Intelligent people found to be less God-fearing, yet less promiscuous

Religion may not be the path of the most intelligent people

Carol Forsloff - In a published study several years ago, researchers found intelligent people tend to be less religious but are also less promiscuous.  In other words the rules that smart people use for self governance are different than those who adhere to a particular faith group. This difference, and others, may explain the separation of views in the contemporary world that explains voting styles and the unique ways people behave. 

The published research in The Journal of  Social Psychology advances a new theory to explain why people form certain preferences and values. The theory maintains higher intelligence is associated with atheism, liberal politics and also the male's preference for sexual exclusive behavior. Both men and women score similarly on all measures, except for sexual attitudes.

The term 'evolutionary preferences' is explained by scientists as those values not biologically determined and that ancestors likely didn't have but which may instead have been 'evolutionary familiar.'

Researchers used the following definition to explain their concept of intelligence as this: “General intelligence, the ability to think and reason, endowed our ancestors with advantages in solving evolutionarily novel problems for which they did not have innate solutions,” according to Satoshi Kanazawa, an evolutionary psychologist at the London School of Economics and Political Science. “As a result, more intelligent people are more likely to recognize and understand such novel entities and situations than less intelligent people, and some of these entities and situations are preferences, values, and lifestyles.”

What Kanazawa also found in an earlier study is that intelligent people are more noctural, stay up later at night than others. This is unique in that ancestors had no artificial light so they went to sleep earlier and got up earlier. Thus Kanazawa points out being nocturnal is evolutionary novel.

With other values, intelligent people deviate from the evolutionary norm as well. For example, Kanazawa explains how in evolutionary terms people are actually designed to be conservative, caring for family and friends first as opposed to being liberal, which expands the caring to an undefined number of genetically unrelated persons.

The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health presents data that according to analysis supports Kanazawa's hypothesis. Those young adults identifying themselves as "very liberal" have IQ's averaging 106 in adolescence while those describing themselves as conservative have an average IQ of 95.

Kanazawa explains religion represents a form of paranoid perception, seeing God's work behind natural events. This helped humans survive and protect families because of serious vigilance to dangers that hurt themselves and those they loved the most. More intelligent children, who test with higher IQ's, are less likely to believe in God and therefore unique in the evolutionary cycles.

In evolutionary terms people were slightly polygamous, that is allowing more than one mate Consequently, males were not anticipated to be sexually exclusive in their behaviors. Intelligent men have been found to be more exclusive in their sexual behaviors. Again Kanazawa's suppositions are supported by the health data collected in reference to adolescents as cited above.

Man's ability to use language in a fashion that allows it to be read and passed to other generations aids learning in an evolutionary manner.  Knowledge is not viewed as static.  Those who read history and the sciences will read research and also learn from its conclusions.  They are less apt to rely on anecdotal evidence that is specific to only their behaviors without comparing them to others.  Yet while some people attribute this to the understanding of science, certain individuals attest to language as a gift from God.  In other words intelligent people may draw initially upon the science but may mix in some level of religious belief as well.  That is the middle ground, albeit not often heard as loudly as those who see the blacks and whites of the universe and not those shades of gray.

The new study brings a level of scientific awareness to human behavior, yet religious scholars might say not to toss aside religious principles as a result.

Then there are the audacious who question these notions, as one writer did in 2008. What this fellow points out, using a table he created to back up the beliefs, is conservative men are actually smarter than conservative women. Would this mean if conservative women were weeded out of the study, conservative men would still be less intelligent, stay up late, and be less inclined to stray while in a relationship?