Religious people are less intelligent than atheists

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Message 1403418 - Posted: 15 Aug 2013, 12:22:20 UTC

they just seem to be in the minority of higher IQ people


7 Billion Plus in Da World. Of The 7 Billion, there are More High IQ Believers, than High IQ Non-Believers.

Bound FO "IQ" IQ. There There.

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Message 1403429 - Posted: 15 Aug 2013, 13:31:32 UTC

Having gone back to the original link, I've looked at the results from some of the studies that they looked at, to see if I could find out why.

It would seem, and probably logical once you are told, that in religious households that the children are taught from a very young age to accept, usually without question, and believe what they are told. They therefore tend to grow up not being very inquisitive or skeptical. Apparently this puts them up to 7 IQ points lower by the time they are 16.

On average religious families have more children, and therefore there might not be funds for further education. But one advantage they have is that they are usually organised and disciplined and therefore do the homework and coursework on time.

Their kids go to religious schools, and if the family is rich enough, in the US, go to small religious run universities. If funds are limited these funds usually gets spent on the boys. There is a tendency to encourage the girls to marry young, have kids and support the husband. The girls that do go to university seem to be directed towards teaching and medicine (nursing).

The small church run universities, with a few exceptions (Bingham Young etc), do not have high reputations. They also have a very limited prospectus, which limits their chances of going on to post grad courses and in their choices of employment.

If these children from religious backgrounds go to main stream universities, they are entering an alien world. They will meet people from different religious or non-religious backgrounds. These aliens don't necessarily accept religion and will also argue the point. A lot of these non-religious people do tend to explore all sorts of things now they are away from the parents, things the religious person will usually not do. The religious students might even have to share a room with someone of the same sex but otherwise 100% different to them.

Quite a few of them do not do well in these circumstances. Some drop out because it is not the place for them, but if they try to join in with the "party people" they tend to go overboard and we all know where excesses lead to. About 50% of those that soldier on will or will start to reject their religious beliefs.

So to conclude, at birth children from religious backgrounds are almost certainly as likely to end up as intelligent as the rest of society. But their environment puts them at a disadvantage right from the beginning. If they survive this hurdle then there is a push to send them to wrong universities studying the wrong courses. And if they go to the main stream universities there is a good chance they might not complete the journey.

Also, unsurprisingly, if they do go to main stream universities, at least 75% of the teaching staff think the Bible is a story book, so no help there.
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Message 1403434 - Posted: 15 Aug 2013, 13:48:50 UTC - in response to Message 1403418.  
Last modified: 15 Aug 2013, 13:51:33 UTC

they just seem to be in the minority of higher IQ people


7 Billion Plus in Da World. Of The 7 Billion, there are More High IQ Believers, than High IQ Non-Believers.


Care to provide proof for your claim? The data doesn't support your assertion.
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Message 1403588 - Posted: 15 Aug 2013, 19:53:36 UTC - in response to Message 1403315.  
Last modified: 15 Aug 2013, 19:54:06 UTC

Religious people are less intelligent than atheists


....are they? I've no idea....but I doubt it though - I doubt it very much.



+1!
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Message 1403600 - Posted: 15 Aug 2013, 20:09:14 UTC - in response to Message 1403588.  

Religious people are less intelligent than atheists


....are they? I've no idea....but I doubt it though - I doubt it very much.



+1!

Why do you have doubts?
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Message 1403617 - Posted: 15 Aug 2013, 20:19:32 UTC - in response to Message 1403600.  

Religious people are less intelligent than atheists


....are they? I've no idea....but I doubt it though - I doubt it very much.



+1!

Why do you have doubts?


Because every believer that has responded in this thread does not want to believe the findings are true. If I were a believer, I'd probably not want to admit that Atheists are likely and on average smarter than me. It's a natural response to deny data that doesn't fit your world view - especially for those that don't let the data bring you to a conclusion.
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Message 1403622 - Posted: 15 Aug 2013, 20:27:14 UTC - in response to Message 1403617.  

Religious people are less intelligent than atheists


....are they? I've no idea....but I doubt it though - I doubt it very much.



+1!

Why do you have doubts?


Because every believer that has responded in this thread does not want to believe the findings are true. If I were a believer, I'd probably not want to admit that Atheists are likely and on average smarter than me. It's a natural response to deny data that doesn't fit your world view - especially for those that don't let the data bring you to a conclusion.



You have to believe in something. Even for your own comfort. All the scientific stuff left aside. There's much more to it and we can't know and understand everything. The point is that studies can't prove a thing. Different opinions are needed and there are quite a few of them I assure you and even then, we can't grasp the whole picture. But now I'm wandering off:))
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Message 1403633 - Posted: 15 Aug 2013, 20:43:26 UTC - in response to Message 1403622.  
Last modified: 15 Aug 2013, 20:48:22 UTC

Religious people are less intelligent than atheists


....are they? I've no idea....but I doubt it though - I doubt it very much.



