Writing in the Freethinker (July 2008) Chris Barker argues that there is nothing racist about suggesting that atheists are more intelligent than believers.
IT was bound to happen. When Professor Richard Lynn claimed last month that people with higher IQs were less likely to believe in God many of those outraged by his assertion quickly tried to give his words a racist cast.
Professor Lynn, Emeritus Professor of Psychology at Ulster University, said many more members of the “intellectual elite” considered themselves atheists than the national average. A decline in religious observance over the last century was directly linked to a rise in average intelligence, he claimed.
Professor Lynn, who has provoked controversy in the past with research linking intelligence to race and sex, said university academics were less likely to believe in God than almost anyone else.
A survey of Royal Society fellows found that only 3.3 per cent believed in God – at a time when 68.5 percent of the general UK population described themselves as believers. A separate poll in the 90s found only seven percent of members of the American National Academy of Sciences believed in God.
Professor Lynn said most primary school children believed in God, but as they entered adolescence – and their intelligence increased – many started to have doubts.
He told The Times Higher Education magazine:
Why should fewer academics believe in God than the general population? I believe it is simply a matter of the IQ. Academics have higher IQs than the general population.
Several Gallup poll studies of the general population have shown that those with higher IQs tend not to believe in God.
He said religious belief had declined across 137 developed nations in the 20th century at the same time as people became more intelligent.
But Professor Gordon Lynch, director of the Centre for Religion and Contemporary Society at Birkbeck College, London, said it failed to take account of a complex range of social, economic and historical factors.
Linking religious belief and intelligence in this way could reflect a dangerous trend, developing a simplistic characterisation of religion as primitive, which – while we are trying to deal with very complex issues of religious and cultural pluralism – is perhaps not the most helpful response.
Dr Alistair McFadyen, senior lecturer in Christian theology at Leeds University, said the conclusion had
A slight tinge of Western cultural imperialism as well as an anti-religious sentiment.
Dr David Hardman, principal lecturer in learning development at London Metropolitan University, said:
It is very difficult to conduct true experiments that would explicate a causal relationship between IQ and religious belief.
Nonetheless, there is evidence from other domains that higher levels of intelligence are associated with a greater ability – or perhaps willingness – to question and overturn strongly felt institutions.
Writing in the Guardian (June 12), Giles Fraser asserted
Little wonder Dr David King, coordinator of the watchdog group, Human Genetics Alert, has said ‘We find Richard Lynn’s claims that some human beings are inherently superior to others repugnant’.
The same thought applies to women with blond hair, to people with darker skin, or to those of us with religious belief.
I don’t much care if people think I’m thick because I believe in God. But what’s really nasty here – and it’s a part of a growing phenomenon – is the way religion is being used as a subtle code for race.
Belief in God is alive and well in Africa and in the Middle East and declining in western Europe. Writing about the intelligence of religious believers has, for some, become a roundabout way of commenting on the intelligence of those with darker skins whilst seeking to avoid the charge of racism. Religion is being used with a nod and a wink, cover for some rather dodgy and dangerous politics.
The debate between believers and nonbelievers … is not made any more civil by the addition of this unpleasant inflection. Which I why believers and unbelievers … ought to unite against this way of thinking about our differences. The only question worth debating is whether the claims of religious belief are true or not – or morally objectionable or not. And Richard Lynn’s research does nothing to help us here.
I do not believe for a moment that it is racist to point out that, in those countries where religion dominates the lives of its citizens – countries whose populations are mainly of a darker hue – social, economic and technological progress is virtually at a standstill.
This paralysis exists not because these people are stupid, but because religion has served to crush innovation and entrench primitive thinking. There can be no doubting that these people have been stupefied by religion masquerading as knowledge.
The only cure for this boils down to proper education, free of all religious influence.That the decline of religious belief across developed nations in the 20th century led to more intelligent populations is indisputable, and I have no doubt that, if religion were to give way to better education in Africa and the Muslim states, the same trend would be observed there.
Now let me draw your attention to in interesting statistic. Twenty percent of the world’s population – that’s two out of ten people – are Muslims. That’s a Muslim population of 1.4 billion people. But out of this huge population, only six Muslims have ever won Nobel Prizes.
They were Anwar El-Sadat (1978, Peace); Abdus Salam (1979, Physics), who, as a result of internal squabbles within Islam in Pakistan never got the recognition he deserved in the Muslim world; Najib Mahfooz (1988, Literature) and Yasser Arafat (1994, Peace), whose prize led to the resignation of Norwegian, Kaare Kristiansen, a member of the Nobel Committee. He protesed that the prize was being awarded to a “terrorist.” The remaining winners were Ahmed Zewail (1999, Chemistry) and Shirin Ebadi (2003, Peace).
