God Less Likely To Perform Tricks for Educated 2

If you want to witness a miracle, it helps if you’re not too edumacated, televangelist Pat Robertson opined yesterday.

On Monday’s episode of CBN’s The 700 Club, Robertson responded to a viewer who wanted to know why “amazing miracles (people raised from the dead, blind eyes open, lame people walking) happen with great frequency in places like Africa, and not here in the USA?”

“People overseas didn’t go to Ivy League schools,” the TV preacher laughed. “We’re so sophisticated, we think we’ve got everything figured out. We know about evolution, we know about Darwin, we know about all these things that says God isn’t real.”

“We have been inundated with skepticism and secularism,” he conintued. “And overseas, they’re simple, humble. You tell ‘em God loves ‘em and they say, ‘Okay, he loves me.’ You say God will do miracles and they say, ‘Okay, we believe him.’”

I actually don’t disagree with Robertson on this one. Undoubtedly, the best antidote to superstition and religious flimflam is critical thinking, which correlates with education. An uneducated man sees a faith-healing trick and says “Praise God.” An educated man sees the same trick and says “Nice try.”

As regular readers of this blog know, the countries with the highest populations of atheists also score best for IQ. Moreover, the higher the overall levels of education, the less religious adherence. One study found that each additional year of school leads to a four-percentage-point decline in the likelihood that a person identifies as religious.

Incidentally, I wonder — I’m genuinely curious here — if the same effect is true for students at highly religious schools. Anyone know?

[image via lawyers.com]