Religious people are not as smart as atheists, according to new research.

Scientists claim believers have diminished intelligence because they rely on intuition and not facts.

The strength of religious conviction is inversely linked with intellect, researchers found.

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Religious people are less smart than atheists, according to new research. Scientists claim believers have diminished intelligence because they rely on intuition and not facts (stock)

Researchers led by Imperial College London surveyed more than 63,000 participants on online tasks that measured planning, reasoning, attention and memory.

Participants indicated whether they were atheist, religious or agnostic and completed a 30-minute set of 12 cognitive tasks.

Scientists found that the effect of religiosity was robust regardless of people's age, education and country of origin.

Agnostics are smarter than believers but less intelligent than atheists, researchers found.

The strength of religious conviction is inversely correlated with cognitive performance, researchers found (stock image)

ARE WE HEADING FOR A GODLESS FUTURE? Graham Lawton, author of the new book 'How to be Human,' suggests that as our lives become more stable, society could become 'godless' as our need for religion fades away. When children encounter religion, Mr Lawson argues they find the explanations it offers intuitively appealing and believable - making them born believers - but this instinct is drummed out of them by education. The author claimed the reason people continue to be believe it because 'they haven't thought that hard about it'. However, although the future will be increasingly secular, humans will never totally lose the god instinct. As long as existential uncertainty exists Mr Lawton claims religion will not disappear completely - even though he believes some of the things in the bible are 'just crazy'. People cling onto moral guidance and existential comfort and they don't let go of them easily, he said. His comments are based on the cognitive theory of religion which states that belief is a by-product of our cognitive equipment. Our brain is primed to see meaning everywhere, which helps us make sense of random events. Children like the idea that there is order and design in the world and it is actually useful as it allows them to reason about possible threats that we cannot see, for example a predator lurking in a nearby bush. According to Mr Lawton, although this is an evolutionary advantage, it also facilitates the build-up of delusional belief and a ‘feeling of rightness’. 'To be an actual atheist and reject all religious ideas is not humanly possible - we'll still fill that hole with something’, said Mr Lawton. As long as existential uncertainty exists, Mr Lawton claims religion will not disappear completely. Advertisement

'It is well established that religiosity correlates inversely with intelligence', researchers led by Dr Richard Daws, wrote in the paper published in Frontiers in Psychology.

'A prominent hypothesis states that this correlation reflects behavioural biases toward intuitive problem solving, which causes errors when intuition conflicts with reasoning.'

Religious people have a lower IQ as a result of bad performance on tasks where intuition and logic are at odds with one another, writes the Independent.

They found in certain tasks 'atheists outperform the most dogmatic religious group by a substantial margin' but in other tasks this was not the case.

Researchers believe the disparity is due to behavioural biases rather than impaired general intelligence.

'These findings provide evidence in support of the hypothesis that the religiosity effect relates to conflict [between reasoning and intuition] as opposed to reasoning ability or intelligence more generally,' they wrote.

Earlier this month a survey revealed that one in four non-believers pray when confronted by tough times - despite insisting they are not religious.

For atheists and agnostics, personal crisis or tragedy is the most common reason for them to resort to prayer, with a quarter admitting they pray for comfort or to feel less lonely.

More than half of all adults in the UK pray regularly despite only one in three praying in a place of worship, according to a poll carried out by ComRes on behalf of the Christian aid agency, Tearfund.

A third of people pray in the morning or before they go to sleep. People are also increasingly likely to solicit support from God while cooking or exercising.

And one in five pray while doing household chores while 15 per cent pray while they commute.



