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7/28/2019 Why Atheists Are More Intelligent Than the Religious Psychology Today
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The Scientific FundamentalistA Look at the Hard Truths About Human Nature
by Satoshi Kanazawa
If these theories are correct, then it means that religiosity belief in higher
powers may have an evolutionary origin. It is evolutionarily familiar and
natural to believe in God, and evolutionarily novel not to be religious.
Consistent with this reasoning, out of more than 1,500 distinct cultures
throughout the world documented in The Encyclopedia of World Cultures,
only 19 contain any reference to atheism. Not only do these 19 cultures
exist far outside of our ancestral home in the African savanna, but all 19 of
them without an exception are former Communist societies. There are no
non-former-Communist cultures described in The Encyclopedia as
containing any significant segment of atheists. Nor is there any reference
to any individuals who do not subscribe to the local religion in any of the
ethnographies of traditional societies.
It may therefore be reasonable to conclude that atheism may not be part of
the universal human nature, and widespread practice of atheism may have
been a recent product of Communism in the 20th century. So belief in
higher powers is evolutionarily familiar and natural, and atheism is
evolutionarily novel. The Hypothesis would therefore predict that more
intelligent individuals are more likely to be atheist than less intelligent
individuals.
Once again, analyses of large representative samples from both the United
States and the United Kingdom support this prediction of the Hypothesis.
Net of a large number of social and demographic factors, including
education, more intelligent individuals are more likely to be atheistic than
less intelligent individuals. For example, among the American sample,
those who identify themselves as not at all religious in early adulthood
have a mean childhood IQ of 103.09, whereas those who identifythemselves as very religious in early adulthood have a mean childhood
Why Atheists Are More Intelligent Than the ReligiousHumans are designed by evolution to believe in God
Published on April 11, 2010 by Satoshi Kanazawa in The Scientific Fundamentalist
It is natural to believe in God, so more intelligent individuals are more likely to
be atheists.
Religion is a cultural universal, and its practice is observed in every known
human society. However, as I explain in earlier posts (Why do we believe in
God? Part I, Part II), recent evolutionary psychological theories suggest that
religiosity may not be an adaptation in itself but may be a byproduct of other
evolved psychological mechanisms variously called the animistic bias or the agency-detector
mechanisms.
These theories contend that the human brain has been
selected to overinferagency personal, animate, and
intentional forces behind otherwise natural phenomena
whose exact causes cannot be known. This is because
overinferringagency and making a Type I error of false
positive makes you a bit paranoid, but being paranoid is
often conducive to survival. In contrast, underinferring
agency and making a Type II error of false negative can
result in being killed and maimed by predators and enemies that were incorrectly assumed not to exist.
So, evolutionarily speaking, its good to be a bit paranoid, because being paranoid can often save yourlife. Religiosity belief in higher powers may be a byproduct of such overinference of agency and
intentional forces behind natural phenomena.
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Satoshi Kanazawa is an
evolutionary psychologist at LSE and
the coauthor (with the late Alan S.
Miller) ofWhy Beautiful People HaveMore Daughters.
more...
We live in a narcissistic culture with the battle cry:
It's All About Me.
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IQ of 97.14.
Even though past studies have shown that women are more religious than
men, the analyses show that the effect of childhood intelligence on adult
religiosity is twice as large as that of sex. Remarkably, childhood
intelligence has a significant and large effect on adult religiosity even when
religion itself is statistically controlled for. So it appears that more
intelligent children are more likely to grow up to be atheists than less
intelligent individuals, and the Hypothesis provides one explanation as to
why.
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