Clutch

CT, the problem is that it's too easy let a stereotype influence your perception and recollection of events. You may perceive the dumb-fundy sort as paradigmatically Christian, and call to mind your experiences with them when canvassing your memory for relevant data.

I know some scarily smart theists. The kinds of cognitive errors involved in believing there's a god can be pretty domain-specific; you end up with a smart person who occasionally says and does dumb things. But that hardly seems like a description unique to theists.

wildernesse

I always wonder about these threads which start off wanting to declare atheists as people with high IQs, while dumping all theists in the low IQ category.

Since I can tell from the also common Meyer Briggs tests that the vast majority of people here are also introverts, maybe I shouldn't be surprised when introverts don't have the kind of knowledge/life experience that results from engaging and interacting with a wide variety of people about a variety of topics that weirdo extroverts do from conversing and being interested in anything with human form. Introverts aren't people persons, and while that doesn't mean they don't care about others or observe them at all, but maybe there is a narrower range of people that they do observe.

I'm very not an introvert--so I could be completely wrong, and maybe all the introverts who read this (which, confess, *is* 98% of you) will say that this is ridiculous--but what do you think?

I also think some of this is some kind of nerd syndrome--people like me are highly intelligent/got this scheme figured out and people not like me are idiots and peons--the kind of cheerleading that unpopular (and envious) kids revel in. I'm not quite grown out of that stage myself.

--tibac

seebs

There's a curious data point: I used to be a very strong INTP, but now I test borderline ENTP/INTP. This happened over the same ten or so years during which I converted.

The intelligence thing is interesting, and probably correlates somewhat to an understanding of alternative world models; people who can only handle one world model may not have the basis for comparison. However, there are empirically people who are quite capable of using any of several models, ranging from science to theology to mathematics, who end up religious, so I don't think it's fair to say that, if you can do the comparison, theism necessarily loses. I think, rather, that for most people who *can't* do the comparison, theism wins by default.

Consistent Thinker

Gurdur, at any one point or set of points in time, there are only three possibilities.

1) The mean IQ of theists equals the mean IQ of nontheists.

2) The mean IQ of theists is greater than the mean IQ of nontheists.

3) The mean IQ of theists is less than the mean IQ nontheists.

I think there is a preponderance of evidence to suggest that #3 is the correct choice at this epoch (and probably for earlier ones as well). So my position is that the choice with the highest probability of being correct is #3.

Gurdur, in your judgment, which of these three choices has the highest probability of being correct?

Godbert

[QUOTE]Originally posted by wade-w
I addressed this point in the thread that Livius linked to above. These statistics do not point to a correlation between intelligence and atheism.

In the assessment of statistics it is often helpful to have at least a quick look at them - before babbling about their meaning


At most, they show there may be a correlation between a scientific or mathematical education and atheism.

So you think there is no positive correlation between a scientific or mathematical education and higher IQ?
Oh yes, I remember, all the morons back in high school couldn't wait to get their Ph.Ds in particle physics while the geeks were all looking forward to their careers as cleaning personnel. And I guess Mensa uses a GRE score of 1800 or so (which should not be far from average for graduate students) as entry threshhold because it has nothing to do with intelligence at all?


Are all intelligent people scientists or mathematicians?

No, but most scientists and all mathematicians are intelligent people.


There is another fundamental flaw here, that education = intelligence. There are highly educated people who are not all that bright, and there are many people with limited education who are extremely intelligent.

A few exceptions to the rule are a fundamental flaw?

Godbert

[QUOTE]Originally posted by wildernesse
I always wonder about these threads which start off wanting to declare atheists as people with high IQs, while dumping all theists in the low IQ category.

We are of course talking about the average IQ here. Of course there are also dumb atheists (of which I have met a lot) and highly intellignet theists (of which I have not met a single one)

Godbert

Why don't you read the study and you will notice that the percentage you are babbling about is more than twice as high for the general population than it is for scientists.

Oh and once you are reading why don't you also quickly fly over the original posts which talks about _mean_ IQ and tell us what your "cuts across all classes of education" rambling above has to do with the topic at hand.

Autonemesis

And no wonder, since intelligence questionaires are carefully designed so as to exclude cultural bias, religious bias, racial bias, and so on.

Madkins007

Consistant- what exactly do you think is going on with the mechanics of the brain to make theists less intelligent than atheists?

Belief, per se, is not a part of IQ testing, but language skills, math abilities, problem-solving, pattern recognition, etc. are tested. In which area would you expect a theist to not pass muster?

Looking at the 'Godless Thinker' article, I note that they use college students and MENSA members a lot- but they seem to leave out any tool that shows us how we can extrapolate the numbers of the subgroup to the community at large. What is the average percentage of theist to atheist in the community? Is it reflected in the schools? If the schools are more atheistic than the community (and they usually are), it would appear to be a skewed population.

I would LOVE to see how these studies were structured!



Oh, you can also look at the site {http://tcfreenet.org/people/hoel/main.html} This person has set up a deal where you take a simple IQ test then self-report your faith and the scores. They have been doing it since 1997 and find that only 6% of atheists hit the 'high' category, and 20% of Christians do.

(Flawed study, you say? Skewed population samples? Gee, imagine that!)

Consistent Thinker

I am not an expert on the brain. All I know about are correlations that I read about in studies such as the above, and correlations that I observe in the many people whom I have known in my life.