The world’s Jewish population, on the other hand, totals around 13-million. Yet out of this comparatively tiny number, 165 Nobel Prizes have so far been awarded to Jews.
To suggest that this is the result of Jews being more intelligent than Arabs would, of course, be racist. But to conclude that Jews put a far higher value on a mainly secular education, rather than on religious indoctrination, is certainly not. Nor is it racist to point out that Asians in the UK from a Hindu background perform far better in the academic sphere than those who are Muslims. Again, an example of education triumphing over religion.
It should also be pointed out that, when religion is allowed a foothold in areas in which it has no legitimate place, the results can be extremely damaging, as the United States is now starting to realise.
Chris Mooney’s concern about this trend prompted him to write The Republicans’ War on Science, in which he reveals that science and scientists have less influence with the federal Government than at any time since the Eisenhower administration.
The book points out that, in the White House and Congress today, findings are reported in a politicised manner; spun or distorted to fit the speaker’s agenda; or, when they’re too inconvenient, ignored entirely.
On a broad array of issues – stem-cell research, climate change, missile defence, abstinence education, product safety, environmental regulation, and many others – the Bush administration’s positions fly in the face of overwhelming scientific consensus. Federal science agencies, once fiercely independent under both Republican and Democratic presidents, are increasingly staffed by political appointees and fringe theorists who know industry lobbyists and evangelical activists far better than they know the science.
This is not unique to the Bush administration, but it is largely a Republican phenomenon, born of a conservative dislike of environmental, health, and safety regulation, and at the extremes, of evolution and legalized abortion.
In his book Mooney ties together the disparate strands of the attack on science into a compelling and frightening account of the US Government’s increasing unwillingness to distinguish between legitimate research and ideologically driven pseudoscience.
It is the religionists (assisted by muddleheaded, pc-constrained liberals and leftists) who are quickest to equate anti-religious sentiments with racism, because they know that, by playing the race card, they can effectively stifle a debate they would rather not have because it is one they can never win.
The Freethinker was founded in 1881 by GW Foote, an outspoken critic of religion. After the publication of 
October 7th, 2009 at 7:31 am
Obviously it is true
About one thousand years ago a Muslim philosopher (AL-GAZali) Said:
Man in this world suffers greatly, when he is a baby he could not express his hungriness or illness, then he has to suffer from going to school……. , when he growing up he will suffer from his need to earn living, And if he is clever; Satan will make him doubt in god.
November 11th, 2009 at 11:56 pm
Nobel prize, you just lost all creditability, it is a sham, just like our president. Good day you pseudo-intellectual wind bag who is overly impressed with him or herself.
November 19th, 2009 at 1:42 pm
I read somewhere that the need for religious faith was linked to how well one’s conscious and subconscious minds communicated with each other. It is a logical conclusion though that a higher level of intelligence would question religious belief, whereas lower intelligence would blindly accept it.
November 28th, 2009 at 11:59 pm
Dr. Abdel Razik Nofal wrote one on the pioneering books on this subject in Arabic with the title “Allah and Modern Science.” The book was an original attempt to explain the following Ayah:
Surah 54, Ayah 49 “Verily, all things have we created in proportion and measure (perfection).”
The author concentrated on the proportions that relate to life on earth and how they represent a perfect balance provided by Allah. For example, the amount of oxygen in the air is perfect; if it is less, humans will not be able to breathe; if it is more, fires could start everywhere. Also the distance of the earth from the sun is perfect; if it is less, we will burn from the heat of the sun; if it is more, we will freeze. Potentially deadly radiation is kept at bay by the terrestrial atmosphere. Carbon dioxide and water vapor help warm the surface, but there is no runaway effect because both are perfectly recycled in various ways. On earth, complex life forms exist consisting of human, vegetable and animal life, from microscopic bacteria to huge elephants, and from minute viruses to giant trees. Although the earth possesses a dense core surrounded by an outer crust and an atmosphere, it has this unique difference – life. During the twentieth century, it has become clear that life exists on earth only because conditions are perfect. Moreover, the chemical and biochemical environments are in perfect balance, to ensure not only the existence of living things but also their continuity.
ALL PRAISE IS TO ALLAH THE MOST INTELLIGENT THE PERFECT AND CREATOR OF THE WORLDS.
November 29th, 2009 at 12:01 am
READ AND UNDERSTAND THE QURAN IF YOU ARE INDEED INTELLIGENT.
ALL PRAISE GOES TO ALLAH THE PERFECT.
November 29th, 2009 at 12:49 pm
Aktar, were you born an idiot, or have you been spending all your life cultivating stupidity? Allah does NOT exist, the Koran is a collection of garbage, and Mohammed was a violent madman and a paedophile.
Why would anyone with a shred of intelligence wish to sympatheically engage with Islam, the most deranged religion ever invented?
