Richard Dawkins thinks atheists should be renamed "brights." The problem is that, according to the GSS, 56.8 percent of American atheists have IQs below 100. The percent for agnostics is 38.9. I'm sure that many of my readers won't believe it, so go to this website, type "god" in the column field and "IQ" in the row field, then hit the "Run the Table" button. Then just add up the column percentages.
But those of you who know there is a God, don't start getting cocky: 64.1 % of your comrades are stupid (IQ < 100).
Are gun owners mentally ill?
Some anti-gun people think owning a gun is a sign of some kind of mental abnormality. According to General Social Survey data, gun owners ...
Ok, by the methods you used:
ReplyDeleteDon't Believe: 56.8
No Way To Find Out: 38.9
Some Higher Power: 50.9
Believe Sometimes: 61.5
Believe But Doubts: 55.2
Know God Exists: 64.1
It looks like doubting is something more distributed toward the higher end of the scale in the WORDSUM test. It also looks like the very highest scorers are overrepresented among the first three categories and to a lesser extent, so is the fifth category.
Why is every number besides the agnostics above 50%? Because those with an IQ of 100 would be most likely to get a score that corresponds to 98 in their table.
Now, is "brights" a good term? No, I always thought it was tacky and really didn't have anything to do with the topic to which it was meant to pertain, which was the existence of supernatural beings.
Regardless, intelligence only serves as a weak heuristic for the truth value of an idea. Even if it were the case that all believers (or non-believers for that matter) were morons, it would not make them wrong.
If high IQ is smart or clever, then maybe it would be more accurate to call low IQ either dull or dumb - stupid seems to have connotations of silliness to it; yet nowadays most clever/ smart people are politically correct.
ReplyDeleteHence clever/ smarts are more often more deeply and intractably silly than are dull/ dumb people.
According to this scheme people could be:
dumb and silly = stupid,
dumb and wise = simple,
clever and silly = PC,
clever and wise = sagacious.
athiests
ReplyDeleteatheists
B.B.
Vituperation at its best: "We’re ecstatic to hear that George Tiller is finally in hell."
ReplyDeletehttp://spiritwaterblood.com/2009/06/sunday-morning-coming-down/
It looks like only ~half of IQ-115-plus-ers answer "I know God exists". (vs. ~two-thirds of others).
ReplyDeleteThis conflicts(?) with Inductivist's previous finding that Church attendance among whites and blacks skews upper-class today.
intelligence only serves as a weak heuristic for the truth value of an idea
ReplyDeleteSome centuries ago, the most intelligent people would have laughed at the stories of the simple sailors who claimed to see sea-monsters. It turns out the sailors were right: Whales, sharks, dolphis, giant-squids.
Intelligence often brings with it a self-defeating arrogance.
Actually, 60% of the US population has an IQ less than 100. So, if belief in "God" is randomly distributed among people (null hypothesis), there isn't any pattern here.
ReplyDeleteThen there is the meaning of "God." A deist has a very different conception of "God" (indifferent) than does a theist (interventionist). Most discussions of religious belief ignore this assuming everyone is a theist. Theism itself also include benevolent and malevolent Gods, which further confuses the results.
Some centuries ago, the most intelligent people would have...-Hail
ReplyDeleteWho are you to tell the most intelligent people of centuries ago what they think?