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TheDeath
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
with serious business
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posted April 29, 2007 11:54 PM |
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Do you know god exists or do you just consider it a possibility?
The possibility idea was suggested for those that do not believe in God.
Asking if we 'know' god exists is the same as asking if we 'know' why we love, etc.. knowledge is complex. I for example feel that God exists (no it's not a normal feeling, mind you but I do not know any better term).
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pomo
Famous Hero
The lone peasant
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posted April 30, 2007 07:32 AM |
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Edited by pomo at 06:26, 04 May 2007.
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Its the truth, whether you like it or not. The reson I posted this was because someone claimed that religious people are more intelligent than atheists and referred to some study from Israel.
What's the truth? The fact that a bunch of studies have shown an association between IQ and religiosity? That I believe... it's the assumption of causality that is problematic.
The site you linked to basically relies on a whole bunch of quasi-logic to argue that quote...
"The simplest and most parsimonious explanation is that religion is a set of logical and factual claims, and those with the most logic and facts at their disposal are rejecting it largely on those grounds."
What total garbage. First off, people do NOT in the most cases really choose much at all (I can point you to references if you like - See particularly Daniel Wegner's 'the illusion of conscious will'). They CERTAINLY don't formulate a set of logical propositions and then act in accordance with them. Rather, people mostly rationalise (not reason) post hoc about their behaviour. Note the difference between choosing and the cognitive illusion of choice.
Next, religiosity is predominantly a function of your social and family environment - simply, most people are what their parents are. Different social environment, different beliefs. Evidence for this is the study in Israel that found a positive association between religiosity and IQ. Given that your site claims quote...
"The consensus here is clear: more intelligent people tend not to believe in religion. And this observation is given added force when you consider that the above studies span a broad range of time, subjects and methodologies, and yet arrive at the same conclusion."
It seems rather curious that they don't cite ANY evidence from outside the United States.
Not to mention that if...
"religion is a set of logical and factual claims, and those with the most logic and facts at their disposal are rejecting it largely on those grounds"
...then presumably Pakistan would boast roughly the same percentage of atheists as Australia. Unless you can show me some convincing evidence that Pakistanis aren't as smart as Australians? Please do, I can't wait to respond to that one.
So what? You could say in response that IQ is partly genetic, and that it is not the correlation between religiosity and IQ that is spurious, but rather the correlation between parents religion and your religion.
So the causal path would look something like...
Parents IQ -> Parents religiosity & Subjects IQ
Subjects IQ -> Subjects religiosity
True, given that I don't have any experimental evidence (it's pretty clearly unethical to manipulate either IQ or religious beliefs  ) I can't clearly rule that out. However, I think there is a better explanation for the association, which would look like this...
Parents education is negatively associated with parents religiosity
Parents religiosity -> Subjects religiosity
Parents education -> Subjects IQ
This explanation proceeds from two assumptions; 1) Your social environment affects your religious beliefs and (at least in certain social contexts) the social environment of universities/schools/professional workplaces tend on average to be less favourable towards religious beliefs; and 2) IQ is partly a function of socialisation into educational procedures/expectations, including things like test taking, argumentation, etc.
To be clear the reverse claim that you object to (religious people are more intelligent) is just as much garbage, for all the same reasons.
The short response is that ANY causal relationship between IQ and religiosity is unlikely. In any event it's not demonstrated by those studies you cite or the frankly duplicitous arguments that are tacked on to them by the authors of that website. Were one to exist (which is possible), it's even less likely to function via the mechanism that is proposed 
Anyway, maybe you're right. But in the same way that you have no reason to believe in God (because you have no evidence that God exists) you have no reason to accept a causal link between IQ and religiosity (because you have no evidence of that either )
Edit: the reference to Daniel Wegner's book was a slightly wrong title, which I've fixed.
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bixie
Promising
Legendary Hero
my common sense is tingling!
