this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2026
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83 studies spanning over 90 years of research. all pointing in the same direction. Religious people are less intelligent. The evidence is concrete.

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[–] yyprum@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 week ago

I haven't seen the video and probably won't. With that said…

Define intelligence first. Is it having knowledge on many topics? Is it problem solving? is it a mensa result? By moving the goal post you can prove whatever.

I am not from the states so my cultural context might make me think differently in this aspect. I have met many religious people over my life. And as a convinced atheist I have also had many friendly discussions on the topic with them. Some of those people were what I'd consider really intelligent. Religion has as much to do with your cultural context as it does with intelligence and some people continue believing in their religion without really thinking too much of it, not for lack of intelligence, but out of habit.

What I want to say with all of this is that, as with many of these studies, it doesn't really mean much more than at best some probability correlation. Which at a personal level won't mean anything. You might be an atheist and not be… very bright. Or be very intelligent and still religious. Just like I have met people with scientific background and high level studies belive in homeopathy.

Do not make the mistake of thinking an atheist is automatically smarter than a religious person. It is not that simple and this video seems to want to imply something like this. And like others have said, this is most likely a correlation. However we measure intelligence, it will be more likely that those on the lower scale are more often controlled by organized religion. It is not a great discovery really. I would really like to have a look at those studies actually out of curiosity.