This is a question which many people are asking at the moment, because of a piece of research which has been published in the last few weeks. An article summing up the research and discussing its conclusions can be found here, but briefly the findings are as follows:

A group of professors led by Professor Miron Zuckerman of Rochester University in the US has collected a total of 63 studies which have been conducted into connections between intelligence and religious belief going back to 1921. The studies focused on many different aspects of this question; for instance, some focused on the intelligence of young children and others of adults in general or elderly people; some looked at race, gender and so on. The academics looked at each study to determine how thorough, wide ranging and carefully planned the research was. Their overall conclusion was that out of the 63 studies, 53 pointed in one direction – that overall, higher intelligence goes with reduced or non-existent religious belief. Of the 10 studies that pointed the other way, only two showed any statistically significant information, while 35 of the 53 studies were significant.

The study was actually about intelligence and religiosity, which basically means being involved with religion in some way. Technically this is not quite the same as having a particular faith, though the study doesn’t particularly go into the difference. One of the interesting things about the study is that neither education nor gender seems to make any important difference – whether a person could be classed as ‘educated’ or not, it’s IQ that tends to determine levels of religiosity rather than education level.

The definition of intelligence used by the study is the classic one, for example the typical dictionary definition – the ability to take in information, to analyse it, solve problems, think quickly etc. In recent years, though, there has been a lot of research to suggest that intelligence is more complex than that. For example, according to Gardiner’s theory of multiple intelligences you can divide intelligence into different categories such as linguistic, problem solving and so on – you can find a list here. Nowadays we also think in terms of emotional intelligence, which is to do with empathy, ability to deal with people etc and wouldn’t necessarily show up on an IQ test. So the idea that ‘less religion equals more intelligence’ may be based on a definition of intelligence that is too simple.

It is also clear, and the researchers are quite clear about this too, that we’re looking at an overall tendency here, and the research is based on studies of thousands of people – even just one of the 63 studies looked at 1500 children – so it doesn’t say a lot about what you, as an individual, are likely to find in your own life. In other words, your two best friends may well be a brilliant person who is also devoutly religious, and an atheist who you don’t find very bright at all – this is perfectly possible, in fact this kind of thing is almost certain to happen. What the study finds is a general tendency among the population as a whole.

Reasons for the connection, it is suggested, may include the fact that generally, people with higher intelligence tend to make up their own minds rather than take what they are told on trust. You are also more likely to question the logic of the tenets of a faith, or indeed any system of thought – in fact high intelligence is less likely to go with simple, unquestioning belief in anything at all, so really it’s not surprising that the researchers have found this.