Atheists and progressives routinely predict the demise of religion and traditional ways of living. Not only do they predict it, but they have also actively worked for that outcome ever since humankind first realised there were alternatives.
Yet religion and tradition stubbornly hang on. Here I want to isolate the impact of intelligent consideration.
I’ll start with religion.
The isolated association of intelligence (controlled for class, age, sex, education, political ideology and the time trends) with confidence in God’s existence, is quite strongly negative. More intelligent people are less likely to believe – although agnostics tend to be brighter than convinced atheists.
The relationship is so reliable that doubt about God’s reality is as good an indication of high intelligence as solving a challenging maths problem correctly. However, as an IQ test item it would be quite a difficult one. We only see large increases in rates of doubt at IQs above 120.
Among those who have no doubt at all, there is a similar negative relationship between intelligence and biblical literalism, such as, for example, believing Noah’s ark was real.
Similarly, belief in the existence of heaven, hell or the devil are associated with lower intelligence.
Does that mean it is smart to reject religion? Actually, that isn’t obvious.
Both attending church regularly, and active involvement, go with higher intelligence. Changes in opinion are also illuminating.
Among those who don’t change their minds, persistent doubters are brighter. Those who change from belief to doubt are smarter than those who stay believers. However, it is also true that those who change from doubt to belief are smarter than those who stay doubters.
Wherever one starts, changing one’s mind tends to be a sign of intelligence, of having applied one’s mind.
Then there are quite large differences in the mean IQs of different Protestant denominations – 12 points between the large denominations who attract the brightest and dullest adherents.
The mean IQ of Reform Judaism is 115. There are some small quasi-Christian denominations, like Unitarians, that attract even smarter adherents. Finally, among those in the top two percent, convinced believers outnumber doubters two to one (because doubters are relatively rare).
Wise or stupid
In other words, there are very many highly intelligent people who sincerely practice a religion. So, religion can be wise or stupid, depending on how you approach it.
At the social rather than individual level, religion binds communities together. The more universalistic religions – such as, for example, Christianity or Islam – serve to bind much bigger groups together. In contexts of multi-ethnic societies, or strong individualism, that binding function can be crucial. Religion also serves to regulate behaviour that is potentially harmful, to the individuals themselves and whoever depends on or interacts with them. What follows is one example.
One tradition under attack is confining reproduction to the married. In spite of modern tolerance and welfare, violating this rule still has serious negative consequences for both mother and child.
In a traditional Western culture if you were not an aristocrat you could not afford to be sexually (or even romantically) impulsive. The cost of out of wedlock births was so harsh that the illegitimacy rate stayed close to 4% from 1200 to 1800, even though the average age at marriage was 25 and contraception was non-existent. In the UK today the rate is above 30%, and among whites in the US it is higher than 25%, in spite of universal availability of contraception.
The chances of a low-IQ unmarried mother raising a child out of poverty are slim, and the chances of her neglecting or abusing the child in some way is appreciable.
Having a husband makes more of a difference to the child avoiding poverty when the mother has a low IQ.
One group of unmarried women managed to keep their illegitimacy rate below the medieval 4% – white women with IQs above 120. It seems intelligent women can not only avoid illegitimacy without the threat of traditional sanctions, but even where they don’t they seem better able to do without a husband’s help. By the way, more intelligent people are more likely to marry and stay married.
Individualistic self-determination works fine for intelligent women, so the liberal elite jump to the conclusion that breaking down traditional restrictions is fine.
Temptations
A similar picture holds for temptations like drugs and other behaviours that annoy the community. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the progressive liberal lifestyle is not good for everyone. This brings us back to religion.
The un-PC implication is that at least 90% of the population do not appear to have the capacity to manage themselves safely without the guidance and control of tradition or religion. We do away with both at our peril when we don’t understand the reasons why societies evolved and kept them.
Nietzsche is famous for saying, “God is dead and we killed Him.” Less known is that he thought this a very bad thing. His objection to the Christianity of his time wasn’t that it was objectively false. His objection was that the hope of better things in an afterlife encouraged a slave-like victim mentality and stopped people from really living. He recognised the importance of objective scientific truth, but in the grand scheme of things he thought it less important than some other values.
Spiritual ends, and their appropriate means, were more important to Nietzsche. Those means require a more poetic or story-telling kind of truth, or an inspiring fiction if you prefer. He thought religion was a sort of bootstrapping work of art with a spiritual payoff, and that we could choose a better spiritual payoff to aim at. He believed our culture and religion should inspire us and be more of a “the Lord helps those who help themselves” kind of faith. It should transform us from beggars into those with the power and inclination to be generous. It should install in us an appreciation of living, even in the face of tragedy, and build optimism, confidence, ambition and a need to create. He would put more stress on biblical passages that ask, “What have you done with what was given you?”
Positive set of convictions
That kind of argument lies behind rational emotive therapy, the first (and perhaps only) therapy to really work consistently. RET teaches you to question the negative beliefs about yourself and your situation and replace them with a more positive set of convictions.
Rather than abandon religion/mythology as something silly, stupid or wrong, see it as a potential wellspring of human flourishing. Pick a faith or denomination that is life-affirming and attracts brighter people.
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The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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