Scientific education leads to atheism

John Draper
Scientific studies have shown that Intelligence has risen in developed countries and simultaneously belief in religion has declined. The obvious conclusion is that people are getting smarter; smart people tend to reject irrational beliefs, hence with increasing intelligence more people become nonbelievers. But a paper by psychologist James Allan Cheyne at Waterloo University suggests it's more complicated than that. The correlation of intelligence and lack of belief is well documented and is called the Flynn effect, after the social scientist J. R. Flynn who first recognized it.
But first, let's note that the effect is significant - in England, for example, church attendance has dropped to less than one-third of prior levels and atheism is no longer rare. Also, because many are reluctant to call themselves atheists but prefer "non-believer", there may be more atheists than what the many surveys show. Further, studies have shown that the effect is more pronounced amongst elite scientists - only around 7% of them are believers. Is there a connection between science and the rejection of religion?
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