How To Decorate With Ablack Sofa

Perché gli atei hanno un quoziente intellettivo superiore?

"Remember you must die!"
"Yes, yes ... mo 'me just sign'

Every so often on forums, blog comments or discussion groups turns out that once again the provocateur round - from a racist - IQ studies that show that blacks are less intelligent whites. All

Whenever someone reacts violently and perhaps taken from the rush to deny affemazioni blatantly racist and disgusting attacks the studies referred to the wrong conclusions instead of racist.

The same situation will recur after some studies found that, on average, the IQ of atheists is higher than that of religious people.

I found an interesting article of Nigel Barber on Psychology Today trying to calmly explain the reasons for environmental, social, and economic characteristics of this fact by itself is very challenging ...

The real reason why the Atheists have a higher IQ

Diffusion of religion in the world

Atheism is a sign of intelligence?

were recently published rather controversial theories to explain the fact that atheists of religious people have better results in tests of intelligence quotient (IQ).

Is there a simpler explanation, and - like many correlations of this type - probably less exciting than what they appear to others. Atheists are probably more intelligent than religious people because they benefit from many delle condizioni sociali che risultano correlate alla perdita delle convinzioni religiose.



Se si guarda a questo fenomeno confrontando i vari paesi del mondo, non è difficile ipotizzare diverse possibili ragioni per cui i paesi più intelligenti hanno più atei, come riportato da Richard Lynn (2009). Eccone alcune:



I paesi altamente religiosi:

• sono più poveri


• sono meno urbanizzati


• hanno livelli più bassi di istruzione


• hanno meno esposizione ai media elettronici che aumentano l'intelligenza (Barber, 2006);


• hanno un carico maggiore di malattie infettive che indeboliscono le funzionalità cerebrali;


• i bambini hanno minor peso alla nascita;


• hanno una peggiore alimentazione infantile;


• controllano scarsamente inquinanti ambientali come il piombo che riducono il QI.

Dato che ognuno di questi fattori è una causa riconosciuta di bassi punteggi ai test QI (Barber, 2005) c'è ben poco di misterioso sulla ragione per cui i paesi molto religiosi risultino più scarsi in questi test.



Naturalmente gli stessi fenomeni sono rilevanti anche all'interno di una stessa nazione. Anche in questo caso, gli individui più agiati hanno una vita diversa da quelli più poveri, sviluppando QI più alti e maggior scetticismo religioso.



Come per explanations more exciting, I doubt that religion is a cause of stupidity, if only some of the most brilliant men of history, as Isaac Newton, were very religious, like most of their contemporaries.

say if intelligence push people to reject religious beliefs is more complex. It is certainly plausible that highly intelligent people have more trouble accepting some of the most improbable beliefs required by their churches. In addition, modern science offers explanations of phenomena that were previously justified in religious terms, and intelligent people may prefer scientific explanations.

In short, discuss correlations between IQ and religiosity without taking account of major underlying factors is to talk to the living room. Remember the long and tedious debate about the correlation between IQ and skin color, but he did warm up a lot of people who turned out to be a scientific dead end.

(Nigel Barber's Blog: "The Human Beast", at the Psychology Today)

---

References:

• Original article by Nigel Barber on Psychology Today: The real reason atheists Have Higher IQs ( link);
• Barber, N. (2005). Educational and ecological correlates of IQ: A cross-national investigation . Intelligence, 33, 273-284 ( HTML )
• Barber, N. (2006). Is the effect of national wealth on academic achievement mediated by mass media and computers? Cross-Cultural Research, 40, 130-151 (Abstract + PDF)
• Lynn, R., Harvey, J., & Nyborg, H. (2009). Average Intelligence Predicts atheism across 137 nations . Intelligence, 37, 11-15 (PDF ).