splort
Thanks, Tris. My keyboard looks good drowning in Coke…
Yer pal,
Satan
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Only if you consider Pantheism a religion. Excluding, of course, a “religious” devotion to science.
Pantheism is a religion. Izzy’s post was brilliant. Tris went above my head.
Actually, Libertarian… that comment came from me, not my daughter nevermore. She recently began posting here, and I haven’t gotten used to clearing the cookies or checking the username prior to posting. Sorry for any confusion.
Anyway, my point was Einstein certainly did not believe in a traditional God – he simply equated the orderly nature of the universe with God. He didn’t ascribe to a God that was involved in human affairs to any degree.
Forgive me for asking this, but is it my intelligence that’s being challenged, or my faith?
And which should I be more offended by?
Well, I’m honored that a thread this long has grown out of one of my posts. I have a few things to say about the various responses, which I’ll just toss in haphazardly.
First, would everyone please stop posting anecdotal examples of famous geniuses who believed/ didn’t believe in God? The whole reason I made that post in the first place was to rebut two people who were doing exactly that! The point of the studies I posted was to give genuine, quantifiable evidence of the correlation between intelligence and religious belief, not just anecdotal examples which prove nothing. Let’s all agree right here that there are millions of intelligent theists and atheists. What we’re looking for is a general trend, not absolutes.
Second, I think I should clarify what I have inferred from these studies. Some recent poll by Skeptic magazine asked people why they did/didn’t believe in God. The most common reason for belief was the apparent good structure and design of the universe, a la Paley. This is by no means a new argument. Even the Bible argues that “the heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork” (Ps. 19:1).
So, if this argument were valid, we would expect certain corrolaries. Among them:
Those who study the heavens (i.e., the universe) the most would have greater exposure to the evidence of God’s handiwork, and would therefore be more likely to believe.
As scientific knowledge progresses, scientists would become more religious, since greater evidence of God’s design are available now than hundreds of years ago.
But, the studies I posted showed the exact opposite correlations. How come? Well, we can come up with lots of explanations. We can say that scientists are predisposed to a naturalistic worldview. Or we can say that intelligent religious people are more likely to become theologians and priests than scientists. Or we can argue that intelligent people like to rebel against anything, including God. But, it seems to me that there is a much simpler explanation, which we should then favor due to Occam’s razor: God either doesn’t exist, or doesn’t reveal his existence through his creation.
To take an analogy, let’s imagine that there exists a certain painting. This painting may be a Rembrandt, or it may be a very good fake. Lay people who look at it are overwhelmingly of the opinion that it is a Rembrandt. Those with some study in art, however, are slightly less inclined to believe so. Experts in art history are even less likely to consider it real. The top experts, the creme de la creme, the Rembrandt specialists, are overwhelming in their belief that it is a fake.
Now, we can make up all sorts of arguments about how experts in art history may have some sort of bias, or how they may just be trying to buck the establishment beliefs, but the most likely explanation is that the painting is indeed a fake, no matter how many people want to believe it to be real.
Does any of this prove the non-existence of God? Of course not. Outside of mathematics, proof doesn’t really exist anyway. But it is a curious (and frustrating) fact that theists have to deal with: Those who have the greatest exposure to God’s handiwork, are the most likely to believe that it is a fake.
Just want to point out that a significant number of major contributions to mathematics over the last 2 centuries have come from the Middle East, from folks who were also Islamist. So, neither Christian not atheist nor stupid.
That’s the single most coherent reply to the OP in this whole thread.
…or He cannot be revealed by the methods of science.
Your experts are able to match the paintings with their author more accurately, because they know more than everyone else about both the art of painting and Rembrandt. Scientists may know more than the rest of us about the Creation, but it’s not a given they know God better than a simple peasant in Mongolia.
E d’Mann
No, E d’Mann, I haven’t. I’ve been on this board for over a year and I’ve never heard of Pascal’s wager :rolleyes:.
Jessi the Mighty
Are you trying to imply that people with high intelligence in one area will probably have less in another? Even if there are different types of intelligence, as long as they are independent, then high intelligence in one area implies a high overall intelligence.
Raptormeister
That was just one comment in a larger argument. It was not meant, on its own, to establish that the intelligent tend to be non-religious.
It wasn’t liberalism, it was **religious ** liberalism.
Putting words into other people’s mouths is hardly a valid counter-argument.
Are you trying to imply that they assumed that all religious people believe in an afterlife? I never saw any such claim.
Libertarian
Well now, if you think that reason is worthless, it’s going to be rather difficult to argue against those “proofs”, isn’t?
pldennison
And just how is this obvious?
