Spirituality and Smarts

Scott Adams has a discussion going about the connection between spirituality and intelligence. Honestly, I'm pretty conflicted on the subject. God is more than capable of confounding the wisdom of the wise. But here is what I think:

I think that there isn't generally a correlation between intelligence and religious observance. From the Christian perspective I think that the Church is made up of people from every walk of life and intellectual capacity. I think Paul's description of the body of Christ being diverse in our various gifts probably substantiates that concept. We are a people of many different faculties and not all of them are mental.

The whole concept of "Christians are smarter" smacks of a sort of arrogance I don't think God would approve of. We certainly aren't Christians because we earned it through feats of mental gymnastics or any sort of spiritual or logical mathematics. If I suggested that Christians were physically stronger than others you would laugh at me, why doesn't a discussion of innate intelligence bring about the same reaction? We are Christians because either God chose us (Calvinism) or freely gave us the capacity to choose him (those other guys). That's it.

That said, my personal experience leads me to recognize some differences that I hesitate to call intelligence, but may look like it under casual observation. Let me give you some personal backstory.

Back when I went to college at University of Delaware, I was in the Honors Program. I also participated in InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. IVCF was essentially broken up into three groups: East Campus, West Campus, and a small North Campus group. Prior to my freshman year, Honors freshmen were housed on West Campus in Dickinson. Starting with my freshman year, Honors freshman housing moved over to the Russell (and Lane) dorms on East Campus.

Prior to my freshman year, West IV was larger than East IV. It must have been considerably larger when you consider the number of Christian Russell Fellows who switches Campuses after being on West the year before. As I went through college this changed. West shrunk and East grew. Leaders from East began deliberately moving to West to fill needs. By my senior year, West and North had merged but were still only about the same size as East. IV leadership on both sides of campus favored Honors students for all but my freshman year. If you can't tell, I think the Honors program had a lot to do with the shift in the center of campus Christian life.

Now I think I've successfully argued against "Christians are smarter" in general. But the Honors program in particular seemed to draw in a lot more Christian students per capita and a lot of spiritual leaders grew out of there. I can only explain this by saying that the Honors Program attracting students who were self-motivated and self-disciplined rather than kids who just wanted four years of parentally subsidized alcoholism. I think those sorts of kids would also be Christians for reasons having nothing to do with intelligence and everything to do with Christian values.