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Are atheists smarter, on average, compared to religious people?

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jeez this thread is still active?

who cares which is smarter? whether the point of this thread was to "prove" something or not, it doesn't matter. besides, believing the troll is the worst thing you can do.
 
Although I do believe that there is a trend that Christians will have lower SAT scores than atheists, I don't think that people become christian simply because they are stupid and never learned how the world really works. I think God generally makes a people for himself out of the un-intellectual fools of the world.

1 Corinthians 1:21-25

By the way, this is a lame excuse to exalt yourselves.
 
the pope can speak 10 languages, how many of you atheists can speak more than 1
btw i'm catholic and i speak english and italian, and i know all the curses in spanish
oh, and my dad who didn't even finish middle school can speak italian, english(his second language), spanish, portoguese and some french
there are different forms of intelligence then just sats and iq scores
 


<< the pope can speak 10 languages, how many of you atheists can speak more than 1
btw i'm catholic and i speak english and italian, and i know all the curses in spanish
oh, and my dad who didn't even finish middle school can speak italian, english(his second language), spanish, portoguese and some french
there are different forms of intelligence then just sats and iq scores >>


And you're trying to prove what exactly?

This discussion is leading absolutely nowhere. Perhaps it would be a good idea to have the mods lock it, so that everyone, atheists and theists can prove their 'superior' intelligence in other threads.
 


<< ok, maybe if I make it simpler, you will understand. Agree or disagree with the following

1. The average member of this forum, is smarter than the average person walking down the street.
2. Statistically speaking, 11% of the nation is atheist (www.atheists.org)
3. Statistically speaking, 40% of the people on anandtech are atheist... (forum poll, just do a search)


The average atheist, is smarter than the average religious person.

EDIT: So what I'm saying is, people here are smarter than the general population, AND, there is a greater concentration of atheists. Is this a coincidence? I don't think so. My friends in honors dorms notice the same thing, there are a lot of atheists. This forum is the "honors dorm" so to speak, of the internet. >>




Okay AlastorX82,

The religion poll, that you've based yer argruement on, only shows that 40% of the peolpe who took the poll are atheist. It does not "prove" that 40% of AT are atheist. Voluntary Response polls are meaningless. And I'm not going to start in on the arrogence of thinking that people who know more about computers then the average person are inherently smarter than the average person. Or that your "measuring stick" for intellegence is a test kids take when they are around 17yrs old.



Lethal
 
Who are smarter?


Im guessing neither, perhaps atheists know more about the world, but religious people spend lots of their time studying their religion..... sooo, maybe the length and depth of the knowledge is the same, but on standardized tests atheists would probably score higher....

SAT 1370
IQ 155

Christian
 
Whoo... flame bait...

And since when have any of you actually believed that the SAT is a measure of anything other than the ability to take the SAT? 🙂
The College Board is suck... how much money must they rake in! That's an evil empire if I've ever seen one... how much does it cost to take a friggin SAT, AT, LSAT, MCAT, GRE... etcetc now? It's just as bad as friggin M$, Cisco, Novell, Sun, etc and their friggin certified exams... :|
 
I've thought about this before. I would like to believe I am starter than the average religious zealot, becuase I have come to my conclusion via thought and logic, and many religious people are simply born into their religions. However, there are many who have thought about and have come to the conclusion that religion is the answer.

I dont think its a matter of intelligence, rather, just the way your brain is hardwaired. Atheists tend towards literal, hard facts and religious people tend towards faith and metaphorical abstracts.

BTW, AlastorX82, I just read your convo with that girl. I honestly feel sorry for her. It is one thing to believe in god. I have no problem if someone wants to believe in god. Hell, there are times when I wonder if maybe I am wrong in being atheist. But it is another thing to believe in *anything* so blindly that you cant even back up your claims with any reputability. The way she kept evading your questions; I bet she is so brainwashed it doesnt even occur to her that you are making valid points. Again, I'm not trying to discriminate against anyone; even blind atheists evoke the same feelings in me.
 
This is a dumb question because it's comparing two things which really don't have an influence on each other. If I were to abandon my religion tomorrow, would my IQ and/or general intelligence suddenly shoot up or down? If an atheist were to be converted towards buddhism or catholicism, do they lose/gain intelligence? Come on .... it just doesn't make sense. It's like saying, if my house pipes were made of blue copper instead of red copper, would my intelligence have grown?
 


<< This is a dumb question because it's comparing two things which really don't have an influence on each other. If I were to abandon my religion tomorrow, would my IQ and/or general intelligence suddenly shoot up or down? If an atheist were to be converted towards buddhism or catholicism, do they lose/gain intelligence? Come on .... it just doesn't make sense. It's like saying, if my house pipes were made of blue copper instead of red copper, would my intelligence have grown? >>



if you are 'unreligious' enough to be converted to an atheist then according to this argument you should be smart anyways. what hes saying is the if you take the fanatical atheist and a fanatical oh say christian, there a good chance the atheist is gonan be smarter.
 


