Saturday, September 05, 2020

2016-18 GSS data: Atheism and agnosticism are dysgenic

 Using 2018 General Social Survey (GSS) data, I looked at the relationship between confidence in the existence of God and IQ as measured by a vocabulary quiz:

The IQ average for atheists is over 6 points higher than the mean for those who know God exists.  Agnostics, in fact, have the highest average with 103.9. 

Now let's look at fertility by confidence in God for those who are old enough to have completed their family size but are not so old they're really from another generation. Let's choose 45 to 64:

We see that atheists average 1.2 children, while the mean for those who know God exists is 2.1. So believers have families that are 1.8 times bigger than those of atheists.  The believer/agnostic difference is similar.  

We know that general intelligence is highly heritable, so smart people tend to have smart kids. Atheists and agnostics have fewer kids, so, at least under current conditions, skepticism is dysgenic. 

































3 comments:

  1. Anonymous4:53 AM

    This doesn't show a causal link between belief and fertility. All this shows is that dumb people have more kids than smart people, and are also more likely to believe in God. For those smart people to start believing in God too (like you seem to want) they'd have to drop 5-10 IQ points, and then there'd be even more dumb people reproducing, which would be even more dysgenic.

    ReplyDelete
  2. The solution is a religion for the intelligent that encourages them to have more children. And I have found such a religion in the Old Testament. But there are so few intelligent people left that I am not sure if it is worth the effort.

    ReplyDelete

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 ...