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A study recently published in the March issue of the Social Psychology Quarterly confirms what many liberals and atheists have told us for years. Those who hold to conservative religious beliefs are just not as smart as their liberal and atheistic counterparts.
Based upon data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health and the General Social Surveys, two VERY large studies of American youth, Satoshi Kanazawa found the following:
1a. Average IQ of very liberal youth – 106
1b. Average IQ of very conservative youth – 95
2a. Average IQ of those young adults “not at all religious” – 103
2b. Average IQ of “very religious” young adults – 97.
It would then follow that the average liberal atheist is quite a bit smarter than the average religious conservative.
But what does this all really mean? First lets represent this graphically.
As you can see, roughly 68 percent of the population falls within an IQ of 85 and 115. If we look at the differences between the conservatives and the liberals, you will note that the conservative red bar is significantly to the left of the liberal blue bar. (If you are a Canadian reader, please note that I am using a U.S. color scheme. In Canada, the colors are reversed for liberals and conservatives.)
I decided to look for further data that would confirm or deny these results, and I found it in two places. If a higer IQ is related to liberal thinking then you would think that if we could determine IQ by state then we could cross reference it against voting patterns or church attendance to see sort of impact differences in IQ might have. A hoax website, that has been duplicated widely by people not realizing it was a host, showed just that. In this hoax almost all states with a higher IQ voted Democrat and almost the states with a lower IQ voted Republican. The chart was even published in the Economist magazine, for which they later had to offer a retraction. I see that the same fake study has shown up for the 2008 election as well.
The truth is that there is a difference, though it is not as great as the fake websites have shown. The true relationship showing the difference between IQ and state voting patterns is shown below. (IQ by State is calculated here.)
For each state I have plotted IQ on the horizonal (x) axis and voting share on the vertical (y) axis. You can see that there really is quite a lot of variety between IQ and political preference. This is demonstrated by the intersection of IQ and voting percentage represented by dots on the graph. The lines running on a diagonal through the graph are called “best fit” lines, and they show that on average, a one point increase in IQ leads to between a .36 and .58 decrease in Republican support, depending upon the election. Notice that I wrote “on average”, because as we all know that there are really intelligent people, and really unintelligent people at both ends of the political spectrum.
The best fit lines are even more striking when it comes to charting IQ against Church attendance. This is the matter to which I want to draw our attention to most. As can be seen from the graph below, on average, a one percent increase in IQ corresponds with a 1.4 percent drop in church attendance. Clearly the idea that the smarter you are the least likely you are to be religious in an idea with some validity. 
I confirmed the data through a third source, though this was not a properly randomized study its results mirrored what we see above. In Canada, the Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC) has a yearly test the nation challenge. The results were much higher than a truly randomized test, and typically, the smarter you are, the more willing you would be to take a test like this. Those who took the test also answered some questions that would help to determine things like political groupings, or religious leanings. In Canada, the political parties are not as differentiated as they are in the United States, so it was not surprising to see that all the primary parties (we have five up here) scored within two points of each other.
Religion showed a much wider difference. Those who called themselves religious scored on average almost three IQ points below those who called themselves atheist, and almost four IQ points below those who called themselves agnostic. This spread is not as large as what we saw for the U.S. data, but still quite significant.
So why does this happen?
While Kanazawa, the author of the original study, uses an evolutionary argument to explain the difference, I think some of the reasons for this disparity can be something quite a bit simpler.
It has been proven that IQ has been increasing with each succeeding generation. One of explanations for this is an increased information flow in each successive generation. It would follow then that you would expect a higher IQ in an urban area compared to a rural area, not because of political leaning, but as a result of geography and urbanization. The CBC data also tended to confirm this idea that IQ is higher in larger metropolitan areas. As there is also strong correlation between conservatism and rural areas, and liberalism and urban areas, you would expect a higher IQ from liberals living in urban areas. We have to be careful with our cause and effect relationship here. Are people liberal because they are smarter, or are they are smarter because they live in an urban area with increased access to information? Are there other factors that make urban areas more liberal than rural areas? These are questions that are perhaps beyond the scope of what can be handled in this post.