+1!

Why do you have doubts?


Because every believer that has responded in this thread does not want to believe the findings are true. If I were a believer, I'd probably not want to admit that Atheists are likely and on average smarter than me. It's a natural response to deny data that doesn't fit your world view - especially for those that don't let the data bring you to a conclusion.



You have to believe in something. Even for your own comfort. All the scientific stuff left aside. There's much more to it and we can't know and understand everything. The point is that studies can't prove a thing. Different opinions are needed and there are quite a few of them I assure you and even then, we can't grasp the whole picture. But now I'm wandering off:))


That proves the findings precisely! Most people with higher intelligence don't need to believe in something for comfort. Sure, there's so much to the universe, but the adventure is in finding the answers, not making them up with fictitious answers involving the supernatural. I proactively like to challenge people who think they need to believe in the supernatural to find the confidence within themselves, as I believe everyone can.

Different opinions are very important, and I love reading different opinions, but the best ones are those founded in evidence-based reason and data. How else are we suppose to arrive at the same conclusions if we don't examine the data and find an agreement?
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Message 1403639 - Posted: 15 Aug 2013, 20:52:07 UTC - in response to Message 1403622.  

If you read the original link I gave, you will see it's sub-headline reads

Study found 'a reliable negative relation between intelligence and religiosity' in 53 out of 63 studies


So you have to assume the authors of this report took your or very similar views into account because there were 10 studies that either found no difference or the opposite. But concluded after combining and reading the evidence that in today's society "religious people are less intelligent than atheists" by the time they reach their early twenties.

Now if you have some fresh evidence that at least questions the reports findings then I would be glad to read it, but as this is a science thread I'm afraid beliefs and doubts don't carry much weight.
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Message 1403766 - Posted: 16 Aug 2013, 5:03:10 UTC

Slightly off topic, but mentioned earlier, was IQ scores and what is the highest.

From a quick look at the problem it would appear that my first assumption was correct that probably the highest possible is 170. But as you may, or may not know, you cannot say an IQ of 140 is twice as intelligent as an IQ of 70.

To overcome this someone, and I've not yet found out who, but I suspect it is a psychologist, wrote a formula to enable the scale to be converted so that a score of 200 is twice as intelligent as the average of 100.

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Message 1403802 - Posted: 16 Aug 2013, 7:35:34 UTC - in response to Message 1403600.  
Last modified: 16 Aug 2013, 7:42:01 UTC

Religious people are less intelligent than atheists


....are they? I've no idea....but I doubt it though - I doubt it very much.



+1!

Why do you have doubts?

Because this studies results would have been evident to me over the many years
that I have had technical staff under my control. As it currently stands no
evidence ever presented itself to me. I would though side with this study
where members of my staff have belonged to "extreme religious groups" i.e.
none of the mainstream religions. For here I have often found my self wondering
about their intelligence levels with respect to their religious beliefs and
doctoring's...especially so where they give up a certain amount of their earnings
to the cause....or in my mind into some religious freak leaders back pocket.

Evidence to the contrary over the findings of this report leads me to believe
this report is unsound, I shall be lead by my own evidence/experiences here.
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Message 1403815 - Posted: 16 Aug 2013, 8:01:29 UTC - in response to Message 1403633.  

Religious people are less intelligent than atheists


....are they? I've no idea....but I doubt it though - I doubt it very much.



+1!

Why do you have doubts?


Because every believer that has responded in this thread does not want to believe the findings are true. If I were a believer, I'd probably not want to admit that Atheists are likely and on average smarter than me. It's a natural response to deny data that doesn't fit your world view - especially for those that don't let the data bring you to a conclusion.



You have to believe in something. Even for your own comfort. All the scientific stuff left aside. There's much more to it and we can't know and understand everything. The point is that studies can't prove a thing. Different opinions are needed and there are quite a few of them I assure you and even then, we can't grasp the whole picture. But now I'm wandering off:))


That proves the findings precisely! Most people with higher intelligence don't need to believe in something for comfort. Sure, there's so much to the universe, but the adventure is in finding the answers, not making them up with fictitious answers involving the supernatural. I proactively like to challenge people who think they need to believe in the supernatural to find the confidence within themselves, as I believe everyone can.

Different opinions are very important, and I love reading different opinions, but the best ones are those founded in evidence-based reason and data. How else are we suppose to arrive at the same conclusions if we don't examine the data and find an agreement?


The thing with humanities is, there is no such thing as data to examine. We can't write down a formula that explains belief, faith or fate for that matter...

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Message 1403826 - Posted: 16 Aug 2013, 9:03:45 UTC - in response to Message 1403802.  

