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Swedish clergy challenges American study which posit that believers possess low IQ and weak analytical skills

Wednesday, 14 August 2013
Not long ago it was an academic study, which concluded that black people had lover IQ compared to their white counterparts. The argument was that despite all efforts made, the black race was not performing well in most aspects of socio- economic or political modern life as the would have been expected or as the rest of the non black world was doing. Today or last week a similar study in the US was out and it attested that there was a reliable negative relation between intelligence and religiosity.

In a nutshell, the American study published recently, claimed that religious people have lower IQs than non-believers. It continues that there should be a negative correlation between analytical thinking, conceptual thinking and being an atheist.
the Mosque
Although the size of the relation varied according to sample type and the nature of the religiosity measure, the study said that the more one in intelligent, the less they rely on religion for solace given that they can understand real life phenomenon and make reasonable decisions on how to improve on their lives. There is not direct evidence that the expectations from believing in a religious model are attained by individuals. Rather fundamentalist attitudes show that believers lack the ability to analyse and understand the value to their actions, draw boundaries and to note that they are merely just "believing" and that what they believe in might not be true. One can think of suicide bombings and the believe in life after death - the later issues that is not feasible or has not been proven to exist.

This raise some discussion about the issue in Sweden last week but given this period of holidays and low news cover, the issue did not gain proper traction. Today, Cristina Grenholm, professor and priest at Uppsala university disagree with the U.S. study and counter that believers do have analytical skills.

The Professor of theology, priest, church secretary and chief theologian of the Swedish Church holds that "Religion implies, rather an interaction between the mind, will and emotion. This means that the analytical skills often have a very important role in the interpretation of the faith traditions," she says to Swedish television.

She believes that the study can create negative connotation about religion, as such do not think one should associate religion with superstition.

The study attributed factors such as that intelligent people are less likely to conform and, thus, are more likely to resist religious dogma. Secondly, intelligent people tend to adopt an analytic (as opposed to intuitive) thinking style, which has been shown to undermine religious beliefs and thirdly, several functions of religiosity, including compensatory control, self-regulation, self-enhancement, and secure attachment, are also conferred by intelligence. Intelligent people may therefore have less need for religious beliefs and practices.

Contrary to what the study says, Cristina Grenholm believes that that analytical skills are important in many religions, faiths, and that faith is needed in the struggle for peace and justice.
"The community is dependent upon the people who have a belief and not shaken by adversity, supported by hope and faith. Even believers must relate to complex phenomenon as humans so it is important to not only go on with feeling but also with analytical ability."
By scancomark.com Team