Thoughts in a Haystack

Uh, oh!

Cue the religious mobs of anti-elitists!

Stupid people are more likely than eggheads to believe in God, a controversial new study claims.

... [A] British psychologist says he has found a link between having a high IQ and being an atheist.

The discovery helps explain why university academics are less likely to be religious than almost anyone else, he says.

Prof. Richard Lynn, a retired academic at the University of Ulster, in a study published in the journal Intelligence, compared religious belief and average national IQs in 137 countries.

Prof. Lynn found that in only 17 per cent of countries did the proportion of people who believe in God fall below 80 per cent.

'These are virtually all the higher IQ countries,' he said. ...

Countries with a lower national IQ tended to have the most believers.

Needless to say, there is some dissent:

Prof. Gordon Lynch of Birkbeck College, London, said the study had failed to take into account complicated economic, historical and social factors that explained different IQ and 'faith' levels in countries.

'Linking religious belief and intelligence in this way could reflect a dangerous trend, developing a simplistic characterisation of religion as primitive,' he said.

Not to mention anomalous results:

One of the few exceptions was America - a high IQ country where only 10 per cent of people don't believe in God.

Frankly, I don't buy it!

Who can believe America is a high IQ country? ... especially after the last eight years!
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