What you are saying about your staff can still be in line with the study. Nobody is suggesting that people from a religious background cannot be intelligent. In fact the study was on people with an IQ over 135, which is the top 2% of the population, the 98 percentile people if you prefer it that way.

What the study is saying is that the bell curve of IQ for the different groups is not the same, and that the curve for those from a religious background is lower than the curve for those who are atheists.

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Message 1403829 - Posted: 16 Aug 2013, 9:21:49 UTC - in response to Message 1403815.  

The thing with humanities is, there is no such thing as data to examine


Now I am told that is not necessarily true. My friend says look up
UK - JISC
Netherlands - SURF
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
Australia - DEST
Denmark’s Electronic Research Library
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Message 1403841 - Posted: 16 Aug 2013, 10:16:39 UTC

The SURF foundation in the Netherlands... Don't they work on ICT innovations?
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Message 1403847 - Posted: 16 Aug 2013, 10:40:34 UTC - in response to Message 1403841.  

The SURF foundation in the Netherlands... Don't they work on ICT innovations?

I wouldn't know without asking my friend, she studies and teaches medieval history.
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Message 1403878 - Posted: 16 Aug 2013, 12:34:02 UTC - in response to Message 1403802.  

I know this is my 2nd reply to your post but maybe you have an answer for this anomaly.

The Irish republic, population 4.6 million, would not be regarded as much different to the United Kingdom, population 64 million. It has only been independent from the UK since 1922.
The Irish republic has been described by at least one Pope as the most Catholic country.
Nobel laureates would in most case be regarded as intelligent.

So how come Eire only has 7 Nobel laureates, of which two are actually from Northern Ireland, and one lived most of his life in London. Only one is a scientist, 4 are for literature and 2 for the peace prize.

The UK has 119, of which over 80 are for science or medicine.


Part of it might be explained by Irish pupils taught over twice as much religion as OECD average and
spend only 12 per cent of their time learning maths. The average among developed countries is 18 per cent
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Message 1403886 - Posted: 16 Aug 2013, 13:01:24 UTC - in response to Message 1403815.  

Religious people are less intelligent than atheists


....are they? I've no idea....but I doubt it though - I doubt it very much.



+1!

Why do you have doubts?


Because every believer that has responded in this thread does not want to believe the findings are true. If I were a believer, I'd probably not want to admit that Atheists are likely and on average smarter than me. It's a natural response to deny data that doesn't fit your world view - especially for those that don't let the data bring you to a conclusion.



You have to believe in something. Even for your own comfort. All the scientific stuff left aside. There's much more to it and we can't know and understand everything. The point is that studies can't prove a thing. Different opinions are needed and there are quite a few of them I assure you and even then, we can't grasp the whole picture. But now I'm wandering off:))


That proves the findings precisely! Most people with higher intelligence don't need to believe in something for comfort. Sure, there's so much to the universe, but the adventure is in finding the answers, not making them up with fictitious answers involving the supernatural. I proactively like to challenge people who think they need to believe in the supernatural to find the confidence within themselves, as I believe everyone can.

Different opinions are very important, and I love reading different opinions, but the best ones are those founded in evidence-based reason and data. How else are we suppose to arrive at the same conclusions if we don't examine the data and find an agreement?


The thing with humanities is, there is no such thing as data to examine. We can't write down a formula that explains belief, faith or fate for that matter...


If it can be observed, it has data that can be examined. We already have strong hypotheses as to why people have belief in the supernatural, fate while utilizing faith.

Just because people possess those traits, doesn't mean it was backed by empirical reasoning. Rather, as we progress as a society, discovering reality and the Universe around us, we see less of a reason for those traits, which is exactly what this study suggests; those with a higher level of understanding feel those traits are less useful.
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Message 1404053 - Posted: 16 Aug 2013, 22:55:12 UTC - in response to Message 1403993.  

The Irish republic, population 4.6 million, United Kingdom, population 64 million

Eire only has 7 Nobel laureates, the UK has 119.

Irish = 1 Nobel per 657,000 population.

UK = 1 Nobel per 538,000 population.

I would say that was fairly close.


Except that two are from NI and one lived in London all his life. So maybe 4.6M / 4.5 = 1 per million.

And if you leave out the lit and peace ones?
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Message 1404204 - Posted: 17 Aug 2013, 7:13:42 UTC - in response to Message 1403993.  

The Irish republic, population 4.6 million, United Kingdom, population 64 million

Eire only has 7 Nobel laureates, the UK has 119.

Irish = 1 Nobel per 657,000 population.

UK = 1 Nobel per 538,000 population.

I would say that was fairly close.


Of course it's close, close enough to see that - that report was a load of bunkum.

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belong to a formal team so "fly their own kites" - as the saying goes.
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