.

“The best data we have are exactly what I would have predicted, had I had nothing to go on but the five books of Moses, the Psalms, the Bible as a whole.” (Penzias, as cited in Bergman 1994.)

"To me it is unthinkable that a real atheist could be a scientist.”

---

I almost missed this one Franklin. It pains me to say so, but Great Post. LOL!

My first inclination, upon reading Dodge's post, was to quickly research some of the great Christian scientists of our time. But then that required more effort than I was willing to invest at the moment.

I'm surprised he didn't provide his own list, beginning with Carl Sagen.

I couldn't have done more justice for the cause, and believe the door has been slammed shut on this subject.

It's a mad, mad, mad, mad world!

PS
I believe you have found your niche.

[Kestrel]

Hi Jeff. You say that you believe in freedom of speech. Wouldn’t that include the freedom to express the opinion that those who believe in angels, demons, heaven and hell, the Garden of Eden, and a virgin birth are less intelligent that those who reject what to them is imaginary biblical mythology?

Is it “arrogant” and “militant” to speak one’s mind openly and honestly about what they feel concerning religion? You said that they “would not dare” to express their opinions in front of you. What would you do, punch them out? Do you generally do that with people who don’t share your beliefs and are vocal about it? What happened to the right to speak freely? Isn't your attitude quite intolerant?

---

Dodge,

Nobody wishes to deny you the ability to express an extremely narcissistic nature.

However, common sense alone should dictate that even a professed atheist should be more intelligent.

Your criteria for "intelligence" might need to be revised, if this is the fruit of it's vine.

Signed,
Your local "wine snob".

[dodge]

Hi Kestrel. You’re really here to yank my chain, aren’t you. First you say that I have a “narcissistic nature,” and then attack my intelligence. Is this the way isn’t going to be between us?

Why is it “narcissistic” to express my opinions concerning religion? This is a discussion board, where people engage in an exchange of ideas and opinions. If you disagree, then tell me why; and then we can have a debate. What you’re doing is attacking me personally rather than what I say, and that is the definition of ad hominem.

I would be more than happy to have an intelligent dialogue with you; but all I see is someone who’s motive is to tear me down through attack rhetoric, which is a distraction tactic.

I’ll try to establish a mature dialogue with you; but I’m not going to play your games.

I offered some research that scientists have done that indicates those who embrace a fundamentalist Christian philosophy, that includes a literal interpretation of the Bible, are “less intelligent” than atheists in general. Have you read the links, the papers, the evidence? And what is your opinion?

This is the subject of this thread, and the only thing that I’m going to respond to. Check your attitude at the door, as you suggested we do.

[shadowcat]

As it is now, I have absolutely no belief in any gods or other supernatural beings, heaven or hell, angels, demons, or Christ and Satan; and, in all honesty I don’t understand how anyone could believe such things that seem to me to be imaginary and mythological. It really baffles me. It’s like I’m living in an alternative reality where people around me are having conversations with invisible creatures and are surprised that I can’t see them. It seems insane to me. What’s going on?

You have people around you that have conversations with invisible creatures and they are surprised you can't see them? No wonder you think that atheists are more intelligent than those that believe in God. Why on earth would these folks think that you could see invisible creatures?

[shadowcat]

On a serious note, I do not think that one can use the very limited and generalized studies to prove that atheists are more intelligent than those that believe in God. The very first article that you put up states that only 3.2% of the participants reported themselves as being atheists or agnostics. The rest of the participants were part of a Christian denomination. I think that more research would have to be done that included more atheists and those that are from other religious beliefs.

Some interesting information I came across was the average IQ by country. I was very surprised to see the numbers. I'm not trying to brag here but my IQ was 109 when I was in the 3rd grade using the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, which is high average. I was always in the gifted program. It is roughly 134 now. I do not see myself as being exceptionally intelligent, just average. Also there are Autistic Savants that can do mathematical calculations in their head that none of us, or extremely intelligent scientists, could dream of doing even with a calculator. Many Savants are also exceptional in the arts and music but would be considered retarded in most other areas.

Another thing you may want to consider is the peer pressure that is involved within the academic and scientific community. This plays a crucial role in the development of one's religious beliefs. In other words, the higher the education level goes, the greater the peer pressure is to not believe in silly mythological invisible creatures.

[shadowcat]

Here are some interesting charts, most and least religious by country and by state in the US.

On the top 10 least religious states in the US, a side by side comparison of other countries Israel ranks with Oregon. Apparently only 53% of Israel believes religion is important part of daily life. Your state is on this list dodge, for being the least religious.

Of course the bible belt is the most religious, no surprise there.

http://dailyatheist.blogspot.com/200...ntries-in.html