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Atheists are more intelligent than believers according to Danish Professor of developmental psychology, Helmuth Nyborg.

The controversial study was conducted at the Aarhus University pulling data from over 7000 subjects leading to assumptions that people with “lower intelligence” may have a stronger attraction to religion than non-believers.

Nyborg already sparked controversy in 2002 when he suggested that men generally are more intelligent than women and on another occasion, white people being more intelligent than blacks.

Claus Jacobson wrote:

Last year the professor was fired from Aarhus university following criticism from a panel of experts who criticized his research, but the verdict was changed to a correction for negligence after both Danish and American researchers argued that he was the victim of a witch hunt because his results were not “politically correct”.

Helmuth Nyborg belongs to that branch of psychologists who believe that intelligence depends more on genetic factors than environment.

The type of intelligence that he measures is the so-called g-factor, which is a measure of the ability of the brain to handle complex information.

Other brain researchers and psychologists say that the brain changes over time, including the intelligence, and some also work with different categories of intelligence, such as social, creative and musical intelligence.

Helmuth Nyborg says that the rankings from intelligence test made by the age of six usually still stands 60 years later regardless of the education the test subjects have achieved. Education does not influence intelligence, but intelligence often determines the length of the education, according to the professor.

A rather fascinating topic, but can you actually measure intelligence? And if our genes determine our intelligence, shouldn’t the world look somewhat different?

Personally I find it hard to believe that intelligence is measurable at all… or at least not to a certain degree. E.g. you may be a fantastic musician but can’t solve a simple math question to save your life, does that mean you are in fact, stupid?

And religious people being less intelligent than atheists… well… if his argument is that people who follow a religion are less interested in science / evolution and everything that relates to education, purely because they believe in a higher being to resolve their / our problems… then I suppose he is right. But I don’t think anyone, any scientist in particular; has any right to call religious people less intelligent.

Everyone’s got a reason for believing or not believing in higher entities…god…nirvana… whatever… be it to feel less lonely, compensate for something or just to be accepted within a group.