Effect of intelligence on religious faith
Dan Fain
The controversy over _The Bell Curve_ has largely passed over another,
often-overlooked correlate (and hypothetical result) of low
intelligence. The article described below explains the basis for the
claim that intelligence is negatively correlated with religious
belief.
I cannot vouch for the methodology of each of the individual studies;
I would be glad to hear from anyone who can offer more details on
them, or present any contradictory evidence from the social sciences
or testable alternate hypotheses.
Unfortunately, I do not have the name of the person who summarized
this article. [Perhaps he/she is on Usenet]
Dan Fain
Pasadena
I do not speak for Caltech.
--begin included article--
Paraphrased and summarized from The Effect of Intelligence on
Religious Faith, Burnham P. Beckwith, _Free Inquiry_, Spring
1986:
1. Thomas Howells, 1927
Study of 461 students showed religiously conversative students "are,
in general, relatively inferior in intellectual ability."
2. Hilding Carlsojn, 1933
Study of 215 students showed that "there is a tendency for the more
intelligent undergraduate to be sympathetic toward ... atheism."
3. Abraham Franzblau, 1934
Confirming Howells and Carlson, tested 354 Jewish children, 10-16.
Negative correlation between religiosity and Terman intelligence test.
4. Thomas Symington, 1935
Tested 400 young people in colleges and church groups. He reported,
"there is a constant positive relation in all the groups between
liberal religious thinking and mental ability...There is also a
constant positive relation between liberal scores and intelligence..."
5. Vernon Jones, 1938
Tested 381 stydents, concluding "a slight tendency for intelligence
and liberal attitudes to go together."
6. A. R. Gilliland, 1940
At variance with all other studies, found "little or no relationship
between intelligence and attitude toward god."
7. Donald Gragg, 1942
Reported an inverse correlation between 100 ACE freshman test scores
and Thurstone "reality of god" scores.
8. Brown and Love, 1951
At U. of Denver, tested 613 male and female students. Mean test
scores of non-believers = 119, believers = 100. Percentile NBs = 80,
BBs = 50. Their findings "strongly corroborate those of Howells."
9. Michael Argyle, 1958
Concluded that "although intelligent children grasp religious concepts
earlier, they are also the first to doubt the truth of religion, and
intelligent students are much less likely to accept orthodox beliefs."
10. Jeffrey Hadden, 1963
Found no correlation between intelligence and grades. This was an
anomalous finding, since GPA corresponds closely with intelligence.
Other factors may have influenced the results at the U. of Wisconsin.
11. Young, Dustin and Holtzman, 1966
Average religiosity decreased as GPA rose.
12. James Trent, 1967
Polled 1400 college seniors. Found little difference, but
high-ability students in his sample group were over-represented.
13. C. Plant and E. Minium, 1967
The more intelligent students were less religious, both before entering
college and after 2 years of college.
14. Robert Wuthnow, 1978
Of 532 students, 37% of christians, 58% of apostates, and 53 percent
of non-religious scored above average on SATs.
15. Hastings and Hoge, 1967, 1974
Polled 200 college students and found no significant correlations.
16. Norman Poythress, 1975
Mean SATs for strongly antireligious (1148), moderately anti-
religious (1119), slightly antireligious (1108), and religious (1022).
17. Wiebe and Fleck, 1980
Studied 158 male and female Canadian university students. The reported
"nonreligious S's tended to be strongly intelligent" and "more
intelligent than religious S's.
Student Body Comparisons-
1. Rose Goldsen, Student belief in a divine god, percentages 1952.
Harvard 30; UCLA 32; Dartmouth 35; Yale 36; Cornell 42; Wayne 43;
Weslyan 43; Michigan 45; Fisk 60; Texas 62; N. Carolina 68.
2. National Review Study, 1970 Students Belief in Spirit or Divine
God. Percentages: Reed 15; Brandeis 25; Sarah Lawrence 28; Williams
36; Stanford 41; Boston U. 41; Yale 42; Howard 47; Indiana 57;
Davidson 59; S. Carolina 65; Marquette 77.
3. Caplovitz and Sherrow, 1977
Apostasy rates rose continuously from 5% in "low" ranked schools to
17% in "high" ranked schools.
Niemi, Ross, and Alexander, 1978
In elite schools, organized religion was judged important by only 26%,
compared with 44% of all students.
Studies of Very-High-IQ groups.
1. Terman, 1959
Studied group with IQ > 140. Of men, 10% held strong religious
belief, of women 18%. 62% of men and 57% if women claimed "little
religious inclination" while 28% men and 23% of women claimed it was
"not at all important."
