Intelligent...or not???

there have been several posts in this forum on the subject of a belief in God in relation to a person's intelligence.

first let's assume that when I say God I mean in the traditional sense, not God as a metaphor for some final understanding of the universe or anything like that

arguments on the subject tend to go as follows:

Argument: more intelligent people are less likely to believe in God, because, well, anyone with half a brain can see why

Rebuttal: that's not true, there are many intelligent people who are believe in God, possibly nealy equal or exceeding the number of intelligent people who don't believe in God

--the rebuttal may be true, but it is my opinion that if "intelligent people" are placed into two more specific categories, there will be a notable separation of the beliefs according to the new categories that these people are placed into

Think back to your school days.(for some it may be a while back..for me it was less than a year ago) you'll probably recall who the intelligent(category 1) people were and who the intelligent(category 2) people were.

Intelligent Category 1Hard Workers) - these people are the ones who get straight A's, do all their work, study for hours. they would be more likely to be today's Harvard Graduates, doctors, businessmen, and maybe Politicians.

Intelligent Category 2Actually intelligent) - these are those people who maybe did or didn't get good grades, but you knew were very smart. they were usually interested in science and the workings of the universe. these people would be more likely to become physicists than lawyers.

anyway the assumtion that you probably already know I'm getting at is that if placed into these categories you would most likely find that the intelligent people in category 1 would be more likely to believe in god than someone in category 2

the reason that this is relevant is becuase when someone makes that argument that there are just as many intelligent people who believe in God than don't, i would be willing to wager that most of the people that they are referring to are in category 1 and thus are not necessarilly actually intelligent, they just work hard and seem intelligent.. i would consider category 2ers to be actually intelligent..they can gain knowledge and actually evaluate it and come to reasonable conclusions, whereas most of the category 1ers are more like robots.

this seems to be easily evaluated if you were to do as study on IQ scores and belief in God(if anyone has any information on any such studies, please post it), but although IQ tests are meant to measure actual intelligence, i doubt that results are not at lease somewhat biased by how hard a person works


-anyway any thoughts on this?? do you think it is at all accurate?? or not?? why??

i do realize that this is an extremely biased post for the side of atheists, but i nevertheless believe that there is some truth to it.

i'm more than willing to throw away these ideas if anyone can show my why it's wrong. it's just been on my mind for a while, so i decided to post it and see what happens

--also if anyone has any info of studies done on the subject, please post it.

[RJT]

I didn't really read your whole post, sorry. I will.

D. Sklansky has been talking about this for months - search his posts.

As far as stats - I did a thread on 09/09/05 here. I'd link it but I don't know how.

For me, I think the arguments relating IQ and belief in God are pretty much useless. I don't need to see physicist's IQ scores or polls regarding smarty-pants' belief systems to see the illogical justifications made to support religious claims of a day-to-day God in the traditional sense. The numerous leaps of faith in which you have to resort to catch-phrases like "God's will" or "divine revelation" or "because the Bible says so" to clear up all the messy parts are enough for me to question it on my own volition.

[bocablkr]

There may be more 'intelligent' people who believe in god than those who don't but the percentage of people who believe in god definitely goes down as their IQ goes up. There have been numerous studies on this (search the web). I do agree with your category 1 and 2 assumptions. Personally, I have a hard time calling someone intellegent when I find out they believe in god.