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posted May 01, 2007 08:45 AM |
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the countries you have stated are all LEDC's, or Less Economically Developed Countries. all of them haven't developed enough to start an education system. most of their young population are immergrating to places like britian, north american, france, belguim and holland in order to get more money.
there are many reasons for them not developing, not one of them is religion. iraq has a war on (incase you haven't noticed) India can't develop as a country, as there is too much poverty about, north africa and turkey are making enough money from tourism (you just have to know alot about a certain site and your loaded!). Mexico is making money on unskilled manufacture, so education isn't needed as much.
its got nothing to do with their religion. they are living in the past because they have no choice! if you were running a country and you had a short supply of food, then your main priority wouldn't be "lets remain atheist so we are smarter than the religious countries" it would be "lets get everyone fed, clothed and cleaned, whatever religion they are!"
you also say that Turkey is a highly religious country. not when i went there, they weren't! infact, they were relatively relaxed about it, just no flash photography in the blue mosque, please.
a number of countries you have listed are Muslim religion. from further posts in other threads, you have claimed that Muslims are the ones who said "a womans brain is a third the size of a mans". Ashrah, am i right in thinking you have a special...amnosity towards muslims?
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Love, Laugh, Learn, Live.
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Pomo
Famous Hero
The lone peasant
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posted May 01, 2007 09:08 AM |
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Edited by Pomo at 09:11, 01 May 2007.
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alcibiades
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
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posted May 01, 2007 09:48 AM |
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It's a fact that people from extremely religious countries: (...) and such are less intelligent than people from other countries. They still live in the past or something.
I found this post on the former page extremely offensive and in direct contradiction with the COC so Penalty has been applied, and post should be cleaned.
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What will happen now?
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bixie
Promising
Legendary Hero
my common sense is tingling!
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posted May 01, 2007 05:39 PM |
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Edited by bixie at 22:53, 01 May 2007.
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Bixie...
Those countries kill and live for religion. If they are in dutch/belgium news it's always about religion and war and stupid things.
don't connect the middle east and a crusade against infidels. we are the ones attacking them!
aslo, since when has India, Turkey, mexico and north africa every been in the news recently about killing and living for religion?
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You maybe reply without racism but I don't care for that as i'm only against religion and the sheeps it produces.
that might be because i am british and a slave of political correctness, but if faced with a pair of zealots armed with handgrenades, i would much rather offend neither than set them off.
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And these countries THINK religion, they always keep god in their rules and minds when they even speak. In some of those countries it's even illigal to be gay or to speak as woman.
none of those countries have any rules like that. in fact, no country on this earth has laws like "praise god every day in the morning", with the possible exception of saudi arabia (but that is restricted to mecca) and Vatican city (seat of the catholic church, no less).
out of your list of countries, you missed the main one that does all the thinks you hate... VATICAN CITY!
this comes to my attention that you do haved something against muslims.
wait... are you secretly Nick Griffin, head of the British National Party?
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Love, Laugh, Learn, Live.
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angelito
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
proud father of a princess
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posted May 02, 2007 12:26 AM |
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It's not only about religion. It's about splitting religion from regime.
As long as the regime of a country interferes if someone believes in the current religion of that country or not, and feels right to punish those people, I for myself will call those nations "medieval". As long as religion is something of FREE CHOICE, everything is fine.
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Better judged by 12 than carried by 6.
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homam
Known Hero
Sailor of the open seas
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posted May 02, 2007 12:51 AM |
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It's a fact that people from extremely religious countries: Irak, Turkey, Mexico, North Africa, India and such are less intelligent than people from other countries. They still live in the past or something.
I don't like religions too.I don't believe in all they say too.But i for sure prefer extremely religious people than blind racists.U can't call whole nations less inteligent cause their close relationship with religion.
And yes in this way the things in the world are going i see religion as the only and the last "fortress" of values and ethics.And if i ever be a father i'll grow up my child close to those values.
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I think we aren't in Kansas anymore Toto
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pomo
Famous Hero
The lone peasant
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posted May 02, 2007 03:56 AM |
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Edited by pomo at 08:29, 02 May 2007.
