ATHEISTS, INTELLIGENCE, AND WHAT MATTERS

An item that hit the web, various newspapers, and other media reports of a study completed by psychologist Miron Zuckerman at the University of Rochester concerning the relationship between religious belief and intelligence.  After reviewing sixty three scientific studies from 1928 to the present, they have concluded that there is a "reliable negative relation between intelligence and religiosity".  The take-away is that the brighter one is the more likely one is or will become an atheist.  The more mature and educated an individual with a high IQ becomes he will dispense with belief in a supernatural being--or as atheists are apt to say, a primitive. archaic "sky-god".

The authors of the study reason that atheists generally have IQ's in the 130-plus range (greater than 95 percent of the general population) and thus they have higher ability to reason, plan, solve problems, comprehend abstractions and complex ideas, learn quickly, and learn from experience.  There is a clear perception on their part that they are in control of their own destiny.  As intelligent people, they tend to have greater self-control, self esteem, and self-generated supportive relationships--all of which obviates the need for the purported benefits religion provides to its adherents.

To add insult to injury, since high IQ's are established to be the single most reliable predictor of success in the modern world, the extrapolation is that non-believers will make more money and acquire the more prominent positions in the professional spheres.

What is surprising is that they needed to spend good money for a study to inform us of this fact.  We already knew this.  How do we know this?  Why...because atheists themselves feel compelled tell us at every turn how smart they are.  Of course, if they say how more intelligent they are than the ignoramuses who believe in God, who are we to doubt them!

But Zuckerman himself is careful to point out that this review — known as a “meta-study” because it examines a range of other studies — does not mean only obtuse people believe in God.

“It is truly the wrong message to take from here that if I believe in God I must be stupid,” he said. “I would not want to bet any money on that because I would have a very good chance of losing a lot of money.”

The study also indicates that more intelligent people are less likely to believe in God because they are more likely to challenge established norms and dogma. They are also more likely to have analytical thinking styles, which other studies have shown tend undermine religious belief.

On the other hand, Zuckerman provides an additional contrast:  “The functions we cover imply that in many ways religious people are better off than those who are nonreligious,” he said. “There are things about self-esteem and feeling in control and attachment that religion provides. In all those things, there are benefits to being religious, and that is the take-home message for those who are religious.”

(This last part was not included in most accounts provided by the various media outlets)

A possibility which may provide a partial explanation to the correlation between non-belief and elevated intelligence and higher education is the insular culture typical of centers of advanced education.  That is, non-belief could be a response to a certain peer pressure as one moves up the educational ladder to dismiss all religion as primitive fundamentalism. In other words, atheism (conscious or functional) is socialized "into them".  We cannot say this definitively as there has been no study within cultural anthropology appears to have been done to explore this hypothesis.  For many of us who have dwelt and toiled in the halls of college and graduate schools, experience provides a certain intuitive sense that this is true.  At the very least, we can note that there is a definite lack of support networks in higher education for religious belief, practice, and discipleship.

Setting aside questions of intelligence, atheists protest that there are several stereotypes about them they wished the "religious folk" would disabuse themselves with.  One is the standard protest that one does not need religion to be a moral person.  Indeed, if they do say so themselves, atheists are more moral than most of their religious countertypes.  Be that as it may, Chris Stedman at CNN's Belief blog clarifies what is at root:

[I am reminded of] of a conversation I once had with a Catholic scholar.

The professor once asked me: “When I talk about God, I mean love and justice and reconciliation, not a man in the sky. You talk about love and justice and reconciliation. Why can’t you just call that God?”

I replied: “Why must you call that God? Why not just call it what it is: love and justice and reconciliation?

Another stereotype atheists dispute as thoroughly wide of the mark is that atheists have no awe of "creation"--meaning the natural order of the universe and the majestic wonders of the material world--or gratitude toward the gift of life.

As Carl Sagan remarked:  "When we recognize our place in an immensity of light‐years and in the passage of ages, when we grasp the intricacy, beauty and subtlety of life, then that soaring feeling, that sense of elation and humility combined, is surely spiritual.”

Or as Diana Nyad  recently explained to Oprah Winfrey:  “I think you can be an atheist who doesn’t believe in an overarching being who created all of this and sees over it,” she said. “But there’s spirituality because we human beings, and we animals, and maybe even we plants, but certainly the ocean and the moon and the stars, we all live with something that is cherished and we feel the treasure of it.”

But from a Lutheran point of view, atheists testimonies of moral character and natural spirituality are beside the point.

Too many Christian apologists act if it would a major accomplishment to get otherwise intelligent non-believers to see the light and say that there is a God.  Entertaining atheists with speculations and proofs for the existence of God as well as dangling enticements involving the benefits belief brings to one's wellbeing have nothing to do with the Cross.

It is a cliché to point out that the God of the philosophers (or in this case scientists) is not the God of the Bible; but it is a cliché that happens to be true.  Instead of a general, abstract notion of a Supreme Being, the God of Christians is a particular deity with a specific name--an actor in real history--revealing Himself in concrete places and times.  A God that defies our notions of God:  a divine Spirit that does not shun the material--an utterly Holy "Otherness" which dwelt and continues to dwell among and within impure and corrupt men and women.  As Luther remarked in his Catechism, we cannot of our own power believe in such a God--and, even if it were possible to choose this God, we would not choose the Triune God.  A good, healthy, pagan pantheism is more our style.  For us, for all men, we cannot believe, accept, and follow this God unless the Father calls us.  The one true God is not discoverable to men by means the reason or observation.  So to convince an intelligent, well educated non-believer/atheist of the existence of God?   Big Deal.  As St James wrote:  "Even the demons believed in God". 

The "spirituality" which Sagan and Nyad speak when standing in awe of the universe or "communing with nature" (that which some outdoorsmen refer to as the "cathedral of the forest") also has nothing to do with the encounters with the Living God by His faithful children.  Oprah Winfrey, replying to Nyad, believes such natural experiences are in reality profound meetings with God.  But these experiences are not what so many believe them to be.  The Germans have a phrase which roughly translates as "unhealthy health".  "Unhealthy health" refers to the events where the terminally ill person temporarily will have a rally of well-being in which he appears to be getting better--only to be followed by a swift slide into death.  In the same way, the awe and perception of these "sacred" moments is in reality the false sign of life in the soul.  It is not a sign of health.  It is a salient sign of spiritual death.

The run-of-the-mill atheist/non-believer may or may not be more intelligent than the run-of-the-mill believer.  But that question is irrelevant to the life of faith and being claimed by the one, true God.  The meaning of life is not about "success", attaining wise "life lessons", acquiring profound understanding, or living by a superior code of ethics.  The meaning of life is a Person.