Atheists vs. theists in terms of intelligence

…but totally rejecting the idea of God… is my business, too. Well, he might have claimed to no longer be an atheist, but he didn’t claim to become a christian either. Maybe he’s some sorta agnostic or deist.

Plus, Creationism and ID are not exactly the same thing. ID does NOT say god designed things, instead, it says that it’s some sorta “intelligent cause”, while Creationism is literal belief in the account of Genesis(or something similar).

Altho, indded, ID is mostly(if not always) used as a cover-up for Creationism. But, since in the case with ID they do not state that that intelligent cause is a god(especcialy the abrahamic or the muslim), we can assume that it could, pretty much, be anything:

Some kind of intelligent thinking super-matter of some sort(which I, personally, would not call a God, since thay’s what people usualy call a diety in a religion(which is in most cases omnipotent or is able to rule/do anything over/in a certain aspect/part of the world(for example sky(Zeus))), which that “super-matter” desn’t neccesarily have to be able to do) . I guess you get the point I’m trying to make here, right? >_<

Hm… why there’s a higher probability of aliens doing that than there is of god? Weeell, no, I haven’t seen an alien(and I wouldn’t want to either. Not right now, at least), but, there are many people that claim to have seen them(or been abducted), and if you ask them to tell how and what heppened, their stories will, in most cases, be very close to identical(yeah, not that convincing, but eh, whatever…).

Plus, I see no reason why someone would assume that out planet is the only inhabited one in the universe. The universe(and the earh) is considerably old, so if life originated on some other planet before it did on ours, why couldn’t there be another form of intelligent life out there? If there is, then they would obviously have WAY more time to develop than we’ve had. And if we consider that they developed faster than us(which we do pretty fast, in my opinion.(I don’t have anything to compare to, obviously, but let’s assume it’s fast)), then they would obviously have far greater and far more advanced technologies than we have so far.

Sooo, what could possibly prevent them from being able to actually “create” life? I mean, perhaps even we will be able to do that one day with the advancement in biology, genetics and all that kind of stuff. Obviously my assumptions don’t seem that realistic, but I guess this could be true in theory. Or… maybe not o.O

I think the true percentage of atheists is higher than 3%. One thing I’ve discovered is that there are a lot of closet atheists. A recent survey found that more Americans said they wouldn’t vote for an atheist for president than wouldn’t vote for a woman, black, or Muslim. Atheists are probably the most unpopular minority in America but all we have to do is keep our mouths shut and nobody knows. At my last job I worked for a devout Mormon. After I quit I made the rounds saying bye to all of the people I worked with and several of them told me that they too were atheists but kept it to themselves because they feared that if more people knew that it could limit advancement in their career. Of course someone like Bill Gates, Linus Torvalds, and Steve Jobs don’t have to worry about prejudice against them any more so they have the luxury of being able to be open about their worldview.

The brightest computer scientist and physicist that I ever worked with was a devout Christian so I’ve learned not to make generalizations about the relative intelligence of believers and atheists.

because rational thought excels you up the ladder. being rational, and thinking logically are key elements to success. rational thought questions every element of a situation, leaves no stone unturned; deduces logically to come to conclusions, but never anchors on a conclusion if something more logical is discovered. anyone who logically and rationally looks at the concept of a god, would see that it is all imaginary, and delusional, because there is no data to deduce, no evidence. free thinkers are what progress our society.

religions are dead ends. no where to progress. personally I feel it is only a distraction from thinking about more creative useful things.

bottom line. to be smart, sucessful you need to be open minded. not close minded the way religious people are; jumping to conclusions and sticking to it no matter what.

and may I add, if something is wrong in science, say the big bang theory for example, it does not make science fall apart, it makes it look for something else. because science doesn’t teeter on one theory or one fact. it is a foundation of many separate theories, with layers and layer of verified facts. its all about finding mistakes and correcting them with something better.

this cannot be said about religion. if one piece is wrong, the whole thing falls apart.

