Religiosity and lower IQ

B_NineInchCock_160IQ

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[SIZE=-1]
[/SIZE][SIZE=-1](cue "jokes" [/SIZE][SIZE=-1]about my IQ being 7 or somesuch)[/SIZE]

So.... you're a religious Republican then?

I don't believe all religious people or all racists are stupid. That seems to be an untenable position. People tend to believe whatever reality they are presented with, even the smart ones. When they are old enough to think somewhat for themselves, then they start believing whatever it is they want to believe. A handful of genuises out there have a few original thoughts here and there, most of the rest of us are just parroting what someone else told us or wrote down in a book we read when we were a teenager and forming our opinions of the world.

If there's a correlation between education and a lack of faith that's unsurprising. An educated person who has retained any of his or her education is going to think more critically and question the reality they've been presented with. Or... the not too bright educated will end up parroting their professors who may be able to think more critically. Or to hear the faithful tell it... the evil liberal schools will have poisoned the minds of their students with secular nonsense. Any way you slice it, the correlation is not surprising.

I'm curious, though, how many of these studies were focused on intelligence and how many on education. The ones focused on intelligence, I wonder how they determined such a thing. The brief synopsis in the OP almost seems to take it for granted that these two very different things were one and the same.
 

Not_Punny

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Yet another idiot completely misses the point of my handle.

The point of your handle? Having an Intelligence Quotient of 9 or 160...?

Don't worry, I'm just messing with you. Truth is, I never noticed the "160IQ" because my selective brain never got past the nine inch part... :biggrin1:
 

SlimGuySB

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Actually, stupidity is one of the requirements for racism.

Rank and file quite probably, but you could make a similar leap for any easily led group. Those who actually pull the strings (for whom racisim is, I believe, more a means to an end than an end itself) probably not so much.
 

DC_DEEP

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No I don't think that's correct... I think maybe what you really meant to say is racists seem stupid to non racists. It's the fear of the unknown.
No, really, I pretty much meant what I posted.

Rank and file quite probably, but you could make a similar leap for any easily led group. Those who actually pull the strings (for whom racisim is, I believe, more a means to an end than an end itself) probably not so much.
And I do. Those who prefer to let others do their thinking for them are pretty much stupid.
 

Andro Man

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Apples and oranges. Back then, religion was the cornerstone of every facet of life. Even the most heretical people believed in some sort of a higher power, even if it was heterodox. True atheism didn't exist.

That's not the point, the point is religiosity and low IQ, I say these individuals clearly have at least average IQ and were religious. And if you're saying that nowadays they wouldn't have believed in a higher power because there's enough evidence to refute it, I'd say there's no evidence either way. Perhaps they would have achieved less if they hadn't believed in anything(cos alot of the times they felt divinely inspired, e.g. Bach), would that have made them more intelligent, or just more of a mediocratie, achieving nothing coz life is pointless anyway?

Btw I think it was Einstein that said if he could have done things differently he would have devoted his life to spirituality



Very religious? State your sources.

I'm pretty sure he said something about it in a brief history of time, I also so a film on his life that he was clearly religious and came from a religious background
 

Andro Man

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Newton's beliefs progressed over his life, he was the only person to be given a dispensation by Charles II to not swear to belief in the Trinity, which was a requirement for holding a Cambridge professorship. He did not accept any dogma in later life. There is a myth floating around about him having been a fundamentalist, his early life was spent during the puritan theocracy, living in the homes of clerical relatives.


I read that he spent the last years of his life studying the bible, and not accepting the church line does that make you non-religious?
 

MrGoodDate

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And what do you do with Einstein?

Are you going the second step , like the Nazis,, and planning to improve the human race by killing all the religious people?

Have you read CSLewis, Malcum Mugridge (wrong spelling) and other highly intellegent people who turned to faith in the middle of their lives?

I would really invite you to go to Atheist Russia from 1918 to the fall of the Berlin Wall and see how really intellegent people would run the world.

And can you prove a negative?
 

DC_DEEP

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This is pretty much my position :smile: and faith doesn't have to be religiously associated. To sign up as an ist is to reinquish responsibility and freedom IMHO.
That's often my point when I post in various threads, but I invariably get attacked for saying it.

One of the most valuable things I learned in one of my philosophy & logic classes in college: you must challenge your own beliefs. If they do not stand up to the challenge, you should rethink them. A weak or false philosophy will not stand up to scrutiny; a truer and stronger philosophy will be the result of it.
 

D_Gunther Snotpole

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And what do you do with Einstein?

Are you going the second step , like the Nazis,, and planning to improve the human race by killing all the religious people?

Have you read CSLewis, Malcum Mugridge (wrong spelling) and other highly intellegent people who turned to faith in the middle of their lives?

I would really invite you to go to Atheist Russia from 1918 to the fall of the Berlin Wall and see how really intellegent people would run the world.

And can you prove a negative?

First, it's Malcolm Muggeridge. Google is your friend.
Second, a claim that members of a group in general have more or less of trait X does not pretend to account for every member of the group.
So one could easily say that Lewis and Muggeridge were clever, while believing that most religiously-inclined folk might be a bit (or more than a bit) less intelligent than the more skeptical folk.
I don't mean one need do that, but you don't run into contradiction merely because you do.
The agnostic Bertrand Russell was at least as brilliant as Muggeridge and Lewis -- but he's simply another specific case.
Says nothing about the overall contention.
Soviet Russia, as you suggest, is hardly an example of atheistism proving its intellectual mettle, at least as it attempts to direct a society.
But, on the other side, what of Muslim suicide bombing?
What of the Crusades? Northern Ireland?
In each of these latter cases, religious sentiment has led to palpable evil.
There are examples on all sides.
The question can't be settled through looking merely at specific cases.