Is there research on whether certain racial groups are predisposed to certain types of religion (or the lack thereof)? Do Caucasoids favor monotheism, Negroids polytheism, Mongoloids atheism, etc.?
If you raised a hundred multi-ethnic kids in a cleanroom on Mars and taught them all in the same classroom about all the world’s major religious-philosophical systems, would certain ones tend to drift towards one type of religion over the other, cultural/historical impacts notwithstanding?
Put another way: Would so-called God genes like VMAT2 affect certain ethnic population groups more than others?
My observation is the genetic link is far more specific - with a few exceptions, people generally tend to latch on to the same religion as their parents.
Are you really suggesting that religion is down to race? Maybe that Arabic people are predisposed to be Muslims and Whites are almost bound to be Christians and Black Africans genetically are bound to have lots of mini gods and Indians being darker than Europeans have sort of mini gods but not quite the same way as Africans do…
I don’t think so just based on history. Christianity has only existed for about 2000 years and is the world’s most popular religion with all major ethnic groups represented. Before Christianity took off in the Roman Empire, most of the people were polytheistic and worshiped the Roman gods.
Plenty of white people have taken up Asian religions like Buddhism and Islam is popular among some blacks. All of this seems to be based on history and political climate much more than racial or ethnic groups.
Indeed. I wouldn’t be surprised if such a study found absolutely no genetic correlation between race and religion. I just wonder if anyone’s ever looked into it.
The strongest predictor of which religion you are is mommy and daddy.
Higher IQs tend to be more skeptical, less devout and in modern times, at least, less inclined to get too nutty about the magical manifestations.
Historical culture is the biggest driver of which religion a whole geographic group belongs to.
Understood. I am not disputing any of that, just wondering if race has any genetic impact on this. (Meaning the connection between race and culture has to be first isolated.)
Probably no actual genetic component. Everyone was polytheistic originally. The Jews and the Zoroastrians came up with monotheism long after everyone was polytheistic. The idea did not impress many until Christianity came along. 2100 years is far too short a time for it to have any affect on genetics, and the concept basically followed Christianity around the world.
I doubt whether there is any direct connection between religious skepticism and IQ. This is just atheists flattering themselves. In fact, there are plenty of stupid atheists and smart believers.
I would not be surprised if it were the case that educational level, particularly level of education in the sciences, correlates with religious skepticism these days (although it would not have done a century or two ago), and, since one needs a relatively high IQ to handle high level education (and perhaps particularly scientific and technical education, since IQ mainly measures that sort of intelligence), there might be a secondary correlation between IQ and religious skepticism because of this. It does not follow, however, that being smart causes (or tends to cause) atheism, or that atheism is a sign of smartness.
I would say that it is very unlikely that anybody has, because scientists do not generally waste their time and resources investigating highly implausible hypotheses. If they did not prioritize according to plausibility, they would never get round to investigating the stuff that is actually worth investigating. There are (literally) an infinity of implausible hypotheses one could dream up about just about anything.
Very interesting question, but I do think an experiment would be difficult to perform. One thing that seems obvious is to look at people who were adopted as babies and raised in their adoptive parents’ faith and not told about their ancestry and see if there was a trend for those people, as adults, to convert to the religion of their immediate ancestors. For example, whether or not a child of devout Irish Catholics adopted into a Scandinavian Lutheran family would be more likely to convert to Catholicism as an adult than the biological child of that Lutheran family. One obvious problem with that is that if the adopted child can recognize that they come from a specific ethnic or racial group, they may desire further contact with others of that ethnicity or race and may, in that way, come under the influence of followers of their ancestral religion.
I have seen a very interesting study that looked at the spectrum of Protestants, from Fundamentalists up through Episcopalians (as I recall).
Income and professional achievement went from low to high along that spectrum; both are a crude proxy for IQ.
I’ll see if I can dig where I saw this if I have a chance…it’s certainly been my personal observation.
One sees the snake handlers/healers at one end of the spectrum, and the high formal superficial “believers” for whom the Church is a nice place to get married and buried at the other…
From Wikipedia “Various studies further suggest that intuitive thinking and inductive reasoning styles tend to increase religious beliefs, but also imply more conservative beliefs in general. Less religious people prefer analytical and deductive reasoning. IQ only measures mathematical and analytical capabilities, so it usually correlates with less religiosity.” (Emphasis mine to highlight cite to njtt).
The wikipedia cites this article to support this claim : here
As I explained, in my post, there are indeed reasons why lack of religiosity might correlate with high IQ and the type of reasoning style that fits someone to pursue a scientific education. However, correlation does not imply causation, and I am pretty confident that the studies you allude to show nothing but correlation. I have explained how such a correlation might come about without a direct causal link. However, the phrase you use, “tend to increase,” is making that unwarranted causal claim.
Correlations there may be, but being smart (even analytically smart) does not turn people into atheists, and being an atheist is not evidence that someone is (analytically) smart.
You asked for a cite to show connection between religious skepticism and IQ. Here are your words :
[QUOTE=njtt;]
Cite?
I doubt whether there is any direct connection between religious skepticism and IQ.
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I gave you a cite which showed a connection. And you are right the cite shows a correlation not a causation. Are you saying that you wanted a cite for causational relationship ? Did I misunderstand your question ?
[QUOTE=njtt;]
being an atheist is not evidence that someone is (analytically) smart"
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