A Reliable Negative Relation Between Intelligence and Religiosity

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Of course! If it weren't hypothetical, your statement would become a bit contradictory. But I know exactly what you mean, and I don't disagree.

I was once chatting online with a catholic girl about religion, and she sent me a link with a long story of people who rightfully ended up dead because they had mocked God. John Lennon was among them. I tried to explain to her what was offensive about that statement, that he was a peaceful person, and definitely didn't deserve his fate, but she had no understanding of what I was saying. In her world the facts were self-evident, and the conclusion in the link, gloating over his and others' untimely deaths seemed entirely fair to her.

NOG comes from a very religious backgroud, and his bigoted statements are entirely fair and self-evident in his view.

 

Seriously??

I'm quite religious and a practicing Catholic and I would be disturbed (in the least) to see John Lennon mentioned among them.

Nor that such a list is a good thing.

I don't like it if someone does mock God or religion in general but that list is messed up.

 

Well, it was a Philippines girl, and I have nothing good to say about the people from that country, so I'll leave it at that.

Catholicism is so widespread, there are differences between methods of practice in different locations. Philippines is notorious for ignoring the Pope's guidelines. And not for humanitarian purposes either - they're so extreme that the Vatican must regularly distance themselves from their activities. Ever heard of the annual crucifixions there?

Catholics I've met in the Netherlands are a lot more amicable. They blame the protestants for all the friction between the Bible and Evolution theory. There isn't a thing that can't be smoothtalked into perfect congruence with *their* faith. Dutch catholics regularly get in trouble with the Vatican for opposite reasons; not condemning gays, abortion and other hot-topics harshly enough. It isn't like that in The Philippines.
I heard stories of nuns in the USA also butting heads with papal dogma.

 

It's a private university. Does that mean that they can use taxpayer money for own their research? The paper doesn't mention any outside funds, so I assume that it was paid for by the university from its own pocket.

Come on, as someone who studied at the same university I went to, you should know that most papers aren't groundbreaking. They only level the ground for the next groundbreaking paper, which is often a mix of own research and the recasting of non-groundbreaking papers that preceded it.

This is what the paper says:

Come on, you haven't read the paper, you haven't checked the methods, the sources, the background of the researchers. It wouldn't be published in a noteworthy journal, or approved by the psychology research committee if it was nothing more than propaganda. But no, you don't like the conclusion, so it must be propaganda. You know a guy that has an MD and goes to mass; my father"-in-law" has a PhD, taught at a major university and recently had himself baptized; so the entire paper must be bunk.

Of course the paper doesn't say that all religious people are less intelligent than non-religious people. It only says that only on average, the religious people are slightly less intelligent. That you know one, or ten, or hundreds of religious intelligent people doesn't invalidate the paper. You need to invalidate it by showing that their sources are flawed, or that they used the wrong methods, or that they made a mistake somewhere when using those methods.

I don't even see how that is the same thing. The paper used statistics, your son used statistics. The same level of statistics? I doubt it.

*Table 5 says ~8 IQ points difference for "college corrected weighted", ~6 for "non-college weighted". I don't have time to read what weighted and (non)-college corrected mean.

I've found a TEDx video of the second author here. I haven't watched the video, so I can't be sure if this is actually an atheist initiation ritual. You need to click on the smaller image to watch the video.

 

Excellent point. You caught me on a bit of hyperboly in order to emphasize a point. And my point was: what was their point? Research is conducted for a purpose. To seek clarity on an unclear subject.

But religion is by its very nature a subjective topic, about which practically everyone has a strong opinion one way or another. What possible clarification could they hope to bring to such an eternally subjective issue.

I read the article about the study, and there are a lot of broad sweeping statements about religious vs. atheist people in it. Scientific studies are not generally conducted purely to ascertain the worth of people and their beliefs. That's why I'm guessing that it was the *article writer* that probably made willful misinterpretations, oversimplifications, value judgements and/or unwarranted conclusions in his attempt to summarize a scientific study. At least, that's what I hope has happened.

 

I think you're right. The article is just too oversimplified, and in tone almost completely the opposite of the actual paper. There is a reason why I rarely bother with articles by scientific journalists. They always seem to just dive in and reduce the entire discussion, which is meant to show in how many ways the results can be meaningfully interpreted, to a single (and always choosing the most controversial), interpretation.

I have the paper as a pdf, but I'm not willing to share it because I accessed it through the university network and now my paper is tagged with an invisible watermark that will allow the journal to identify me as the source.

