by besty 48 Replies latest jw friends
Quendi - go through your list and read into the beliefs of the people you have listed... Except for of course Michael Behe as was mentioned before... Not intelligent...
Then go ahead and ponder the fact that 97% of the members of the Academy of Science deny any belief in god.
From Quendi...
I suppose such a study glosses over people like Isaac Newton...
No. A regular study takes a random sample from a population. If believers with the mental acumen of Newton or the others you listed were in the sample, they were included. If not, they weren't. No glossing over involved.
In any case, it's not very useful to list a whole bunch of clever belivers: there are a lot of clever non-believers who could be listed too.
I like to think that since I possess two college degrees (one in mathematics) and am involved in public education, I would be considered to have above average intelligence.
Neither has anything much to do with intelligence. Degrees are intellectual endurance tests, not intelligence tests (but few dullards achieve degrees in mathematics). Involvement in public education is meritorous, but again it is not a measure of intelligence.
By the way, you do not seem to be writing like someone with tertiary training in the mathematical sciences could be expected to on a statistical report: you wrote from emotion, not understanding.
If you want to believe that religious people are stupid, you can certainly find all kinds of data to support such a conclusion.
I'm not sure there is any reliable evidence for the proposition 'religious people are stupid' at all. But, in any case, no one has put that idea including the study's authors and those commenting on it. Only you did.
But I think it is equally important to point out that those of high intelligence have also committed atrocities against humanity. Their learning did not stop them from formulating weapons of mass destruction, drawing up plans for genocide, swindling governments, societies and individuals and other crimes.
Intelligence makes it easier to work out how to do things like split the atom, make a nerve toxin or get away with huge crimes. Intelligence is a different thing to good sense or morality. The observation is irrelevent.
This study reminds me of the old saying, “When you point a finger at somebody, it is good to remember you have three more pointing back at you.” Those eager to impugn believers would do well to remember this.
No one is impugning anyone, simply noting the relative level of measured intelligence between believers and non-believers. Folk wisdom has its places. Rebutting a properly conducted survey is not one of them.
Well since I'm the culprit who made the first post about this news item I guess I will finally respond to the second time it has come around. I think many of you are missing the point. Of course relgious people can be smart and of course atheists can be stupid. But analyze the two. Evolutionarily speaking belief in a deity/god/religion is simply ONE STEP up from impulsive, reactive responses to external conditions. It does not require any thought. It is the second rung of being sentient. Believing requires absolutely no thought. None. It can be nothing other than a conditioned response.
Thinking, undertanding, knowing and proving are all above it in the sldiing scale. The more rational someone is typically the more they control impulses and require something closer to proof before they make decisions. Our human ancestors of course needed both. Rapid response to some situations may mean life or death, and it certainly did when humans were trying to cobble together a cave, a clan a tribe and a civilization. Absent the time or capabilitiy to study or understand something we all default to it now. It continues to serve us as needed.
But we live in an age where we really should be moving away from the lower rungs of our species and towards fulfililng the hopes locked in our DNA. We will never get there as long as we act like our primate cousins. Chimps and other primates can't be trained to resist impulses. Kinda like the typical 4 year old human. Or my ex girlfriend.
@scotoma
695 people have already viewed this info on http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/jw/friends/259200/1/IQ-and-Theism
A recent meta-analysis of both threads showed there was negative correlation between posters on this thread and posters on the thread you mention. Therefore the study concluded, in part, that more people had seen the information DIRECTLY BECAUSE it had been posted twice.
Bow down ye unbelievers!
Religious people are waiting people.
Like the Tin Man in the Wizard of Oz, they seek the perfect brain and they just have to make it to Oz to acquire it.
Religious people consider smart people handicapped by their cynicism.
Christians are doing the Rain Dance and someday it is going to rain.
Smart people are standing pointing and laughing at them but not offering any better solution.
Rituals and faith bind people to the family and the traditions of the past. There is a solidarity and sense of purpose.
What the BELIEVER gives up is the time they might have used to grow smarter so that they too could point and laugh.
konceptual99: we all know that if you are intelligent then you will find it difficult to be humble.
Perhaps you are trying to be sarcastic, but I have to disagree. I have found the opposite to be true. Many very intelligent, highly educated people are very humble. In my experience, they know what they know, but more importantly they are very aware of their limitations and ignorance.
In stark contrast are the uneducated religious fundamentalists (READ: JW True-believers) that are absolutely sure of everything. That kind of arrogance is appaling.
@oubliette - he used the happified word :-) let the reader use discernment...