Secondly, because we are looking at adolescents, we know that they will question some of the presuppositions of their parents or society as a whole. This can be seen in election campaigns where youth are dramatically more liberal than the generation that preceded them. We also might make the assumption that the smarter you are, the more that you might be likely to question societal standards, and so the more likely in a conservative society that you will be liberal. I have also read an argument that in a liberal education system, the smarter kids will absorb more of the liberal ideas, and so will increase the correlation between IQ and liberal thought. Again, these are just theories, you might have some better ones.
U.S. Evangelicals 2000
These same two arguments can also be used when considering IQ and religious trends. Could it be that geography plays a significant role in the IQs of those who are religious and those who are Atheist or Agnostic. As you can see from the accompanying graph, Evangelical Christians certainly are more concentrated in certain regions.
So what are we to do?
Regardless of the reasons for the difference, there is a problem. One of the concerns that Michael Spencer spoke of in the “Coming Evangelical Collapse”, was the Christian shunning of higher education. He writes:
Despite some very successful developments in the last 25 years, Christian education has not produced a product that can hold the line in the rising tide of secularism. The ingrown, self-evaluated ghetto of evangelicalism has used its educational system primarily to staff its own needs and talk to itself. I believe Christian schools always have a mission in our culture, but I am skeptical that they can produce any sort of effect that will make any difference. Millions of Christian school graduates are going to walk away from the faith and the church.
Chaplain Mike Mercer, in his recent post on staying in the discussion, wrote the following:
Christians have nothing to fear from science. What we should be afraid of is being marginalized, not because of our thoughtful and considerate faith, but because we think it is somehow faithful to refuse to imagine we might be wrong in some of our assumptions or commitments. I, for one, am thankful for serious Bible scholars like Waltke, who has not stopped thinking and who continues to use his gifts in active engagement with truth from many different sources.
I agree… up to a point. There is a verse on the wall at the front of our church sanctuary. Wir aber predigen den gekreuzigten Christus. (My church is of a German heritage.) For those in the congregation, like me, who don’t understand German, they finally added the reference last year, 1 Corinthians 1:23. But we preach the crucified Christ, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles. Our message is one that doesn’t make sense. To the Jews, a crucified Messiah was a paradox that they could not get there minds around. For the non-Jew, a leader sentenced to death is not much of a leader to follow.
This is a theme of Paul’s throughout the early chapters of 1st Corinthians:
For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God… For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe… but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles… For the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength… The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.
The message of the good news of Jesus Christ is a hard one to accept. It will appear as foolishness to many. We need to engage with those around us. We need to engage with science. We need to be prepared to have an answer for the hope that is within us. We need to not put up unneccessary stumbling blocks. But we also need to be prepared to be seen as fools in the eyes of the world.
I leave you with the word’s of Michael Card:
Seems I’ve imagined Him all of my life
As the wisest of all of mankind
But if God’s Holy wisdom is foolish to men
He must have seemed out of His mind
For even His family said He was mad
And the priest say a demon’s to blame
But God in the form of this angry young man
Could not have seemed perfectly sane
Chorus
We in our foolishness thought we were wise
He played the fool and He opened our eyes
And we in our weakness believed we were strong
He became helpless to show we were wrong
And so we follow God’s own fool
For only the foolish can tell
Believe the unbelievable
Come be a fool as well
So come lose our life for a carpenter’s son
For a man who had died for a dream
And you’ll feel the faith His first followers had
And you’ll feel the weight of the beam
So surrender the hunger to say you must know
Have the courage to say I believe
For the power of paradox opens your eyes
And blinds those who say they can see
Chorus
So we follow God’s own Fool
For only the foolish can tell
Believe the unbelievable, come be a fool as well
Are Liberals and Atheists smarter? Maybe, but this is one guy who doesn’t mind being a fool for God.