 

Fair enough. Thanks for confirming it for us anyway.

 

What Morgoth said. Any population of people will be normally distributed around a mean for a variable like intelligence and any two populations are likely to have a difference in those means. The results of this study are probably valid, but even if they are, so what?

 

There's probably something to be said for differences between born-again Christians and generational ones, but let's not put too much emphasis on stereotypes.

And it's hard to deny that the more aggressively expansive religions have a reputation of stifling free thought and access to information, in order to keep the flock in line. Islam is perhaps the worst in this regard nowadays. It wasn't always like that. The entire renaissance can be traced back to a single muslim library captured from the Moors in Spain. But their attitude hardened over time, changing the region from a repository of knowledge to an active paper-shredder.

Religious people often come across incredibly pig-headed and misinformed about hot-topics for their faith, but as for the rest of reality, they are people like any other. All shapes, sizes, and levels of intelligence.

 

Utter crap is what this study is. Substitute any other two identifiable groups and you'd have this called bigoted nonsense without even bothering to look at the methodology and data.

I'm no scientist and have never claimed to be one, but my BS detector works just fine, and this sort of dreck sets it off like crazy.

Before you all say I'm a knee jerk religious moron, I'll state here that I feel the same way about "studies" that say religious people live "happier" lives. That crap is just about as believable as the "the following people dissed Jesus and now they are DEAD!" stupidity that was mentioned earlier in the thread.

I'll have more to say when I get to a real computer. Brace yourselves

 

That's Mormon not moron....

 

Could you copy-paste the summary on the front page, or key parts of it?

I do ascribe to the scientific method, though with my limited research credentials I couldn't call myself a scientist. But what I was trying to say with so many words, was that the article also sets off my BS detector.

 

You mean the abstract?

Please note that they do not say that the 3 interpretations are true, they are merely interpretations posited by others and in this paper they try to the see if these interpretations are justified given the 63 studies.

@LKD

That doesn't mean anything. You cannot rely on what you feel, you rely on what you measure; especially in a scientific debate.

Here is a video that addresses your point in the context of the global climate debate

 

As far as I'm concerned, this is pseudo-science. They can claim they "measured" things and were completely unbiased as much as they want, but this is about as credible as the science used to claim that Africans are mentally inferior to Caucasians. It's prima facie crap, no matter how much scientific bafflegab is used to cloak it in legitimacy.

 

Is it though?

 

On my drive home on Friday the radio station I was listening to had a comedian on (I didn't catch the name). The funniest part of the bit was they were talking about this study and he said "The study may be correct and atheists may be smarter, however, I'd like to see a study that figures out why atheists are so high on the douchebag scale. I mean seriously, who would you rather be trapped in an elevator with, someone who goes to church a couple of times a year or an atheist. If I was trapped in an elevator with an atheist I would be totally confused. My first instinct would be to kill him to get him to shut up, but then that would be a mortal sin. Damn, I can't even kill myself as that would also damn me. What's a fellow to do?"

I couldn't stop thinking about this thread while he was doing his bit.

 

Douchebags, like smart people and dumb people, are found in all population groups. I've never denied that.

 

Being a 'defender of religion,' though while not being religious, I find myself in an odd position here, but ... where exactly is the sinister motivation of this study? I don't really see anyone involved having late night secret meetings plotting to destroy religion (though the conjured image is comical if you substitute lab coats for business suits. ). Are those of you alleging some form of bias suggesting that it's informed by a passive motivation, like innate prejudice?

 

If the study or article is meant as PR it could be aimed internally or externally.

To make people inside a group feel better about being inside the group or make others feel bad they aren't.

Its obvious a single paper will not destroy religion but that doesn't mean this article wasn't written with a PR aim in mind.

I hadn't thought of the supposed research from the past that seemed to support racism (white people are smarter or better than black people) but that stuff provides a good example of internal PR.

A study itself wouldn't result in black people being put in 2nd class citizenship.

But it would be one more brick in the wall of a long list of things said to prop up segregation.

And it was aimed internally so white people would feel better about following segregation's rules and expectations.

Would this study lead to building some kind of segregation? I expect not. But the bs put out promoting segregation helped encourage white people to hang together as a group.

It isn't exactly unheard of for a group of people to maintain internal cohesion (keep a group together) by looking down on other groups.



Now this is all if the study or article was done or written with a specific purpose or bias. I don't know about the study but from what has been said it seems the article probably was.