Besty,
It's so nice, I wanna hear the same song twice,
it's so nice i wanna hear the same song twice__Sublime
@oubliette - just to be clear I was trying to be a little ironic and sarcastic - naturally I fully agree with your comment. Even though I am still nominally "active"(ish) and "in good standing"(ish) I am trying hard not to eat my own **** any more. As @vidiot intimated, however, in the good 'ole happified World of Dub, truth certainly is stranger than fiction.
August 2013
Even the legendarily left-leaning Huffington Post called it “provocative.” A new study claims that religious people are less intelligent than atheists.
The “study” is actually a review of 63 studies of intelligence and religion conducted over the past century (1928-2012). The “meta-analysis” apparently shows that in 53 of the studies there was an inverse relationship between having religious beliefs (and/or performing religious rituals) and intelligence.
In other words, non-believers scored higher than religious people on intelligence tests.
Some smelled raw meat, jumping immediately to the conclusion that “religious beliefs are irrational, not anchored in science, not testable and, therefore, unappealing to intelligent people who ‘know better.’”
Actually, no.
Study co-author Jordan Silberman says that it would be a mistake to assume their findings mean that if you’re a believer, you’re a few fries short of a Happy Meal.
“I’m sure there are intelligent religious people and unintelligent atheists out there,” Silberman says. “The findings pertain to the average intelligence of religious and non-religious people, but they don’t necessarily apply to any single person. Knowing that a person is religious would not lead me to bet any money on whether or not the person is intelligent.”
Or as the study’s conductor, Miron Zuckerman (a psychologist at the University of Rochester) offers, “It is truly the wrong message to take from here that if I believe in God I must be stupid.”
Fair enough, but not enough.
Let’s dig into the study itself.
The meta-anaylsis did not look at the type of religion, much less the role culture might play in the interaction between religiosity and intelligence.
To lump, say, Jehovah’s Witnesses with American evangelical Christians would be ridiculous for a study of this type, as JWs decry education (particularly for women), and evangelicals founded such intellectual bastions as Wheaton and currently laud such scholars as scientist Francis Collins, historian Mark Noll, and… well, you get my point.
And we all know the sad, tragic, heroic story of Malala Yousafzai who was shot in the head and neck by Taliban gunmen last August in retribution for her public advocacy for girls’ education.
Would you diminish the worth of her faith due to her lack of education? And let’s be clear: the results of many intelligence tests rise and fall on the amount of educational stimulus an individual has received.
To that point, The Independent noted that the researchers used a very narrow definition of intelligence in the study, defining it as “the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly, and learn from experience.”
Sounds good, but it excludes other forms of intelligence, such as creative and emotional intelligence (forms of intelligence more easily assessed independent of educational stimulus).
But for me, the most important observation came from public statements from both Zuckerman and the study’s co-author, Jordan Silberman. When asked why he thought the meta-analysis seemed to favor the atheist over the believer, Silberman said he suspected it had more to do with “intelligent” people having less of a “need” for religion.
Specifically, “Intelligence may also lead to greater self-control ability, self-esteem, [and] perceived control over the events.”
Is it just me, or does that translate as “pride”?
If you fancy yourself smart, and indeed perhaps are, you are prone to pride. Intellectual pride leads to a false sense of self-sufficiency coupled with a lack of teachability. You do not bow your knee to anyone – if anything, others should bow to you.
No wonder the study concludes that the higher the “intelligence,” the more likely that person is to challenge established norms and dogma (read: authority).
Perhaps nowhere does that kind of pride run amok more than in academia. As Lillian Daniel has observed, “there is a certain peer pressure as one moves up the educational ladder to dismiss all religion as fundamentalism. It’s one of the last acceptable biases in an environment that prides itself on being open-minded.”
There’s that word again.
Pride.
If you give in to that pride – particularly its highest form, which is putting yourself in the position of God – then there is no place for, well, God.
So maybe it’s not that religious people are less “intelligent” than atheists.
Maybe, in truth, the religious are the most intelligent of all. Not because they refuse to accept the facts, but because they do. Two in particular.
First, that there is a God.
And then the all-important second fact:
“And I’m not Him.”
James Emery White
Sources
The study first appeared in the online version of Personality and Social Psychology Review, an academic journal, and will appear next year in print version.
“Religious People Branded As Less Intelligent Than Atheists In Provocative New Study,” Macrina Cooper-White, The Huffington Post, posted August 14, 2013, read online.
“Are atheists smarter than believers? Not exactly,” Kimberly Winston, Religion News Service, August 16, 2013, read online.
Editor’s Note
James Emery White