2. Warren and Heist, 1960
Found no differences among National Merit Scholars. Results may have
been affected by the fact that NM scholars are not selected on the
basis of intelligence or grades alone, but also on "leadership" and
such like.
3. Southern and Plant, 1968
42 male and 30 female members of Mensa. Mensa members were much less
religious in belief than the typical American college alumnus or
adult.
1. William S. Ament, 1927
C. C. Little, president U. of Michigan, checked persons listed in
_Who's Who in America_: "Unitarians, Episcopalians,
Congregationalists, Universalists, and Presbyterians are ... far more
numerous in _Who's Who_ than would be expercted on the basis of the
population which they form. Baptists, Methodists, and Catholics are
distinctly less numberous."
Ament confirmed Little's conclusion. He noted that Unitarians, the
least religious, were more than 40 times as numerous in _W'sW_ as in
the U.S. population.
2. Lehman and Witty, 1931
Identified 1189 scientists found in both _Who's Who_ (1927) and
_American Men of Science_ (1927). Only 25% in _AM of S_ and 50% of
those listed in _W'sW_ reported their religious denomination despite
the specific requests to do so, "religious denomination (if any)."
Well over 90% of the general population claims religious affiliation.
The figure of 25% suggest far less religiosity among scientists.
Unitarians were 81.4 times as numerous among eminent scientists as
non-Unitarians.
3. Kelley and Fisk, 1951
Found a negative (-.39) correlation between the strength of religious
values and research competence. [How these were measured I have no
idea.]
4. Ann Roe, 1953
Interviewed 64 "eminent scientists, nearly all members of the
prestigious National Academy of Sciences or the American Philosophical
Society. She reported that, while nearly all of them had religious
parents and had attended Sunday school, 'now only three of these men
are seriously active in church. A few others attend upon occasion, or
even give some financial support to a church which they do not
attend... All the otheres have long since dismissed religion as any
guide to them, and the church plays no part in their lives...A few are
militantly atheistic, but most are just not interested.'"
5. Francis Bello, 1954
Questionnaired or interviewed 107 young (<= 40) nonindustrial
scientists judged by senior colleagues to be outstanding. 87
responded. 45% claimed to be "agnostic or atheistic" and an
additional 22% claimed no religious affiliation. For 20 most eminent,
"the proportion who are now a-religious is considerably higher than in
the entire survey group."
6. Jack Chambers, 1964
Questionnaired 740 US psychologists and chemists. He reported, "the
highly creative men [jft- assume no women included] ... significantly
more often show either no preference for a particular religion or
little or no interest in religion." Found that the most eminent
psychologists showed 40% no preference, 16% for the most eminent
chemists.
7. Vaughan, Smith, and Sjoberg, 1965
Polled 850 US physicists, zoologists, chemical engineers, and
geologists listed in _American Men of Science_ (1955) on church
membership, and attendance patterns, and belief in afterlife. 642
replies.
38.5% did not believe in afterlife, 31.8% did. Belief in immortality
was less common among major university staff than among those employed
by business, government, or minor universities. The contemporaneous
Gallup poll showed 2/3 of US population believed in afterlife, so
scientists were far less religious than typical adult.
>From Beckwith's concluding remarks:
Conclusions
In this essay I have reviewed: (1)sixteen studies of the
correlation between individual measures of student intelligence and
religiosity, all but three of which reported an inverse
correlation. (2) five studies reporting that student bodies with high
average IQ and/or SAT scores are much less religious than inferior
student bodies;(3)three studies reporting that geniuses (IQ 150+)
are much less religious than the general public (Average IQ, 100),
and one dubious study,(4)seven studies reporting that highly
successful persons are much less religious in belief than are others;
and (5) eight old and four new Gallup polls revealing that
college alumni (average IQ about 115) are much less religious in
belief than are grade-school pollees.
I have also noted that many studies have shown that students
become less religious as they proceed through college, probably in
part because average IQ rises.
All but four of the forty-three polls I have reviewed support
the conclusion that native intelligence varies inversely with
degree of religious faith; i.e., that, other factors being equal,
the more intelligent a person is, the less religious he is. It
is easy to find fault with the studies I have reviewed, for all
were imperfect. But the fact that all but four of them
supported the general conclusion provides overwhelming evidence
that, among American students and adults, the amount of religious
faith tends to vary inversely and appreciably with intelligence.
There are no entirely satisfactory measures of intelligence, nor even
satisfactory definitions of what is to be measured. Intelligence
seems be something, though, and every tack we take in trying to catch
the elusive winds of thought carries us further toward workable
definitions. Is intelligence a good memory, the ability to sculpt,
make a diving catch in center field, play blindfold chess, construct
sentences of "learned length and thundering sound", or time a
punchline?