<< if you are 'unreligious' enough to be converted to an atheist then according to this argument you should be smart anyways. what hes saying is the if you take the fanatical atheist and a fanatical oh say christian, there a good chance the atheist is gonan be smarter. >>



then we come full circle, because the supposition that a convert away from religion must be smarter than a religious person hasn't been proven and, in fact, is the point in discussion at the moment...but I see your point. What about the inverse tho? What if someone converts away because they don't have the intelligence to grasp it?

Personally, I believe that fanaticism is an affront to intelligence regardless because of its tendency to deny any and all other possibilities. A fanatic atheist is "God doesn't exist" and a fanatic Christian is "God does exist". No comprimise on either side and refusal to wrap their minds on other possibilities. Still, this argument is like a bunch of older ones such as, "White people are smarter than black people", "Asian people can't drive as well as other cultures", "women are less capable than men" and so on and so forth. With little more than dogma and protagonists to drive it on, these assumptions were/are hard to dislodge from people, even though there really isn't any proof nor explanation as to how they could be true.
 
right but the thing is, we call each other fanatics beucase we are convinced that a thing is a certain way. Like the sky is blue or the sun is bright. and until proven others wise, when we say the sky is blue, you can't say we are wrong beucas there is proof. for religion, there is no tangible proof of god's existence. so, i dunno, i do'nt think atheists can be called fanatics unless they start denying undeniable proof, like if jesus came back or god somehow showed himself/herself/itself .... self
 
First off I think the whole idea behind this thread wreaks. Even if someone believes that their particular stance on an unknown somehow makes them smarter or better than the rest, it is childish to the extreme to try and point it out to everyone else. It also takes a very insecure person to start something like this. Why do you need such justification for your belief or lack thereof? If only stupid people were atheists would you change your beliefs to fit in with what you perceive to be a smarter group, even though you think they are wrong? I think you would.

Personally I don't know what I believe. I am always questioning everything to the point that I don't have any faith in anything. I guess you would call me an agnostic. An atheist is someone who ceases to question and has faith in the lack of a higher power. That's not me at all. I never took an SAT or ACT or anything like that because I knew that I would be pursuing other things and that college would not be part of my endeavors. However I always scored a percentile in the upper 90's on any kind of standardized test I took, so I guess you'd say I'm pretty intelligent. Maybe you wouldn't, but that wouldn't matter to me at all. So I'm an agnostic with no SAT score. How do I stack up to you? Are you better than me or not? Does the fact that I believe that maybe there could be a higher power in the universe somehow invalidate me? Am I in the "stupid" group or not?
 
id say being agnostic is pretty intelligent by not taking everything for granted. i just think its not very wise to believe in a higher power so fervently when there is no proof to its existence.
 
Its not that we(athiests) are smarter than the rest. Anyone would be brainwashed when something like religion is beaten into them as a child. I am thankful my parents never did that to me. But those who chose religion on their own, especally not as a child, then yes we are smarter than them.
 
I didn't read any of the replies to this, and in truth, doubt many people will. However, I will throw in my $0.02 regarding the issue 😉. I'm a fairly intelligent agnostic. The people I work with are all intelligent people, as well as a number of the friends I developed during undergrad and grad schools. There is a decent mixture of religious and atheist/agnostic people in my grouping of friends, though more are non-religious. The smartest man/woman I have ever met, and I've known some Nobel Prize winners over the years, lives next door to my parent's summer home. He teaches history at a community college in the area, and is a deacon at one of the local churches. I have no idea what his SAT scores were, or his IQ, but his raw intelligence is unmatched in my experience.

IMHO, being religious or not doesn't have much of an effect on your intelligence. It may influence what direction you take with your life, history instead of physics perhaps 😉, but it doesn't alter one's intelligence.
 
I think agnostics are the, shall we say, most enlightened. Both religious fanatics and atheists are too close-minded to be truly enlightened, but since agnostics question everything they truly have open minds. (well, most do)
 
This thread is so sick and biased...wow. I can tell already the answer to the question. Note my signature...if there was a killfilter in this particular message board, this is where *PLONK* would go ____________.
 
My SAT I score: 1410
Religion: Prefer not to say
Grade: 10 🙂 Yup, softmore

Anyway, this is quite an odd question. In my view, perhaps one of intelligence may choose to believe in a God/Creator simply because our earth is so wonderfully designed and is so beautiful. (ie, if one sees a house by the road, one will comment that there is definitely a builder because a pile of bricks can't be so organized without guidance). But on the other hand, one of intelligence may decide to remain athiest because one may see corruption and greed as driving forces of some religious organizations.
 
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