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I just want to clarify something about the current debate concerning the possible relationship between IQ and religiosity: This is not a question of science vs religion, the truth or otherwise of religious doctrines has nothing to do with it. This is a question of science vs quasi-science.
There are a couple of reasons why claims such as 1) 'intelligent people choose to be non-religious' or 2) 'people in very religious countries are less intelligent' are misleading.
I've dealt with (some of) the arguments relating to 1) above, so I'll be brief in summarising them again.
a) A correlation between IQ and religion DOES NOT imply that one causes the other. Non-causal correlations are known as spurious relationships. For those who aren't statisticians or otherwise familiar with the term correlation, it basically just means that one thing seems to co-occur with another.
b) The fact that the both the relative frequency of religious persons AND apparently the direction of the association vary between countries cast fairly severe doubt over the notion that one is a proximate cause of the other. If this were really a basic psychological mechanism we would expect neither.
c) Psychology suggests that persons do not choose very much at all. In fact there is evidence that action and the experience of willing are produced by different parts of the brain. The causal mechanism (logical reasoning) on the page Maretti linked to is therefore highly unlikely.
a further point with regard to Marettis page -
d) Sample selection. Confining yourself to first year psychology students as the sole source of empirical evidence is problematic for ALL psychology; however, it is even more problematic when you attempt to infer that an association that is present in your HIGHLY biased sample (first year psychology students) is present in the population as a whole. Any such claim is clearly unsupported. No-one has yet presented ANY data that shows even an association in any full population.
Moving on to 2)
- I'm not sure where Ashrah got the idea that people in very religious countries are less intelligent on average, or if she just made it up, but if there is ANY source claiming that, I'll be happy to look at it. In any event, even if Ashrah has no evidence, there is sufficient history of such quasi-science contributing to racism to make the points below worthwhile.
The first thing to take note of (and this is relevant to 1) also) is that IQ is not itself the thing that we are interested in. IQ attempts to measure intelligence, but is not itself intelligence. This is not problematic in itself, given that we have no way to observe intelligence directly, we have to rely on the best proxy. While contemporary IQ measures often perform quite well in many ways, there are still very significant problems. Of particular note, many IQ tests are poor measures of intelligence for different cultural groups. This is because IQ is not solely measuring cognitive ability - it is also measuring cultural learning.
This point implies furthermore that IQ is affected by education, whereas basic cognitive ability is probably not.
Because both A) cultural learning and B) education affect our measure of IQ, trying to use IQ as a gauge of intelligence between countries that vary in terms of cultural background and the amount of education is HIGHLY problematic. It may still be feasible to standardise test results for a given national population and use IQ as a measure of intelligence within that group.
The second thing to keep in mind is a statistical illusion known as the ecological fallacy. The ecological fallacy occurs when we find a correlation is present between some properties at one level (say countries) and try to infer from that evidence that the same correlation will be present at another level of measurement (say people).
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It's a fact that people from extremely religious countries: Irak, Turkey, Mexico, North Africa, India and such are less intelligent than people from other countries.
So, assuming that some data were produced (and leaving aside the measurement issues related to IQ) for the above case, the evidence is this: The average level of religiosity within a country is negatively correlated with the average level of IQ within a country. The conclusion in turn is this: the religiosity of an individual is negatively associated with the IQ of an individual. The conclusion, quite clearly, does NOT follow from the premise. In fact, it is entirely possible that the case might exist where within each country, the individual level association between IQ and religiosity is a big, fat ZERO, but the association between the country averages still arises. If anyone is particularly interested I can even construct a hypothetical data set that illustrates the point.
But wait, there's more! Associations based on aggregate statistical data (such as those that would presumably lie behind assertions such as Ashrah's) can be misleading in yet another way. Let's assume (hypothetically) that there is a small correlation between religiosity and IQ for individuals. If you now take the country averages for religiosity and IQ and correlate them, amazingly enough, the correlation probably appears to be much larger! This is because by taking the mean you have compressed the variance in the data, thereby inflating the correlation.
