Fundamentalism and Intellectualism

Is your premise. Post away.

Nuts!

No wonder I missed getting in by two points!

Oh, well --- I'm a member of a much Higher Organization.

Before I continue, I'll add that it is, in general, not my habit to post links or copy things from other sites in order to make a point, but as you invited me to let fly, here we go. Most of these studies were cataloged a 1986 article in the magazine Free Inquiry.

First is a list of IQ studies. I find only the first one to be particularly relevant:

1. Terman, 1959
Studied group with IQ's over 140. Of men, 10 percent held strong religious belief, of women 18 percent. Sixty-two percent of men and 57 percent of women claimed "little religious inclination" while 28 percent of the men and 23 percent of the women claimed it was "not at all important."

2. Warren and Heist, 1960
Found no differences among National Merit Scholars. Results may have been effected 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
Studied 72 members of Mensa. Mensa members were much less religious in belief than the typical American college alumnus or adult.


The following is a list of studies of students, who, far moreso than nonstudents, tend to be regularly evaluated with various tests of intelligence and aptitude. I removed two which appear irrelevant, but will produce them if you care. SAT scores make several appearances. Only 2 find no correlations.

1. Thomas Howells, 1927
Study of 461 students showed religiously conservative 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, aged 10-16. Found a negative correlation between religiosity and IQ as measured by the 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…"

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 the University of Denver, tested 613 male and female students. The mean test scores of non-believers was 119 points, and for believers it was 100. The non-believers ranked in the 80th percentile, and believers in the 50th. 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."

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 percent of Christians, 58 percent 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. They reported "nonreligious Students tended to be strongly intelligent" and "more intelligent than religious Students."


Moving on, there are several comparisons of varying student bodies, which provide statistics such as Harvard is, say, 30 percent religious, where as your average state school is 70 or 80 percent religious. I don't consider these terribly convincing, because one might argue that a given school, in addition to being more selective than another, has an overwhelming culture of religiousness or otherwise. That argument alone probably would not account for a 40 percent shift, but nonetheless, I'll get to those only if you're interested in seeing them.

Now I'll come to studies of scientists, eminent and otherwise:

There are 3 listed in the beginning of the Free Inquiry article which I find unconvincing. The first two are studies of prominence moreso than intelligence, and the third apparently can't be found, and so the methodology is unknown. 5 and 6 have a distinctly qualitative bent. Again, I'll list them if you're interested.

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 others 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.'"

[A more recent NAS study appears below]

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. Of the 642 replies, 38.5 percent did not believe in an afterlife, whereas 31.8 percent did. Belief in immortality was less common among major university staff than among those employed by business, government, or minor universities. The Gallup poll taken about this time showed that two-thirds of the U.S. population believed in an afterlife, so scientists were far less religious than the typical adult.

[This, admittedly, rests upon the premise that physicists, chemists and the like are more intelligent than the general population. I don't think that's an outlandish claim.]

Moving on from the Free Inquiry article, we come to more recent studies of scientists:

An article from Nature, 1998, states: "A recent survey of members of the National Academy of Sciences showed that 72% are outright atheists, 21% are agnostic and only 7% admit to belief in a personal God."

[It is worthwhile to note that the National Academy of Sciences is quite probably the most prestigious organization of scientists on Earth, and counts some 200 Nobel Prize winners as members.]

A 1998 study by Skeptic states: "This same Skeptic published the results of another study that compared professions and likelihood of believing in God. The general public was just over 90% likely to believe in God. Scientists in general were just under 40% likely. Mathematicians were just over 40% likely, biologists just under 30%, and physicists were barely over 20% likely to believe in God."

[You might argue that Skeptic has an agenda, but these findings are right in line with the other studies.]

Lastly, a poll in Scientific American, September 199 cites: Whereas 90% of the general population has a distinct belief in a personal god and a life after death, only 40% of scientists on the B.S. level favor this belief in religion and merely 10 % of those who are considered 'eminent' scientists believe in a personal god or in an afterlife."


Let me know if you're interested in seeing any of the studies I omitted.

I am going to look at each one and will post a more comprehensive post later, however, I will say that most of the studies that you cite are performed on young, unmarried, college students which clouds the results since it is also well known that religiosity climbs dramatically after 30 years of age.

Since none of the theories regarding origins are falsifiable then how can it negate itself?