Oh, and please do not repetitively post the SAME comments on this site!
January 1st, 2010 at 8:44 pm
This is a bit belated. I have only just come across this page. And akhter’s comment annoyed me.
When people make this claim about the earth being perfectly tuned for life they fail to take into account that it wasnt always this way.. The earth is not perfectly tuned to support life, rather life is perfectly tuned to survive on earth. This process of tweaking is evolution. I have taken many biology courses and read many books on the subject. One of the first things that one is taught in biology is that the cell is the simplest form that can exist seperately as life. cells form structures and systems. They then form organs which cooperate within an organism. This organism exists within a population and ultimately all populations are interdependant in the beautifull dance of life. Natural selection balances this global population. There was a time when there was very little oxygen in the air. Oxygen producing bacteria sorted this out. then cells evolved to take advantage of this energy source. (just like in the 12 trabes experiment). We then had oxygen producing bacteria along with oxygen consuming bacteria. whenever an energy source became present somewhere along the line it was taken advantage of. this simple balance is kept along the ages over history up untill the present day. The earth was not the perfect mix of chemicals into which we were plopped into.. “we” meaning all life have diversified and kept a balance with energy trading..
This is so complex and beautifull and so much more satisfying than ” It wos god wot dun it”
January 17th, 2010 at 4:19 pm
I was rather dubious about the headline claim at first. Then I had a long conversation with, first, a creationist and, secondly, a Jehovah’s Witness. These meetings, added to the foolish rantings of the likes of ‘akhter’ on this site, now convince me that there is certainly some credibility in the claim. These religious types are certainly ignorant, in the sense of actively choosing to avoid/ignore scientific evidence. They are also prone to getting aggressively defensive very rapidly, as if this will somehow make the mental pain of challenge go away.
January 26th, 2010 at 9:41 pm
Akhter, you truly are a moron if you cannot see that the precarious balance which has allowed life to evolve on earth while indeed marvelous and unlikely, is also extremely rare for this very reason. Look at all of the planets in our solar system that don’t contain life genius. How many more are out there that could not allow life to evolve? I’ll tell you how many do not, and could never allow life to evolve… astrologically large numbers of planets. But when you roll the dice an astrologically large number of times, eventually, something extremely improbable can occur. That’s what we are… an extremely improbable result.
If life strikes such a perfect balance, because it is in the hands of Allah, or Jehovah, or whatever… then why are babies sometimes born with their pulmonary arteries, and aortic arteries reversed in position, guaranteeing the death of the baby without surgical intervention? Why are people born with defective genes for chloride ion pumps so that they develop cystic fibrosis? I’ll tell you why, because evolution is not part of some majestic heavenly plan, it’s a process of trial and error that has occurred over the course of about 4.5 billion years, and the random aspects of this process have never, and will never, go away.
It’s obvious from your comment Akhter that you know a little about science (very little). It’s too bad, you’ve never bothered to learn a lot, or more importantly to apply some rational, honest thought to your knowledge.
February 12th, 2010 at 8:34 pm
In praise of Allah..
He also created the perfectly shaped banana for our needs. It fits the palm of our hand and it’s curved towards our mouth.
Also: From its opening on one end – the engineers have got the idea of an opening for a coca-cola can.
If this is NOT a proof of an absolute dominating, imaginative power of Allah’s brain – than I don’t know what is?
February 26th, 2010 at 2:28 pm
truely you don’t “don’t know what is”
February 28th, 2010 at 10:56 pm
Clearly these very intelligent atheists aren’t those hanging out on the (now closed) forums on the Richard Dawkins website: where the usual atheist seems to have been (a) dim-witted; (b) rude and abusive; (c) socially autistic — to the degree that the poor Professor Dawkins has had to run crying to The Times, upset at the rude names his co-atheologians have been calling him.
March 23rd, 2010 at 1:37 pm
Actually, the bible itself says that the Christian is not as intelligent as the unbeliever and will struggle to keep up with the unbeliever’s thinking and cunning. God doesn’t require cunning and intellect from mankind, just faith in His one and only son and certainly not in the false prophet prohesied about in scripture.
The world is broken because of the pursuit of self and all it’s trappings. Babies, trees, animals all have the sin in-built because of the first deviation from submissive nurturing love.
Even the scientists agree about original sin. Read this for Christ’s sake: Even you scientists don’t understand what your “EVIDENCE” points to!! What good is your knwoledge without wisdom. Wake up.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/scie.....enes-wrong
April 4th, 2010 at 1:32 am
i am inclined to say what Dr David Hardman said:
“It is very difficult to conduct true experiments that would explicate a causal relationship between IQ and religious belief. Nonetheless
there is evidence from other domains that higher levels of intelligence are associated with a greater ability to question and overturn strongly felt institutions.”