some people just don’t want to learn. intelligent people less likely to believe in God? Interesting. What are they going by? Personal observation? IQ scores? What is considered intelligent by these people? Intelligence is simply a person to person thing. Some people take things like school and general learning more seriously then others. Simple as that. Do I take back what I said above about theists being smarter than atheists? nope. Why? Because …seriously…if you know that you nor anyone that you know of walking this earth created things like life…then…to me…denying God is just stupid. But when you talk about academic pursuits, I believe that it isn’t dependent on whether or not one is a believer or not. I was a pretty good student in school, went on to college..etc, and the same is true for many around me. I don’t typically follow statistics. Being a black guy we are typically included in many negative statistics on a daily basis. So if somebody is smart, give him the accolades. If someone is not, give him a book and tell him to start reading. Statistics are overrated and can be blown out of proportion when reported in either a positive or negative direction.

your definition of intelligence is continuing to believe in ideas that were found to be ridiculous by one of the creators of one of the theories? Atheists are big on leaning on science to try to prove their point, but I used science to prove mine.

There’s a Christian rapper name Lecrae who in one of his songs says:

“and since our complexity is more than irreducible. the fact that our design had a designer is irrefutable I use this science here to make a statement like this… The existence of an atheist proved God exists.”

“Interesting…I was viewing Fred as being an enemy once I heard his named mentioned on Jeopardy that day. But now…I realize that the creator of one of my most hated theories one day saw the light! There may have been a big bang, but what CREATED it?”

Um… I guess you’re a Christian, huh?

How could making an intelligent theory make him an “enemy”? And why did you hate his theory? Didn’t it makes sense and explain how the universe could have originated? I mean, saying “god did” isn’t very intelligent way of thinking, is it? It’s like saying “just because”.

And, uh, saw the light? What could you mean by that? He didn’t say it was a “god” or anything. He didn’t say it was the Christian god either, seriously…

Sure, I’m sure you can list many rich and smart Christians, given that they have a billion plus population figure. Atheists probably make up less than 50 million in the world and yet they dominate in the sciences and academia. Shouldn’t such a small world figure of people be marginal in any discipline? Yet, they are not, they are very disproportionately represented in the sciences, intellectual societies, academic rings, business world, etc.

And I was talking about your perception of intelligence in the regards that you were challenging the basic definition of intelligence to make it fit in with your agenda and premise of argument.

well, in the end…you will find that the theists were the “smartest” of the two groups in question.

A lot of atheists appear smarter because they tend to rely on scientific findings, theory etc. It’s not that theists don’t look at science at all for anything, we just are more concerned with the creator of all of this. Who created these scientists? Who created their ideas? Who created their ability to think and ability to apply these thoughts in the real world? People like me are led by faith and not by sight. It appears to be very childlike. It is. Does that mean that it’s not smart, or the right way to think?

The vast majority of religious people come from the third world, so I’m not surprised why the average theist is less intelligent than the average atheist. Most atheists are concentrated in first world nations and even if they’re not, they come from scientifically focused countries like the USSR.

“But who created those parents and granparents and other generations and the world and the UNIVERSE for that matter?”

Easy: Evolution through natural selection. And the universe? The big bang.

“Scientists ONLY have theories to explain it, there is no concrete proof.”

Scientists ‘only’ have theories (note that the scientific definition of theory is quite different from the lay-definition), but notably, nobody else, theologians included, have anything better. Science presents the best explanation we have for these things, and its inability to explain some things (so far) merely reflect’s humanity’s incomplete knowledge. And it’d be pretty boring if we did know everything anyway.

No, the original poster isn’t suggesting that Atheism makes you rich or smart; he’s suggesting that those who are smart are more likely to be atheists.*

His original question is how come atheists are so much smarter than theist in general? Doesn’t that then (after reading his post) imply that he means that the fact that they are Atheist is what makes them so clever?

It can be interpreted in a few ways.

You’re not answering the question, I am asking why atheists are smarter than theists.

“His original question is how come atheists are so much smarter than theist in general? Doesn’t that then (after reading his post) imply that he means that the fact that they are Atheist is what makes them so clever?”

No, correlation does not imply causation. If I said “how come mensa members are so much smarter in general”, it wouldn’t imply that joining mensa makes you smart.

Not really, all I saw was a bunch of garbage and playing around with semantics, not getting really getting anything done. Also, there have been plenty of studies on atheistic and anti-religious people since the 1920’s that show they happen to smarter on average than theistic and religious people.

