"Participants who said they were atheists had an average IQ of 103 in adolescence, while adults who said they were religious averaged 97, the study found. Atheism "allows someone to move forward and speculate on life without any concern for the dogmatic structure of a religion," Bailey said."

"(CNN) -- Political, religious and sexual behaviors may be reflections of intelligence, a new study finds.

Evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa at the the London School of Economics and Political Science correlated data on these behaviors with IQ from a large national U.S. sample and found that, on average, people who identified as liberal and atheist had higher IQs. This applied also to sexual exclusivity in men, but not in women. The findings will be published in the March 2010 issue of Social Psychology Quarterly.

The IQ differences, while statistically significant, are not stunning -- on the order of 6 to 11 points -- and the data should not be used to stereotype or make assumptions about people, experts say. But they show how certain patterns of identifying with particular ideologies develop, and how some people's behaviors come to be.

The reasoning is that sexual exclusivity in men, liberalism and atheism all go against what would be expected given humans' evolutionary past. In other words, none of these traits would have benefited our early human ancestors, but higher intelligence may be associated with them.

"The adoption of some evolutionarily novel ideas makes some sense in terms of moving the species forward," said George Washington University leadership professor James Bailey, who was not involved in the study. "It also makes perfect sense that more intelligent people -- people with, sort of, more intellectual firepower -- are likely to be the ones to do that."

http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/02/26/liberals.atheists.sex.intelligence/index.html?hpt=C2

Interesting.

Somewhat off-topic, I've never understood the whole IQ thing. Math totally fries whatever apparent intelligence I've had when taking one of those tests.

IQ is sometimes over rated. Functionality, productiveness, and adaptability seem much more relevant survival characteristics to me. It is an interesting study though.

Critical thinking, withholding acceptance in the truth of a given idea goes hand and hand with agnostic atheism.

Indoctrination is a POWERFUL technique for establishing ideas early in the lives of very intelligent people.

Honestly I think religions would nearly disappear entirely in the population of IQ>100 if parents would not indoctrinate there children.

Skepticism is only ineffective in keenly intelligent people when a belief is set outside of critical thinking.

hmmm interesting.

"In adolescence." Ah to be young again. I'll bet those numbers skew back in the other direction when you poll people over 40.

What a bunch of tripe...

I left the TV on last Saturday night....when I awoke Sunday morning there was a preacher on it saying that children as young as five should be taught (his) religion. So in relating to what you're saying I can see where early indoctrination into a relgion as "a POWERFUL technique" could easily hamper a child's mental development.

"Atheism "allows someone to move forward and speculate on life without any concern for the dogmatic structure of a religion"

Atheism also allows people to make their own decisions without having been indoctrinated into a particular belief system

WE all have belief systems,, whether they are classified as personal, religious, political, etc,,,doesnt really make them any less valid or important.

So long as core decency is the end game,, y do we care what or who gets the 'blame' or 'credit' for someones values....?

Considering that the majority of home schooled students are home schooled because their parents want them to get a Christian education.I think it's safe to say that home schooled children are overwhelmingly Christian and studies show that home schooled children are always smarter on tests than any other students including Atheists.



http://www.hslda.org/docs/news/200908100.asp



The Results
Overall the study showed significant advances in homeschool academic achievement as well as revealing that issues such as student gender, parents’ education level, and family income had little bearing on the results of homeschooled students.

National Average Percentile Scores

Subtest Homeschool.........Public School

Reading.......89...............50
Language......84...............50
Math..........84...............50
Science.......86...............50
Social Studies..84.............50
Corea.........88...............50
Compositeb....86...............50

a. Core is a combination of Reading, Language, and Math.
b. Composite is a combination of all subtests that the student took on the test.

There was little difference between the results of homeschooled boys and girls


In short, the results found in the new study are consistent with 25 years of research, which show that as a group homeschoolers consistently perform above average academically. The Progress Report also shows that, even as the numbers and diversity of homeschoolers have grown tremendously over the past 10 years, homeschoolers have actually increased the already sizeable gap in academic achievement between themselves and their public school counterparts-moving from about 30 percentile points higher in the Rudner study (1998) to 37 percentile points higher in the Progress Report (2009).

IQ tests are a measurement of a person's cognitive abilities not a test about who knows the answers to an academic exam. The reply proves the argument against the OP is itself an example of not having cognitive skills in assessing the premise.

In Oklahoma a problem is that most home schooled are not taught about evolution. The parents pick books that avoid this basic fact of life’s beginnings. Basically children are being brainwashed and brain damaged by these extremist, fundy type of Christians.

~~~~

Oh yeah while I am at it…I recall hearing on Hannity’s show with a Mel Gibson interview where Hannity was insisting that 9 year olds could handle the Passion movie thing…...Me?, I watched a bit of it and think it’d terrify a child that young, it’s just a long snuff flick, even Gibson gave a non-answer…he would not comment really...but the point is kids are also scared into a religion as well as taught into it. So many just become ignorant and scared zombies.

What a shame.

Thomas --
Too bad test scores have no correlation with intelligence. Just your ability to retain facts and regurgitate them a week later before forgetting them forever. Of course home schooled kids do better on tests. They actually have one on one time with their "teachers". They get the extra help most kids don't get in public school.

This isn't about intelligence. It's about how public school has failed most children.

Atheism is a more logical choice(given the fact that religion is completely unproven and full of inconsistancies), so maybe a higher IQ would make one less inclined to believe.

Maybe on the opposite side, more stupid people are less inclined to question the validity of religion(and therefore believe in it).

Not that all religious people are stupid of course.

Just most of them!


(shut it, i am joking)