Intelligent People Have the Ability to Rise Over Religion, New Study Finds
Why does it seem like almost every intelligent person in this world is an atheist?
That question has now been answered, thanks to a new study conducted by researchers from the Ulster Institute for Social Research and Rotterdam University.
Their findings suggest that men such as Stephen Hawking and Alan Turing consider religion as an instinct. And because their intelligence has the ability to rise over instincts, these men dismiss the existence of God, according to the Daily Mail.
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The team created a model called the Intelligence-Mismatch Association Model, which is based on historical evidence and a recent survey. Through it, they sought to understand whether religion is something that is evolved or instinctive. It also hopes to explain why there is a negative association between intelligence and being religious.
"If religion is an evolved domain, then it is an instinct, and intelligence – in rationally solving problems – can be understood as involving overcoming instinct and being intellectually curious and thus open to non-instinctive possibilities," said Edward Dutton, co-lead author of the study.
"It also means that intelligence allows us to able to pause and reason through the situation and the possible consequences of our actions," he added.
Dutton discovered through their research that people who are attracted to the non-instinctive make better problem solvers. Dimitri Van der Linden, co-author of the study, said this is important in this changing ecology. "The ability to solve problems will become associated with rising above our instincts, rendering us attracted to evolutionary mismatches," he explained.
Earlier, Hawking told Spanish journalist Pablo Jáuregui of the newspaper El Mundo that he does not believe in God, although in his 1988 book "A Brief History of Time," he sought to "know the mind of God" if a unifying set of principles was discovered.
"What I meant by 'we would know the mind of God' is we would know everything that God would know if there was a God, but there isn't. I'm an atheist," he explained, according to NBC News.
"Before we understood science, it was natural to believe that God created the universe, but now science offers a more convincing explanation," he said.