Anyway, I wouldn't bother to put so much effort into this post except for one thing: Quasi-science is no better than fundamentalism (and is in some cases allied with fundamentalism, such as the intelligent design movement), both are malignant, protect established interests, manipulate the truth, and are blind to counter-evidence. I am a scientist, so I HATE such manipulation of facts. The racism, bigotry and collective delusions that can result is sufficient reason for us all to be very suspiscious.
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Ecoris
Promising
Supreme Hero
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posted May 02, 2007 12:01 PM |
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Edited by Ecoris at 13:27, 02 May 2007.
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Let's assume (hypothetically) that there is a small correlation between religiosity and IQ for individuals. If you now take the country averages for religiosity and IQ and correlate them, amazingly enough, the correlation probably appears to be much larger! This is because by taking the mean you have compressed the variance in the data, thereby inflating the correlation.
I don't get this. If you "take the country averages for religiosity and IQ" you have removed all information about correlation between religiosity and IQ because the mean values say nothing about correlation. Comparing the mean values of different countries would thereby be pointless. Am I missing something?
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Pomo
Famous Hero
The lone peasant
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posted May 02, 2007 12:44 PM |
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Ashrah - Thanks for proving my point that secularism and intelligence don't necessarily go together. I'm an atheist, living in Australia, so saying that I have an ulterior motive is rubbish. In any event, as I've said, the truth or otherwise of religious doctrines has no bearing on the question of whether or not religiosity and intelligence are related. Please post some evidence or logical arguments; 'IMHO' is not a valid premise for a logical argument.
Ecoris - What you've mentioned is basically the problem, so I'm not quite sure where we're misunderstanding one another. Say you have observations on IQ and religiosity from individuals clustered within countries. Over ALL of those observations there is a slight correlation between the two variables. When you take the mean for each cluster you essentially remove most of the information present in the data; you haven't removed all the information because you still have a line of data (the means) for each country. Now when you correlate the mean IQ and mean religiosity, it's very likely that the association will appear to be much stronger than what it is. Doing so is obviously bad statistical and scientific practice, because IQ and religiosity are clearly properties of individuals, and hence must be related at that level.
A common example of this occurs in research on educational attainment, where some studies report correlations between the mean socio-economic status of schools and the mean maths/english/science/whatever grades of schools. They tend to find a strong correlation. The correlation for students however, tends to be very weak.
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linkTouched by His Noodly Appendage
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angelito
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
proud father of a princess
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posted May 02, 2007 01:06 PM |
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Religion would not exist without high IQ imho.
The "leader" of all those different kind of religions have to be pretty intelligent, pretty good speakers and need much fantasy. If not, they would doing hard to explain all the questions from those "non believers" (like: Why does god allow death by hunger?) in such a convictive way ("God proves all of us in his own way....) all the "believers" don't start to doubt.
And that's the dangerous part of religion. Those fanatics are very intelligent and know how to convince "their" people. Even that strong, many of those believers are prepared to bomb themselves and kill hundred other human beings "For the will of God (Allah, however u call it/him/her)"
Modern religion doesn't (shouldn't) have any punishment.
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Better judged by 12 than carried by 6.
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Pomo
Famous Hero
The lone peasant
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posted May 02, 2007 01:10 PM |
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Edited by Pomo at 13:16, 02 May 2007.
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Angelito, I agree with you - and I abhor such stupidity also. Manipulation of the truth isn't solely the preserve of religion though, and the secular versions can be just as scary.
edit: I respect science, and secularism is not equal to science. Just because you don't believe in God, doens't make you smarter, or more right. There are plenty of other unsupported beliefs around, and quasi-science of this type can lie plenty.
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linkTouched by His Noodly Appendage
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Ecoris
Promising
Supreme Hero
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posted May 02, 2007 01:23 PM |
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Edited by Ecoris at 13:26, 02 May 2007.
