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.

Thomas G. Plante, Ph.D., ABPP

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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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