Dr. PZ Myers can’t quite bring himself to embrace the claim:
I’m an atheist who thinks IQ tests are over-rated and over-interpreted, and here’s a Danish study that claims that atheists have IQs that average 5.8 points higher than theists’.
I expect that he is correct, actually given the obvious caveat of atheist self-identification. Atheists are a tiny fraction of the population, and the sort of individuals who were classified as atheists were almost surely High Church atheists who have enough of a predilection for abstract thought to identify themselves on the basis of their belief in the non-existence of God.
It’s interesting to note that atheism is such a destructive philosophy that these more intelligent, very law-abiding people are also less healthy, have fewer children, less satisfying sex, more divorces, are more likely to commit suicide, more likely to be depressed or addicted and live shorter lives.
Of course, 5.8 points is pretty close to the IQ difference between men and women:
A study to be published later this year in the British Journal of Psychology says that men are on average five points ahead on IQ tests.
I find it interesting that so many atheists – including female atheists – spend so much time running around declaring that they are smarter than those stupid theists. But the male ones have got nearly as much scientific reason to declare that they are smarter than those stupid women, and even more to declare that they are smarter than those stupid blacks.
And yet they don’t. I wonder why?