Source:

“Several Gallup poll studies of the general population have shown that those with higher IQs tend not to believe in God.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/2111174/Intelligent-people-less-likely-to-believe-in-God.html

whatever. Intelligence is good, but wisdom is better. And, yeah…there is a difference.

You just think that atheists are more intelligent. Probably because you are one, or an agnostic. Am I talking about my own perception of intelligence? What in what I said makes you conclude that? Was I talking about myself beyond saying that I was a good student, and went to college, worked within the public library system in my city for years? The media rejects Christians in general so you won’t hear much about them. Do you want me to start listing rich Christians who are also very smart and not cranial deficient and missing it’s contents?

Well for a start, some of the richest men in the world are atheists, they are not even in the field of science. Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, atheist. Warren Buffet, richest man in the world and pioneer of finance, atheist. George Soros, another very wealthy atheist. Steve Jobs, computer revolutionary and founder of Apple, atheist. Linus Trovalds, inventor of open source Linux platform, atheist. Why are some of the most innovative and richest people in the world atheists when they constitute only 3% of the world’s population?

he said that things appear to be intelligently designed. Maybe he didn’t say God…but what is going to be doing the designing if he wasn’t thinking God. Aliens? Whatever, he basically got to the point where he was seeing his own theory as being erroneous.

Yeah I’m a Christian. and before I was one I still thought that this “big bang” stuff was crazy. I’m sure people think I’m crazy, but so what…let em. What I believe in makes more sense!

All you are talking about is your own perception of intelligence. There is already a definition of intelligence and that is what the studies go by, not some pseudo-definition you made up. I am not even debating if supernatural deities exist or not, I am simply asking why atheists are smarter than theists, which I have provided many sources for. When the academic elites in the most developed countries are vastly more atheist, it makes you wonder how atheists who are 3% of the world population are dominating intellectual societies in the margins of 50%,75%, and even up to 90%. Why, why, why?

Science is not the only answer, it is the best answer.

why is because science tells you what really happened, but in religion god did it all and theres no reason why god chose to make stuff he just felt like having some fun and in religion they compltly neglec science like what ever happened to the dinousaurs

The parents of the scientists created these scientists. The scientists themselves created their own ideas. The question I was asking more about is why are the demographics of atheists so vastly different from theists? The average atheist is a professional, lives in the first world, highly educated, affluent, scientifically minded, and prosperous. While the average theist in the world is third world, poor, uneducated, superstitious, malnourished, knows next to nothing about science, and downtrodden. Of course becoming an atheist won’t make you smarter, it probably turns out to be that smart people turn out to be atheist while less intelligent people turn out to be more religious.

The answer is THEY AREN’T

you couldn’t see what I was getting at by what I posted?

Now this guy was an atheist when he came up with the “big bang” theory. But he came to see how it was RIDICULOUS. And also evolution.

if atheists are hanging on to things like this, one made by a guy who later saw it’s silliness, how can you say that they are smarter? Because there are some mega rich atheists? Please!

Did the report happen to mention anything about the percentage of humility, modesty or hubris displayed amongst atheists?

to the average person seeing is believing. But it should be the other way around. Believing is seeing. Why do I believe that God exists? I never seen Him. So am I just loony and one of the people that those stats represent? If so…then I will just be nuts. Can I get some chocolate syrup with that?

I wouldn’t say that all religious people are dumb but almost all dumb people are religious. All of these dumb people tend to pull down their average.

* A lot of atheists appear smarter because they tend to rely on scientific findings, theory etc. It’s not that theists don’t look at science at all for anything, we just are more concerned with the creator of all of this. Who created these scientists?

Wow! I bet those stupid smart sciency guys never thought of questions like this! You nailed ‘em!

* Did the report happen to mention anything about the percentage of humility, modesty or hubris displayed amongst atheists?

Yes it did. It mentioned that atheists do not have a 2000 year history of arrogantly persecuting everyone who disagrees with them, and similar forms of hubris.

the answer to this question is simple… any idiot can say god made it, but it takes a smart person to use reason and evidence to come to a logical conclusion about the origins of the universe

“Yes it did. It mentioned that atheists do not have a 2000 year history of arrogantly persecuting everyone who disagrees with them, and similar forms of hubris.”

