ReluctantMathematician
Member
For more than a millennium, scholars have noticed a curious correlation: Atheists tend to be more intelligent than religious people.
It's unclear why this trend persists, but researchers of a new study have an idea: Religion is an instinct, they say, and people who can rise above instincts are more intelligent than those who rely on them.
said in a statement. [Saint or Spiritual Slacker? Test Your Religious Knowledge]
Why Are Atheists Generally Smarter Than Religious People? | Live Science
The evidence to support this overall general negative association between religion and intelligence keeps building, and such results have been replicated in many studies. I think at this point the evidence is fairly strong that this general negative association between religion and intelligence is real and that the question now is to understand its nature and what it means.
Understand that we are talking about a general overall trend, and not any one person or group, so we are not talking about anyone's religion. Now there are several proposed explanations. Such as suggesting religious people are more in line with intuitive thinking rather than analytical thinking, and this fails to show on a conventional test of intelligence. Others suggest that this negative trend is more closely linked with fundamentalism than all of religion. There seems to be a number of different suggested explanations.
So why do you think this general negative association between religion and intelligence exist? What are your theories?
Feel free to bring in other studies, I have looked at a few and they have interesting ones out there, but keep in mind that the evidence for this negative association has been replicated many times in many different scenarios, so the question of if it actually exists is not the focus of this debate. What we want to do now is understand the nature of this association.