Michael Bell
Joshua Hearne
Tim Melton
Joel Black
To be honest, that IQ given above is not that impressive. Something in the range of 103-107 is about average in central European countries such as Poland and Germany, and there you have perhaps the highest religiosity found in Europe (versus say the Czechs and the British, which score notoriously low). I find these kinds of statistical correlations extremely shallow, and Kanazawa is notorious for his rather vapid analyses on a number of topics where he oversimplifies and then does a bunch of sloppy reasoning to buttress his ideas. What’s worse, the data is misinterpreted to suite whoever comes across it. Not only is IQ a questionable measure, it’s foolish to think that the higher it is, the less frequent a belief in God necessarily is, or that whatever causes IQ is necessarily responsible for a belief in God. It ignores culture, power, approval and conformity, and exaggerates the importance of certain things.
But of course, people have self-interests and honesty is really less important than preserving an ego.
who cares really?!!
Paul the Apostle writes:
‘and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.’
good enough for me, remembering he was one of the smartest men of his time and probably with a high IQ to match.
God’s IQ is in the trillions, so Paul rested in that
conservative youth IQ: 95
liberal youth IQ: 106
conservative young adult IQ: 97
liberal young adult IQ: 103
Anyone else notice that as liberals grow up their IQ drops a bit, whereas conservatives IQ’s increase as they grow up?
Same people, just different subsets. Sorry about confusing the issue with my naming convention.
I am an engineer first and foremost. Secondly, I make nearly 100k per year and I am 27. I don’t know a single religious engineer that could muster up a career in which they improve the world through innovation and scientific endeavours to the extent that us “non-believers” do.
When I was young I was brought up in a religious atmosphere and I could see the mentality of people who were “religious” in nature was different than the people without such beliefs. Now, I am open-minded, but I cannot see a single good use of religion today because remembering all of the sermons that I attended as a youth the people were trained to be followers and not leaders. These people were trained to except the will of others. These people were conformed to the shape of the mold built by others and the shape of this mold was one more cleaver than most could understand. I left this life for science and never looked back. The choice was one based on nature and the universe and not on fairy tales and make believe episodic lapses in fantasy.
There exist people who wish to control you for many reasons, but none stand out like money. Imagine me, the young (arrogant???) engineer that sees this and decides to take advantage of the cards. So I buy houses and I rent them out to people so that they can pay my mortgage on my house far larger than the sum of the parts (houses being rented out). I calculate and decide. I use other people because they put themselves into a particular situation.
My grace goes far beyond this. I conceive of a way to keep people from generation to generation in economic slavery by raising them without education and without ability to succeed. I do this my limiting funds to schools and encouraging mainstream meat market entertainment. Is Brittany Spears a good singer??? Hell no, but I want you to buy into it so that you can raise the value of my stocks so that I can be unimaginable wealthy in comparison to everyone else.
How do I do this? Simple. I inscribe a doctrine into people from birth that says if they do not have faith in God that they will perish. I inscribe the notion that you should follow blindly and if you ask questions then you should feel an inherent sense of guilt. So inherent is the guilt in fact that you actually believe that it is God talking to you.
Now, as a disclaimer, I will say in conclusion that I feel that every person can decide for themselves what they want to do with their lives and want to hold no one back in this respect, BUT if you are going to choose a life of following then expect to eat last, the least, and to not be able to afford an education for your offspring.
GOD BLESS & ENJOY!!! EVEN I BELIEVE IN A SUPERIOR BEING, BUT NOT ANY OF THE ONES THAT WISH PEOPLE CONFORM TO SOCIAL IDIOCRACIES AND NOTIONS OF INEPTITUDE.
I almost forgot… this is supposed to be about IQ. I am non-religious and tested into MENSA in high school. So I suppose… count 1 for all the smart a$$e$ out there.
Hi Brandon,
Thanks for your comment. I would suggest reading one of Francis Collins books “The Language of God” or the “The Language of Religion and Science”. Who is Francis Collins? He was the head of the human genome project, the innovative thinker responsible for mapping our the human genome. There are many brilliant scientists who are Christians and who are not mere followers in their fields.
Each of my kids are very bright 97th-99th percentile in gifted testing. I teach all of them to investigate the world around them, to ask difficult question, but also to seek after God.