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After looking at a bivariate normal scatter I think I understand the grade / socio-economic status example. Taking mean values "narrows" the scatter along the best fitting line (assuming the correlation at individual level doesn't equal 0), thus increasing correlation, right?
But the religiosity / IQ is somewhat different; in the school example mean grades and socio-economic status could vary from school to school. But assuming the mean IQ is the same in different countries the correlation of mean religiosity and mean IQ of countries would be 0 since the latter variable is constant.
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Pomo
Famous Hero
The lone peasant
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posted May 02, 2007 01:31 PM |
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After looking at a bivariate normal scatter I think I understand the grade / socio-economic status example. Taking mean values "narrows" the scatter along the best fitting line (assuming the correlation at individual level doesn't equal 0), thus increasing correlation, right?
Yes, exactly.
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But the religiosity / IQ is somewhat different; in the school example mean grades and socio-economic status could vary from school to school. But assuming the mean IQ is the same in different countries the correlation of mean religiosity and mean IQ of countries would be 0 since the latter variable is constant.
Yeah, that would be true assuming that IQ was measured properly, but I was responding to the claim that persons in religious countries are less intelligent. So on the (apparently overgenerous given Ashrah's subsequent post) assumption that the claim has some empirical basis, it would seem it was not measured properly.
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linkTouched by His Noodly Appendage
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Ecoris
Promising
Supreme Hero
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posted May 02, 2007 02:28 PM |
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Hmm, right. At least such a claim would likely not receive a great deal of support as it is politically very incorrect.
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TitaniumAlloy
Honorable
Legendary Hero
Professional
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posted May 02, 2007 02:41 PM |
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Quote:
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Correction
You CAN know that everything you said above is a lie as it's just not realistic.
How? By intercepting light waves which YOUR brain processes?
Put it like this: if humans did NOT have ears, would they know sound right now? Does that mean sound doesn't exist in that situation?
if I, for example, could do magic which NO ONE ELSE could see, because I would lift my soul to a different plane of existence, does that mean that it is illogical?
Yes of course it's illogical for YOU. You come back from the future, you tell people about your 'fairy tale', does it matter that they believe you?
Another example would be obvious. For me it's illogical that the Earth is not flat. so what? if it's illogical for me that doesn't make it false.
So who cares magic/shamanism is illogical for you or most other people? That doesn't vanish them
by the way these were only examples, not my actual thoughts (like the Earth flat-thing).
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If anything of that was real we would have seen ANYTHING of that already
Like what? Light waves of God or something?
Senses are not childish, but do NOT limit yourself to them.
You do not see a magnetic field, yet you know it's there by it's effect.
However, what if this magnetic field is actually accelerated by some god (not the creator God)? You don't care, so what? Not everyone shares your opinion.
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Some things like god, teleportation, lifting things with your mind(Telekinesis) and talking to others with your mind (telepathy), are fiction and will NEVER be reality.
Reality = subjective.
If you think reality is the daily life you do = you swallow the Blue pill. You want to believe that you know everything and anything that you can't understand means it doesn't exist. fine, be ignorant.
However not all people take the Blue pill mind you. I would have taken the Red pill for example. Yeah I think I already took it, that's why I believe
Picture this as well:
the average monkey probably cannot understand the magentic field concept. He/she says it is illogical, fiction.
the average human probably cannot understand the religion concept. He/she says it is illogical, fiction. Even if some believe, they cannot comprehend it.
what makes you think that you know what is logical and what not? or what is fiction? reality does equal what you think is logical.
If I think differently (different sense for logic), then of course I would be floating in a different reality, so to speak. For you I would be insane. For me, you would be insane.
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And religion is something that was written down, those things are made up by humans and so are not true.
Really?
Magnetic field concept is made by humans as well, for example.
True.
However there is strong evidence for magnetic field.
We even say that we came up with the concept for it.
We don't attribute it to someone else when it is quite clearly ours.
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Magic is a dream, it's not reality, if you can't see that you should go to the shrink (good spelling?)