Since you didn’t cite the mention… I’ll assume you are making a comparison.

You’re confusing zeal for hubris. I’m not defending the zealots but we should compare apples to apples.

You want to compare persecution… I think the numbers are not on your side here…

Khmer rouge killed 2,000,000 people… they didn’t conform to the communist regime… religious dissidents…[theists] were a large group attacked by the communist[atheist] regime.

The Communist Party of China…[atheists] exterminated between 2,000,000-5,000,000 people. Again… religious dissidents were targets for persecution.

The Bolsheviks and Stalinists combined to kill tens of millions and targeted the religious dissidents to the regime.

Atheists don’t need a couple of millenia… they can do much more damage given a few decades.

…Oh wait… you said “persecution”… not “execution”… my bad!

*Evolution through natural selection. And the universe? The big bang.

I agree with you they might explain it the best…but in the end they are only THEORIES…that is why they call it the big band THEORY…as for the rest of it…actually believing those theories to be correct…requires some faith.

And it’d be pretty boring if we did know everything anyway.*

AGREED

Why are some of the most innovative and richest people in the world atheists when they constitute only 3% of the world’s population?

But are their faith..or non-faith.responsible for them being rich and successful? I.e why are they successful and rich..is it because they are atheists? and does that then mean that atheism is better because it could get you richer? lol…but that’s what you asking isn’t it…haha…I see your point. Also to get a bit off the topic…some of the main scientists in history e.g. einstein and newton…weren’t actually atheists. But then again…that was history.

I understand you point…I just still don’t think that choosing to believe in something necessarily makes you less intelligent. I think choosing to believe in something CLOSE-MINDEDLY hampers your intelligence…and that could then validate your claim or atheists.. who are GENERALLY (not all of them though) more open minded.

“I agree with you they might explain it the best…but in the end they are only THEORIES…that is why they call it the big band THEORY…as for the rest of it…actually believing those theories to be correct…requires some faith.”

Argh. No, as I already said, the scientific definition of theory is different to the lay-definition of theory. As Wikipedia says, “The term is often used colloquially to refer to any explanatory thought, even fanciful or speculative ones, but in scholarly use it is reserved for ideas which meet baseline requirements about the kinds of observations made, the methods of classification used, and the consistency of the theory in its application among members of that class. These requirements vary across different fields of knowledge, but in general theories are expected to be functional and parsimonious: I.e. a theory should be the simplest possible tool that can be used to effectively address the given class of phenomena.”

So the Big Bang and Evolution are “only a theory” in the same way that gravity and the standard chemical model are “only theories”. And no, no faith is required to believe them - that’s the point of a scientific theory.

“But are their faith..or non-faith.responsible for them being rich and successful? I.e why are they successful and rich..is it because they are atheists? and does that then mean that atheism is better because it could get you richer? lol…but that’s what you asking isn’t it…haha…I see your point.”

No, the original poster isn’t suggesting that Atheism makes you rich or smart; he’s suggesting that those who are smart are more likely to be atheists.

The parents of the scientists created these scientists. The scientists themselves created their own ideas.

But who created those parents and granparents and other generations and the world and the UNIVERSE for that matter? Scientists ONLY have theories to explain it, there is no concrete proof. I agree that it does make more sense that religion but TO ME personally there has to be some degree of faith to explain what science can’t explain.

Also to get back to your original questions. I think the reason why poorer people choose religion.. is well. because the are poor and generally uneducated and don’t understand the more complex world of science and all that. Also religion gives them faith to believe that there is more to this HELL HOLE of a world that they are currently living in.

Also in the article you are speaking OF scientists, which doesn’t make out that LARGE a portion of the population. Many well educated people in other industries are theists. So in order to see if atheists are really that much more cleverer that theists, we’ll need to see some world figures of atheists vs. theists and the industry or situation they live in.

“The parents of the scientists created these scientists. The scientists themselves created their own ideas.”

The parents of the scientists didn’t create the scientists. They had sex, and a child was born due to a reproductive process that they did NOT create.

