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Comment by yan | Hacker News Reader

The above post.

I used to think that Dawkins & co's books were just preaching to the choir. Yeah, I found them fun to read and nod along, but I didn't believe they'd change anyone's mind. I assume that this isn't an issue of logic, and when you're not dealing with logic for the most part, no logical argument would be sufficient.

Reading posts like these do make me believe that it's possible to change minds, if people are willing.

(I'm not saying those books aren't useful; they give a sense of legitimacy to those who don't side with religion and this is important.)

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Do you think that being a good atheist requires a certain level of intelligence that many people don't have?

In particular, the extent to which a person can predict the consequences of his/her actions is probably highly dependent on intelligence.

Religion can be viewed as taking some of this unfairness away.

Well, religion and intelligence have been shown to be inversely correlated. Perhaps 'intelligence' is the wrong word; educational level might be better.

For example, only 7 percent of the members in the U.S. National Academy of Sciences believe in a personal god [1]. I forget the numbers for the general public of the US (I don't have the book with me), but it was the vast majority who believed in a personal god.

Of course: grains of salt, correlation vs. causation, etc.

I don't think being an atheist requires a certain level of intelligence, but I do think that people of a certain level of education have been taught to think critically about everything they read/learn/work with, which probably bleeds over into their personal life.

[1] Victor J. Stenger. Has Science Found God? p.78

In my experience and from statistics I have seen there is little correlation between intelligence and religious inclination. For example Donald Knuth is strongly religious. (Evidence: http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/things.html. ) But can anyone honestly deny his intelligence?

That is not to say that there is no correlation. In general educated people are more likely to be exposed to thoughtful commentary on atheism, and are therefore more likely to consider the idea. But the correlation seems to be with exposure, and not propensity to be convinced by it.

My comment is about the intelligence required to be good.

Religion could reduce this and as a result be potentially beneficial to society.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religiosity_and_intelligence

A modicum of research reveals that 'The authors reported a correlation of 0.60 between atheism rates and level of intelligence, which is “highly statistically significant.”'

Yes, it is statistically significant. But it can't tell the difference between educated people being more often exposed to the ideas of atheism, and being more likely to find them convincing.

The furor over creationism vs. evolution indicates that even if the ideas themselves are not well exposed to uneducated people, some of the basic building materials and one of the frameworks of the discussion is there.

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