Thanks for dropping by!
It sounds like you and your children may be above the mean then. I went to school with a fellow that was one of the brightest among us and watched as his over bearing family pushed him into religion and at that time he diverged from science and mathematics. He seemingly fell apart from year to year to some downgraded form of his prior self. He went from the best private engineering school in the country to working at a gas station in the area he grew up. I do not believe he would have taken this path unless driven by an outside force as he was too bright and talented to fall from within. The worst possible event in my life is the observance of collapse in potential of a fellow man. I cringe when I see it and I put a great deal of effort into helping others find a better path. The path to science, philosophy, and reason since it is after all the true light of the mind (Spinoza).
I would never say that for a certainty everyone following religion is not intelligent. There have been plenty of religious folk throughout history that were very intelligent in fact. But, at the same moment we must use statistical tools to come to some end decision. From my experience there were more people with lower logical reasoning skills in religious sects than those outside of these faiths. My colleagues have the same experience and so I can only conclude one end result after all is said and done.
The standing opinion among the educated is that those following religion blindly are below the bar. One must never follow blindly and be held accountable for their actions. Using the notion that God will forgive your sins is a big stumbling block and source in creation of repeat offenders. So, if you bring your children up correctly and in a fashion that curiosity is never hampered by the rote or tradition, then believe anything you wish and prosper. However, if you end up using religion to limit your potential, then drop that ideology like it’s hot and move on in some logical fashion.
Question everything and question often and there is no doubt that you will eventually find the truth among the bogus. You will also be delighted that the creator (for me nature) has blessed your life with so much more than you ever could have asked for in the start of this hard work. Taking the route least taken and making your own way while adhering to some personal principle is that only means to enlightenment.
Interesting. I am a high schooler at a very privileged institutions and one of my best friends fits almost exactly into the model of the student about which you wrote. He is one of the smartest kids I know, but is controlled to the core by his parents, who are very religious. Interestingly though, I highly doubt he will diverge from science/math. Somehow he has found a way to believe in both, though I worry that the contradiction forming in this will force him to make a choice, which will no doubt be controlled by his parents
Tradition needs to be broken at some point and religion should be left behind entirely or taken in context of a means to instill discipline and right/wrong. There is nothing more important than reasoning skills though and sadly religion never addresses this. The whole creation of christianity and many others stemmed from astrology and the study of the stars. Afterwards, it was twisted into many myth-ridden forms that serve only to control the masses while the elite manipulate to their old ends.
My advise is to help your friend see the light. Philosopher Spinoza once said, “reason is the natural light of the mind.” Only science and mathematics/philosophy can lead one to a true understanding of nature. Religion is a 10k yr old attempt at this that fails more often then not. Would you use a 10k yr old version of transportation to travel from the US to Europe??? I think not
My son is looking at taking Engineering Physics at University. We have always encouraged him in the to investigate, and challenge. But we do not believe that reason and faith have to be at odds, rather that faith in God is a “reasonable” conclusion to draw from the evidence that exists in the world.
Having said that, I think that taking a look at the BioLogos.org website would be helpful to anyone trying to understand how Science and Faith can peacefully co-exist.
Here is one article written directly about that subject.
I’m not so sure that they can “peacefully” coexist. If a scientist is trained to question and prove everything then there is no bounds to be set in this respect. Therefore, I see the Christian perspective as a dangerous one because you are taught to take concepts and notions on faith. If one is not careful, then this blind faith aspect will overflow into one’s career which drastically impedes productive output.
There is yet another psychological term for all of this and that is “cognitive dissonance.” This term is used to desribe the effect on the mind of two opposite and competing ideas. Faith and science do not mix, are opposites, and certainly do compete. Now, the effects may be small, but they can also lead to more restrictive routes in which people go to extremes in ruining their lives, commiting suicide, or simply becoming logically incoherent.
I think what you are refering to at not being at odds would rather be the minimization of the relative negative outcome. But just like anything else there are possibility spectra and outlyers. I hope that you and your family can break the mold.