John Harvey replies to my criticism of paper on IQ and atheism
In an article posted a couple of weeks ago, I criticized a
paper by Richard Lynn, John Harvey, and Helmuth Nyborg which argued that higher IQ people are more atheistic. John Harvey has now kindly replied to that article (or rather he has replied to the part of the article that I sent out as an e-mail, the four paragraphs beginning with the sentence, “I’ve read through the Lynn/Harvey/Nyborg paper and as I expected it does not control for other factors and does not deal with any of the objections I raised”).
Mr. Harvey writes:
Richard Lynn has passed your e-mail on to me as one of the authors of the paper you refer to, and I would like to make a comment or two. I apologize for not getting back to you earlier, but I have been away.
Perhaps the most important point to make is that in finding a correlation between IQ and lack of religious belief, no judgment of the “rightness” or “wrongness” of religious belief is being made by us. Certainly it is true that in the study we quote others who have suggested for instance that “…one reason for the decline in traditional religious beliefs in industrial societies is that an increasing sense of technological control over nature diminishes the need for reliance on supernatural powers.” But as authors of the study we clearly reference any such quotations. For the record I might add that I do not know the religious beliefs of the other two authors, nor do they know mine since this is not relevant to our study.
I think there is something of a “conflict of the good” going on here. A high IQ is widely believed to be a “good” thing, and for many adherents a Christian (or indeed other) religious belief is also held to be a “good” thing. When a negative correlation is shown between two “good” things it can cause some degree of angst, and I think it does so here. But if IQ were stripped of its “good” aura and merely viewed as a neutral measure of one human variable, then the problem disappears. Imagine that instead of IQ, our study had been comparing religious belief to another neutral human variable such as height for instance. Would the same worries still have arisen—whichever way the correlation went?
I think it is also important to remember that the correlations we found were nowhere near 100 percent, so numerous geniuses will still be Christians and many low-IQ people atheists. Francis Collins for instance, a high-achieving evolutionary scientist, is also an evangelical Christian.
In referring to the religious leadership of societies in earlier centuries you make an important point, but you do not comment on other people in those societies. So let’s do some speculating. Suppose that in the typical European country of some six hundred years ago the elite did indeed hold strong religious beliefs, and suppose that they were also of above average intelligence. Well so what? Is it not also possible that the somewhat less bright rest of the population may have held even stronger religious beliefs than their leaders? If so then the correlation would have worked in exactly the same direction as in our modern study, (although I will grant you that it would probably have been less marked.) But the important point here is that whether this was the case or not, it neither confirms nor denies the statistical data we present about the modern world.
You suggest that high IQ people hold erroneous beliefs on the unimportance of racial differences. You also suggest that these and other deleterious beliefs are strongly held by the ruling liberal elite. I agree completely. But how does this negate our study’s finding that high IQ people today are lower on religious beliefs? Is it not perfectly possible in life to be wrong about one thing but right about another—or vice versa? Having a high IQ is by no means the gateway to omniscience, merely an advantageous human characteristic in some matters some of the time.
Finally, am I not right in thinking that religious belief is based on perceived knowledge rather than intelligence? So wherein lies the conflict anyway?
LA replies:
I thank Mr. Harvey very much for his courteous and thoughtful reply.
First, I don’t think it’s a matter of “angst.” In my article, I was not anxiously defending religion from atheists. Rather I was questioning the reasoning process by which the authors of the paper reached their conclusions.
Mr. Harvey writes:
Suppose that in the typical European country of some six hundred years ago the elite did indeed hold strong religious beliefs, and suppose that they were also of above average intelligence. Well so what? Is it not also possible that the somewhat less bright rest of the population may have held even stronger religious beliefs than their leaders? If so then the correlation would have worked in exactly the same direction as in our modern study,
But of course we don’t know that the lower IQ people of 600 years ago were more religious than the elite of that time. And my point was that without such knowledge of IQ distribution in religious societies as distinct from modern secular society, the authors’ conclusion about IQ and atheism, which they reach based solely on a study of modern society, lacks a key “control.” I was saying that without knowledge of the correlation of IQ and religious belief in past societies, the authors lack sufficient information to reach the conclusion that they reach. Further, I was arguing that given that our present society expects people in high level positions not to show conspicuous religious belief, naturally the people in high level positions—and thus higher IQ people—are going to be less religious, and more atheistic.