Blind people can't see yet the world does exist around them.
Are you serious?
She didn't mean literally SEE. Come on. Play fair now.
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if you were both deaf and blind, would you still believe in light and sound? do they exist? (supposing all humans were deaf and blind)
that is why it's naive to limit yourself to your five senses. There is a reason for that 'limit' word I typed.
I wish you would finally understand that we are not claiming that seeing is the sole proof of existence, or any other five senses.
They help, sure, but haven't claimed that they are vital.
But because you can't see god, and you're so sure that he exists (for some inexplicable reason on your behalf), you seem to reject senses so much by portraying them as almost ignorant and naiive, the very things that define your life.
hmm
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You seem to be the type "I want to see proof of that before I trust it" or similar, hence your addiction to science.
Science doesn't equal seeing.
But having proof before you trust things can be very wise IMO, and not negative at all. The only reason people thing it is is because words like 'faith' and 'trust' have a positive ring to them.
@Pomo:
I don't think the study is trying to say that religion causes low IQ or vice versa.
It's just a sample audience in america which shows a correlation between IQ (scale) and belief (yes/no)
They found that the people who believe in god in their sample tend to have a higher IQ.
This could be for any number of reasons, but they're just showing the facts.
Also IQ isn't defined by education. It's more of a measurement of capacity, that's why you can take the test while you're very young, before schooling etc.
It's qualitative, sure, but it's the best we can do.
The survey is more saying that sure your family can make you become christian but as you grow older, with a higher IQ the people tend to reject the ideas once they can fully realize them.
So sure IQ and religious beliefs are affected by other things, it's just not really relevant to the survey.
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John says to live above hell.
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Pomo
Famous Hero
The lone peasant
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posted May 02, 2007 02:53 PM |
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Edited by Pomo at 15:02, 02 May 2007.
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TA - I disagree, if you read the whole page they do suggest a causal mechanism - that more intelligent people reason better and as a consequence reject religious beliefs.
Also, it is not just 'presenting the facts'; they (deliberately or not I don't know) distort the facts to support their case - neglecting to mention any of the concerns that I raised. With a limited knowledge of psychology, scientific method or statistics it's quite obvious that their claims are very weak. However, not that many people actually do have the relevant understanding, and are consequently likely to be deceived.
Edit: In response to your edit IQ most certainly is affected by education - and you cannot explain it away as more intelligent people obtaining more education either - education actually tends to increase your IQ.
Further, as I've explained, it is possible that there may exist a causal relationship between IQ and religiosity as suggested, but it is totally wrong to think that such a notion is in any way supported by the data which has been presented. If you are keen to base your beliefs on evidence and not speculation, that site is not a good place to look.
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linkTouched by His Noodly Appendage
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Ecoris
Promising
Supreme Hero
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posted May 02, 2007 03:02 PM |
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Edited by Ecoris at 15:03, 02 May 2007.
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"There are three types of lies; lies, damn lies, and statistics."
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angelito
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
proud father of a princess
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posted May 02, 2007 03:29 PM |
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Edited by angelito at 15:30, 02 May 2007.
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IQ most certainly is affected by education - and you cannot explain it away as more intelligent people obtaining more education either - education actually tends to increase your IQ...
I'm not sure about that. As far as I've heard/read, IQ is something pretty "stabil". You can measure an IQ as early as age of 4. And this number won't change that much later on. I still think being a "believer" or not has more to do with "logic" and "open to influence".
Can anyone explain the "logic" behind the whole "horoscope" things? Why do most of the women believe in things like e.g. "a taurus man is always strong and knows what he wants to achieve in his life....", but only a few percent of men do believe in such things? Maybe because it really sounds illogical 3 different planets in space have influence on the behaviour of a new born child.
But of course women are not less intelligent than men, but maybe less critical.
So I think it is not a question of intelligence to be religious or not, but more a question of criticism and questioning.
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Better judged by 12 than carried by 6.
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