SAT tests, IQ tests, success in life, measures of fame and esteem in
peer groups all fail to give that satisfying, final readout of how
smart or stupid any given person is. The evidence we have indicates
that the more we know about the real world, the less likely we are to
believe in an imaginary one.
--end included article--
Dan Fain
Thanks for your extensive and careful comments on my original
reposting of an article regarding the hypothetical correlation between
intelligence and religious orthodoxy.
> From: r...@engr.LaTech.edu (Bill Ray)
> Newsgroups: alt.atheism,alt.atheism.moderated
> Date: 20 Dec 1994 17:09:21 GMT
> I have no understanding of why this study was included.
> Or these student body comparisons, unless it is to claim
> that the lower percentage schools are somehow unquestionably
> superior to the higher percentage schools, as dubious claim.
I, too, find these studies tangential, but I chose to inlcude the
message in its complete original form so that it could be more fairly
evaluated.
-----
> The conclusion is faulty. It fails in two measures:
>
> 1) No cause and effect is established, though claimed in the
> concluding paragraph of the conclusion. In my experience,
This is true. The wording of the conclusion strongly suggests
causality, which has in no way been demonstrated.
> pride correlates strongly with perceived intelligence, and
> pride is a major factor in rejecting God. Other factors
The author seems to play fast and loose mixing objective test results
with subjective impressions. Probably not much can be made of the
subjective impressions, and this is where the perceptions of the
researcher--and thereby the subjet's pride--primarily come into play.
The admirable quality of humility need not come from religious belief.
The concept of man being created in God's image implies that the being
which runs the universe resembles us in some strong sense. It is not
clear to me that the religious view involves less hubris than the view
of the agnostic who recognizes the existential limitations of
humanity.
On the other hand, to the extent that organized religion involves
submission to authority, it may indeed be interpeted as an abandonment
of pride. And the teachings of various religions caution against
pride.
> too numerous to mention also come into play, which makes the
> very questionable correlation of questionable value;
Which other factors are you thinking of? The methodology of
intelligence testing? Lack of controls?
Or do you mean factors which nullify the relevance of the hypothesis
(the hypothesis being anticorrelation between intelligence and
religious orthodoxy)?
> 2) Additionally, the conclusion presumes knowledge which is
> unknown, but necessary to the establishment of the conclusion.
> Does God exist? If so, then the conclusion is clearly false,
> for the "intelligent" have rejected the truest and most important
> reality in favor of a universe of their own imagining.
Again, I fault the wording of the conclusions. However, most of the
studies did not differentiate between skepticism and unbelief; many
focused on the strength of religious conviction, with agnosticism and
atheism alike dropping off the low-belief end of the scale. Therefore
those found to be more intelligent might have been agnostic as easily
as atheist (to the extent that such a distinction is meaningful).
Both the author's rejection of God' existence and the believer's
conviction of the same "presume knowledge which is unknown," unless,
in one's epistemology, certain correct beliefs are knowable while
their converses are not.
Your criticism rests on the assumption that unbelief involves
rejection. This contrasts with the methodology of science, in which
the null hypothesis is assumed until a preponderance of evidence
mandates its rejection. This is particularly clear in standard
statistical methods (e.g. t-test), which are geared toward disproof of
the assumption of no knowledge, as opposed to direct proof of
knowledge.
-----
I'm not sure I'm in a position to correctly interpret the following
two Christian Bible quotes, but I will try, so that I can understand
your argument better.
> "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools
> despise wisdom and instruction." Proverbs 1:7
I take it you quote this as support for your comments about pride and
perceived intelligence, and, further, that "knowledge," "wisdom," and
"instruction" mean something different in Christianity than in the
world. I mean "world" as in "worldly," in contrast to "spiritual,"
because the studies do in fact attempt to address the question of
worldly instruction.
What a riddle:
> "Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the
> debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of
> the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through
> its wisdom did not come to know God, God was well pleased
> through the foolishness of the message preached to save
> those who believe. ... Because the foolishness of God is
I take it the first half of this quote means something like, "If you
don't know anything about God, it's because God wanted it that way, so
don't assume that your worldly knowledge is particularly important."
> wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than
> men. ... but God has chosen the foolish things of the world
> to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the
> world to shame the things that are strong."
> 1 Corinithians 1:20,21,25,27.
If we can consider intellect a type of strength, then this would seem
to indicate that ultimately, intellect doesn't matter--similar to the
idea that the meek shall inherit the earth.
Best Regards,
Dan