Scientists may have created their own ideas, but why is it possible for them to form those ideas? They created their own brain too? The big bang did it? I know they don’t pray to anybody, but if they did would they pray to Fred Hoyle? I just looked some information up on him and it’s interesting. Well about a month ago I learned that Fred Hoyle was the one who came up with the big bang theory. I just now found out that in 78..the year I was born he came to the conclusion that…this universe HAD to have been intelligently designed!

“In his book “The Intelligent Universe” (1983): “Life as we know it is, among other things, dependent on at least 2000 different enzymes. How could the blind forces of the primal sea manage to put together the correct chemical elements to build enzymes?” According to his calculations, the likelihood of this happening is only one in 10 to the 40 000 power (1 followed by 40 000 zeros). That is about the same chance as throwing 50 000 sixes in a row with a die. Or as Hoyle describes it: “The chance that higher life forms might have emerged in this way is comparable with the chance that a tornado sweeping through a junk-yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein… I am at a loss to understand biologists’ widespread compulsion to deny what seems to me to be obvious.” (“Hoyle on Evolution”, Nature, Vol. 294, 12 November 1981, p. 105)”

Interesting…I was viewing Fred as being an enemy once I heard his named mentioned on Jeopardy that day. But now…I realize that the creator of one of my most hated theories one day saw the light! There may have been a big bang, but what CREATED it?

A lot of things appear to be intelligently designed… but, as it often is with evolution, when you dig deeper, it still turns out it didn’t neccesaruly have to be designed, and that it realy could, and most likely did, evolve by itself.

And you know, it could be aliens. I’d say there is a higher probability of aliens doing that than there is of god. Plus, they could simply put some kind of bacteria or two and let them develop, since there are pretty many fossils showing the gradual development of different species. So it didn’t necessarily have to beging with the creation of every single spicies(if it did). But we aren’t talking about evolution anyway so…

Well, even if he did mean god, again, he didn’t necesarily mean the christian god, or any religions god at all. Not all people have the same definition of god, either - he might’ve meant something completely different.

And, uh, why would people think that you’re crazy? Haven’t said anything THAT crazy yet…

And just to add on to what I said last…intelligent design does mean God. He claimed to no longer be an atheist after all of his study and theorizing. All of his studying proved to him that God indeed does exist.

“And you know, it could be aliens. I’d say there is a higher probability of aliens doing that than there is of god.”

Why because you’ve seen an alien but not God? And I don’t mean an illegal alien. Why do you believe that there is a higher possibility of it being done by aliens?

Why is it so hard to believe that there is a God? Believing IN Him is your business, but totally rejecting the idea of God… Eh, never mind.

“I am also glad I have not had to spend one minute of my time trying to prove his existence. HAHAHA! That is not my job. How much time does an atheist spend on disproving Gods existence?”

It’s not really necessary to disprove something there’s no evidence for. How much time do you spend disproving the existence of fairies?

“your definition of intelligence is continuing to believe in ideas that were found to be ridiculous by one of the creators of one of the theories? Atheists are big on leaning on science to try to prove their point, but I used science to prove mine.”

Actually, no, science doesn’t rely on whether or not people find something ‘ridiculous’, and simply claiming something to be true isn’t ‘science’. A scientific theory stands or falls on its own merits, not on the personal opinions of its discoverer.

And as it happens, Hoyle didn’t ‘invent’ the big bang theory - he named it, as a little rudimentary reading would reveal: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hoyle

I am so glad I have God in my life. I am also glad I have not had to spend one minute of my time trying to prove his existence. HAHAHA! That is not my job. How much time does an atheist spend on disproving Gods existence?

Khmer rouge killed 2,000,000 people… they didn’t conform to the communist regime… religious dissidents…[theists] were a large group attacked by the communist[atheist] regime.

Now you’re not comparing apples to apples. Just because a regime does not have a professed, official religion, does not mean their actions are attributable to atheism - any more than Hitler’s atrocities are attributable to Christianity because he was Christian.

If you want a fair accounting, you need to compare those killed or persecuted on religious motives to those tortured or persecuted for their lack of religion. In which case I think you’ll have a hard time finding many of the latter.