I write on the psychological aspects of atheism, because academic psychology and academic tradition has been biased and focused on the psychological aspects of belief in God.  I feel there needs to be a little balance to this issue.  Recently, there has been some research that seems a little more even-handed in the study of belief and disbelief.  It is a very large and ongoing study.

I have noted before, the association between a poor relationship with one’s father and atheism.  Paul Vitz noted this association for the most extreme atheists.  The recent study presents some data on the issue in terms of what atheists and believers say about their relationship with their fathers.

There certainly is a correlation here.  It looks as if approximately 56% of atheists believe that they had a good relationship with their father, whereas, 62% of believers believed they had a good relationship with their fathers.  Granted, that’s only about a 6% difference.  So, while the association I’ve noted between relationship problems with the father and atheism exists.  It does not appear to be the whole story.  I would also point out, that in treatment, that beliefs about one’s relationships with one’s parents often changes during the course of treatment.  Patients often come to see their relationship with their parents in a new light–the light of today’s understanding.  So, I will admit that the relationship may be less strong than what I have presented before, but certainly does exist.  This factor with the mother, is not associated.  The study also did not examine the strength of belief and association with the relationship with one’s parents (which is the notion of Paul Vitz).

I’ve also asserted the following before:

4). They portray themselves as enlightened, intelligent, tolerant, moral, caring, accepting, loving, peaceable, and kind.  And sometimes, they really and truly are.  I’ve known them and met them.  However, they are not tolerant, in general, of the beliefs of “believers.”  They can tolerate anything but that.

I think the data broadly supports this assertion.  You can see more graphs here.

The data does seem to show that atheists (on average), view themselves as more intelligent than the rest of the population.

So, as you can see, 68% of atheists believe they are more intelligent than the average person, whereas, 52% of Christians believe they are more intelligent than the average person.  This is a stronger association than the assocation between the relationship with the father and atheism.  So, this confirms what I’ve stated with respect to intellectual elitism and atheism.  However, I would also state that I have never seen a study of IQ scores of believers vs. atheists.  So it is at least possible that their beliefs about their intelligence are accurate.  But on average, in my opinion, this intellectual elitism does exist.

I will continue to examine these issues in Part VI.

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