Not surprised. I know lots of very smart people who are religious, but I think on the whole if you have a lower IQ and therefore don't understand the world, religion is easy to turn to.
This IQ test, which is supposed to measure natural intelligence and not education, is yielding averages of under 70 for whole countries? So, half the citizenries of Angola, Mali, and Senegal are actually mentally r****ded?
I was curious about the correlation between religion and per-capita income (note logarithmic scale for y-axis). This is for the same countries.
Yeah, there's no way I'm believing that just about every country in Africa has an average intelligence more than two standard deviations below the mean in the US.
This is a dangerous thread. The sky wizard can and will cast spells at you non believers if you don't follow a very specific set of rules as defined by a few humans 2,000 years ago. Don't bother just being a good person or thinking for yourself, just do exactly as your priest or spiritual leader tells you (despite numerous incidents of corruption and sexual deviation within the church). Organized religion is one of the worst things to ever happen to human kind.
"Higher levels of intelligence are associated with a greater ability - or perhaps willingness - to question and overturn strongly felt institutions." Some intelligent people question everything to a fault. i.e. If there is no evidence, then it doesn't exist. What it boils down to is that one side is inclined to 'reason', the other side to faith. To imply that intelligent people are atheist because they have a higher understanding of the universe, or that they know something that religious people don't is nonsense. No one will ever be able to prove or disprove the existence of God. (From a theist point of view) if we were able to, it would defeat the purpose of our existence- to choose to believe, or not. But, whatever. Give this a couple days it'll fester with atheists being spiteful to believers who say that they are going to hell, and believers getting pissed for being called unintelligent and ignorant.
can somebody label the countries on the graph? I'd be curious to see where places like Afghanistan, Pockistan and other poor Muslim countries lie on here. TIA
I don't think that's what they're saying. They're saying intelligent people are more likely to continue to question things until they find a logical answer. They're not going to read a book of fairy tales and say well there ya have it.
how does anyone prove anything? stoicism/platonism/neo-platonism->augustine->aquinas, even descartes on the pro side. many more against, most famously betrand russell. it's all a big spun web- tall tales, proofs and theorems. science works the same way.
On the other hand, the Harvard study found that participants who tended to think more reflectively were less likely to believe in God. Reflective thinking was further correlated with greater changes in beliefs since childhood: these changes were towards atheism for the most reflective participants, and towards greater belief in God for the most intuitive thinkers. The study controlled for personality differences and cognitive ability, suggesting the differences were due to thinking styles - not simply IQ or raw cognitive ability. An experiment in the study found that participants moved towards greater belief in God after writing essays about how intuition yielded a right answer or reflection yielded a wrong answer (and conversely, towards atheism if primed to think about either a failure of intuition or success of reflection). The authors say it is all evidence that a relevant factor in religious belief is thinking style.[1] The authors add that, even if intuitive thinking tends to increase belief in God, "it does not follow that reliance on intuition is always irrational or unjustified http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religiosity_and_intelligence#Studies_comparing_religious_belief_and_I.Q.
Yeah, they'd rather be arrogant and declare something doesn't exist just because it's beyond their comprehension. "A book of fairy tales", "sky wizard" (not all atheists are intelligent)...that's some offensive **** to some people. Do you care? I'm gonna exit this thread while I can. I don't like seeing the ugly sides of people, including myself.
