I'm certainly not going to take up religion for supposed cognitive benefits. This earlier research suggests the opposite.
Life-Course Religious Attendance and Cognitive Functioning in Later Life
Our key findings demonstrate that older adults who attended religious services for more of their life course tend to exhibit poorer working memory and mental status.
But have the smarter people self selected out of religion? I self selected out 50 years ago.
The latest here:
Life Course Religious Attendance and Cognitive Health at Midlife: Exploring Gendered Contingencies
Abstract
A
growing body of literature suggests that religious attendance might
mitigate processes of cognitive decline associated with aging. However,
few studies have made adequate linkages with the life course
perspective. We draw from over 35 years of prospective panel data from
the National Longitudinal Study of Youth (1979–2015) to assess the
associations of cumulative exposures to religious attendance over the
life course (childhood and midlife) for self-rated cognitive health and
working memory (as assessed by the Serial 7s task). Our results suggest
that midlife adults who attended religious services consistently between
childhood and adulthood had higher self-rated cognitive health and
better working memory. Women were also found to receive stronger
benefits to self-rated cognitive health from consistent religious
practice between childhood and adulthood. This pattern of findings
allows for greater reflection into the neural enrichment and neural
depletion arguments proposed to explain the religion/cognitive health
link in previous research.
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