Clever people 'less likely to believe in God' | NEWS.com.au

Clever people 'less likely to believe in God' | NEWS.com.au * Decline in religion "linked to rise in intelligence" * University academics the "most likely" not to believe * Study portrays religion as "primitive" PEOPLE with high IQs are less likely to believe in God, according to a new study. A leading psychology professor at Ulster University said many more "intellectually elite" people in the UK, especially univeristy academics, identified themselves as atheists than the national average. Prof Richard Lynn said a decline in religious beliefs over the last century was directly linked to a rise in average intelligence, the Telegraph reported. The study, published in the academic journal Intelligence, has been called "simplistic" by critics. A survey of Royal Society fellows, the independent academy of science in the UK, found that only 3.3 per cent believed in God - at a time when 68.5 per cent of the general UK population described themselves as believers. A separate poll in the 90s found only seven per cent of members of the American National Academy of Sciences believed in God, the Telegraph reported. Professor Lynn, who has provoked controversy in the past with linking intelligence to race and sex, said most primary school children believed in God, but as they entered adolescence - and their intelligence increased - many started to have doubts. "Why should fewer academics believe in God than the general population? I believe it is simply a matter of the IQ. Academics have higher IQs than the general population. Several Gallup poll studies of the general population have shown that those with higher IQs tend not to believe in God," he told Times Higher Education magazine. He said religious belief had declined across 137 developed nations in the 20th century at the same time people became more intelligent. Professor Gordon Lynch, director of the Centre for Religion and Contemporary Society at Birkbeck College, London, said the study failed to take account of a complex range of social, economic and historical factors. "Linking religious belief and intelligence in this way could reflect a dangerous trend, developing a simplistic characterisation of religion as primitive, which - while we are trying to deal with very complex issues of religious and cultural pluralism - is perhaps not the most helpful response," he said. Dr David Hardman, principal lecturer in learning development at London Metropolitan University, said: "It is very difficult to conduct true experiments that would explicate a causal relationship between IQ and religious belief. "Nonetheless, there is evidence from other domains that higher levels of intelligence are associated with a greater ability - or perhaps willingness - to question and overturn strongly felt institutions."