Atheism around the World

The rate of atheism or agnosticism in different countries is a question which can commonly sneak up in discussions over dinner or lunch. Atheist writers, such as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, argued that belief in "a bearded man in the sky" — to take a somewhat provocative verbal expression — interferes with perception of reality.

While there are few people who would go as far as to actually claim that rate of religious belief is inversely proportional to national intelligence (see below), some people may take a high rate of believers as a measure of backwardness. Intuitively, I would guess it is probably relatively safe to claim that atheism rate is indicative of education level and economic well-being. I found a map of atheism worldwide, which I show, I outline the argument around atheism, and give a short discussion.

The data in the map come from different sources and are subject to different sorts of methodological differences and should therefore be taken with a grain of salt. Please, click on the link for a list of sources and to get a bigger image.



In many developed countries, people go to church on at least four occasions baptism, confirmation, wedding(s), and funeral(s). Some time ago, I wrote an article about belief in evolution worldwide, with a graph included that looked quite similar to this one.

I promised a discussion of the argument that religious belief is a sign of backwardness, so here it comes.

Is National IQ Related to Atheism Rate?

Richard Lynn, one of the discoverers of the Flynn effect, published together with others the study "Average intelligence predicts atheism rates across 137 nations." In it, after reviewing previous supportive studies, the authors find further evidence for significant negative correlation of IQ and religious belief within nations.

So, there you have it.

However, then the problems begin and I have to take this detour to distance myself from other results of this study.

They then go on to correlate national atheism rates with national IQs as Lynn previously had compiled in a book, mostly based on Pisa international education assessment studies and find again a negative correlation of educational success and religious belief over populations of different countries.

Rather than arguing for a correlation of education with atheism, the authors argue for a correlation of national IQ and atheism rate, which is not unproblematic. The main problem are methodological confounds about how to define/calculate national intelligence. They include factors of economic development (see below). Further, the authors argue backwards, saying basically that people are religious and uneducated because they are stupid (genetically).

The Flynn Effect and Atheism

It is worth to point out at this point that Lynn's claim to fame beside the Flynn effect is his quest to find racially conditioned differences in intelligence. I am therefore making a detour to point out the confusion of concepts and because I don't feel comfortable in citing a study by Lynn without qualification. Lynn states on his departmental web page:

In 1991 I extended my work on race differences in intelligence to other races. I concluded that the average IQ of blacks in sub-Saharan Africa is approximately 70. It has long been known that the average IQ of blacks in the United States is approximately 85. The explanation for the higher IQ of American blacks is that they have about 25 per cent of Caucasian genes and a better environment.

An abstract of one of his papers, Sex differences in intelligence and brain size is no less controversial: A paradox resolved, reads:

Males have larger brains than females, even when corrected for body size, and brain size is positively correlated with intelligence. This leads to the expectation that males should have higher average levels of intelligence than females. Yet the consensus view is that there is no sex difference in general intelligence. An examination of the literature shows that the consensus view is wrong. Among adults, males have slightly higher verbal and reasoning abilities than females and a more pronounced superiority on spatial abilities. If the three abilities are combined to form general intelligence, the mean for males is 4 IQ points higher than the mean for females. Among children up to the age of around 14 yr the sex differences are smaller because girls mature earlier than boys. The evolutionary selection pressures responsible for greater intelligence in males are discussed.

The article "Why national IQs do not support evolutionary theories of intelligence" delivers rebuttals for most of the claims (emphasis is mine):

We show that these studies assume that the Flynn Effect is either nonexistent or invariant with respect to different regions of the world, that there have been no migrations and climatic changes over the course of evolution, and that there have been no trends over the last century in indicators of reproductive strategies (e.g., declines in fertility and infant mortality). In addition, we show that national IQs are strongly confounded with the current developmental status of countries. National IQs correlate with all the variables that have been suggested to have caused the Flynn Effect in the developed world.

In fact, in the book mentioned above, Lynn and his co-author, Vanhanen, find correlations between the national IQ, as they calculate it, and many other factors. The human condition index (QHC), which they derive in the book, is found to be very highly correlated with national IQs. The QHC is composed of the following:

1. purchasing power parity Gross National Income (PPP-GNI) per capita 2002
   
2. adult literacy rate 2002
   
3. gross tertiary enrollment ratio
   
4. life expectancy at birth 2002
   
5. the level of democratization 2002.
   

One of these factors is education, which they use to calculate their IQ scores, so a high correlation is not too surprising. Basically the whole argument of national IQs boils down to saying religious belief correlates negatively with factors such as purchasing power parity, literacy rate, education, life expectancy, and others. I find it both ironic and sad, that Lynn forgets about the effect he helped to discover.

Concluding, religious belief (or rather the absence) seems to be one of the indicators of development.