Religion & IQ

I was reading the Dilbert.com blog (which I like because of Scott Adam's humour). Anyway, he was talking about how the more educated one person got the less likely they were to ge "religious" (actually this also applied to intelligence as well). There were various studies/articles quoted. One of which Scott himself provided. At first I was tempted to refute this whole thing. The implication is pretty clear. The more intelligent you are the less likely you are to believe is something like that (you know, ridiculous). But a scripture came to mind. God uses the foolish to confound the wise (I also put this into the comment section).

But on further thought, it dawned on me two things. One the way we currently measure "intelligence" was both arbitrary and biased, and relative. That is being smart is not an absolute thing you are but, a relative to the population. If society gets "smarter" and you don't, it could mean you could now be stupid where before you were "smart". It isn't an absolute measure. Second that the "dumb" or even "average" understand their true state... that is they dont' know a whole lot. The main problem that one can run into whe one is "smart" is conceit, arrogance.

The average "smart" person isn't anywhere near as smart as they think they are. The "average" or "dumb" person would be more likely to understand they don't know. Essentially, they are more honest, and humble. One example I understand this with is medicine. A lot of horrible things were done to a lot of people because of certains beliefs that if fact they knew all they needed to . E.g. giving drugs without really understanding how it's long term affects will turn out.

Indeed, my experience has been that "intelligent" people are some of the dumbest people I've encountered.