Mr. Harvey writes:
You suggest that high IQ people hold erroneous beliefs on the unimportance of racial differences. You also suggest that these and other deleterious beliefs are strongly held by the ruling liberal elite. I agree completely. But how does this negate our study’s finding that high IQ people today are lower on religious beliefs?
But Mr. Harvey and his co-authors are not merely saying, in a descriptive, non-judgmental way, that there is a negative correlation between IQ and religious belief. They are not just saying that smarter people happen to be more atheistic. They are saying that smarter people are atheistic because they are smarter. Thus the authors quote a range of writers who hold that view, and the authors don’t dissent from that view in the slightest. They write:
Second, this conclusion raises the question of why should there be this negative correlation between IQ and belief in god. Many rationalists no doubt accept the argument advanced by Frazer (1922, p.712) in The Golden Bough that as civilisations developed “the keener minds came to reject the religious theory of nature as inadequate … religion, regarded as an explanation of nature, is replaced by science” (by “keener minds” Frazer presumably meant the more intelligent). Others have assumed implicitly or explicitly that more intelligent people are more prone to question irrational or unprovable religious dogmas. For instance, some sixty years ago Kuhlen and Arnold (1944) proposed that “greater intellectual maturity might be expected to increase scepticism in matters of religion”. Inglehart and Welzel (2005, p.27) suggest that in the pre-industrial world, humans have little control over nature, so “they seek to compensate their lack of physical control by appealing to the metaphysical powers that seem to control the world: worship is seen as a way to influence one’s fate, and it is easier to accept one’s helplessness if one knows the outcome is in the hands of an omnipotent being whose benevolence can be won by following rigid and predictable rules of contact…one reason for the decline in traditional religious beliefs in industrial societies is that an increasing sense of technological control over nature diminishes the need for reliance on supernatural powers”.
The authors do not disagree with the above opinions that draw a causal connection between low intelligence (or, alternatively, a lack of technical control over nature) with belief in God. Their many quotations of that opinion, combined with their complete failure to question it, plainly suggests that they agree with that opinion. Thus, as I summed it up in my article, “The authors claim that high IQ people are unbelievers because believers lack the intellectual ability to see through the comforting false myths of religion.” Further, the point of my argument about the liberal beliefs held by today’s IQ elite was that higher IQ people believe things that the authors themselves believe are woefully benighted, which disproves the authors’ suggestion that high IQ people have a better understanding of reality or a better ability to see through false, received notions. As all conservatives know, most high IQ people of today live in a tightly sealed world of false, received notions.
Mr. Harvey writes:
Finally, am I not right in thinking that religious belief is based on perceived knowledge rather than intelligence? So wherein lies the conflict anyway?
I think Mr. Harvey’s point is refuted by his and his co-authors’ approving quotations of various writers who say that belief in God represents an intellectual incapacity to see through false and comforting superstitions and to grasp true knowledge.
Laura W. writes (July 7):
That was an excellent discussion.
Would it be so hard to introduce some controls into the Lynn/Harvey/Nyborg article? One possibility would have been to include studies of existing subcultures in which religious belief prevails, such as Hasidic or Amish communities. Do the most intelligent members of these communities, where belief receives material and social support, defect significantly more often or become atheists in larger numbers? Though these communities are afloat in a sea of disbelief, they have been successful enough at isolating themselves to serve as possible controls. As it is, the article mentions only studies of high IQ people in societies where disbelief prevails and comes with proven material benefits.
LA replies:
Great point. I’ve forwarded your e-mail directly to John Harvey and Richard Lynn.
Frankly, I think they’re both at a loss. I think they really are living inside unexamined secular assumptions and didn’t conceive of the existence of a separate framework from that of secularism, and thus of the possibility of and need for a non-secular control.
Laura W. replies:
Thank you.
Theological issues relating to intelligence and belief are not relevant to this sociological survey, but it’s important to remember that the correlation between intelligence and belief is a major theme of the New Testament. The establishment elders and scribes who refuse to take anything on the authority of a person without credentials (that is, the seal of intelligence) are Jesus’ most outspoken critics. If God chose to reveal himself only through human intelligence, Jesus would have come as a legal scholar, not a carpenter. He would have spent all his time in arcane debate, instead of just some of it, and would have no need to perform miracles. A miracle, by its very nature, defies human intelligence and scientific thought. The apostles marveled that Jesus clearly knew he was revealing himself to “the simple.” This in itself was revolutionary.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 03, 2008 02:56 PM | Send