Sorry, I’m unable to “put aside” his theological writing. Anyone who thinks that “The Case for Christianity” is anything but a primer on logical fallacies is not “brilliant”.
Sweet_Lotus
Because unsupported assumptions are irrational. If someone believes that beings from Pluto are constantly invading his house and rearranging his furniture, this belief may not contradict science, but it does imply that he is irrational.
QuickSilver
That’s a rather silly thing to say. You obviously believe that people that believe that they should judge others on matters of personal faith are not intelligent. Thus, you are judging them on their personal beliefs. Which means that either you don’t really believe what you said, or else you consider yourself to be unintelligent (in which case why should I trust your judgement on whether or not to judge on matters of personal faith?)
Have you seen anyone suggesting otherwise?
Seeing as how the former applies to religious people more than atheists, does not that suggest that the latter is untrue?
Libertarian
Are you implying that the intelligent have less love?
Maeglin
I didn’t read Cliff Notes, I read a philosophy book. And I did try to read a translation of Aquinas, but gave up after I realized that the phrase “to will” was being used as a noun. Perhaps this was a poor translation, but I see no reason to spend time searching for a better translation of something which all of the available evidence shows is not worth translating, and I certainly see no reason to learn another language to read such.
[quote]
A comment such as this:
Well, I will freely admit that I do not know the entirety of their works. I suppose that is ignorance. But “basest ignorance”? How so? Are you seriously trying to tell me that it is morally wrong to not seek information on which all evidence indicates is not worth knowing?
And what possible reason would I have to read the works of these people, when what has been presented as their finest works is so obviously flawed?
Well, evidence has been presented that it does, and you have presented no evidence to counter it.
Ptahlis
You point is what exactly? We should not discuss anything that may offend anyone? As long as some members of a group have some trait, it is ridiculous to ask whether others of that group might lack that trait? And I don’t see how exceptions are being made for these people. The statement “Religious people tend to not be as intelligent as others” is in no way equivalent to the statement “All religious people are unintelligent”. The latter discusses individuals, and thus may require exceptions for some individuals. The former, however, does not discuss individuals, and therefore no exceptions for individuals need be made.
Spider Woman
How is that a flaw in the study? The studies were designed to see if a correlation existed, and they found that one did. What we make of those results is not something the studies were concerned with.
Yes, we all know how a debate ends once one side is shown to be false :rolleyes:.
Libertarian
Actually, I pressed the back button on my browser, and that somehow caused my post to be reposted.
Is that supposed to be a counterargument?
What’s your point?
Triskadecamus
Hmm, I’m not sure why Maeglin cited you as an “exception” to the pattern of religious people being less intelligent. Or are you an atheist?
TheRyan
Not if low intelligence in another area offsets the influence of higher intelligence in the first area.
He said reason is not effective “to prove the existence or nonexistence of an Absolute, like God.” That doesn’t imply reason is worthless.
Why can’t you put that aside? You said that lower intelligence in one area doesn’t imply lower overall intelligence.
You made the unsupported assumption that his assumptions are unsupported.
Exactly: “their personal beliefs”, and not “their personal faith.”
No, he is implying that the two are independent.
Is that supposed to be a counterargument?
I guess you pretty much made his point with this post.
I won’t quote you’re comment, because I’m ashamed. But I thought you said you were on this board for over a year?
Disclaimer: All quotes belong to their respective authors.
Really just because of the premise if the whole thing. There are a couple of issues, apart from me just wanting to be a smartarse. First, this comment, from someone quoted by someone else, I think:
This seemed to me to be somewhat analogous to the Christian who gets warm fuzzies when someone ‘famous’ is revealed as a Christian. We all feel good when we get some sort of affirmation that what we strongly believe to be true is also prevalent among others.
The problem in this case, is it was just a list of studies done, with summaries of results. These summaries were biased in a big way. I just thought I’d slant them a different way for fun. I don’t know the studies, and I sure as hell don’t intend to pursue them to see what they really said; but if the summaries are accurate, there are surefire methodological flaws there (eg. ridiculously small sample sizes). In other cases, the results are just too vague to draw any conclusions - I mean, why is there an assumption made that “religiously liberal” is less religious than religiously conservative?
The point is this: the surveys are meaningless as presented in the list. They may make the unreligious feel better (in the same way as Christians feel better when presented with other ‘evidence’), but they sure as hell don’t prove anything, and I have extreme doubts that you could even draw tentative conclusions from them.
This says absolutely nothing about whether intelligence is a reliable predictor of religiosity, of course. But perhaps it shows that credulity is universal, and linked to more base human needs than intelligence? 
I work in an institution that ranks among the top 5 in this country in the earth sciences. We’ve got NAS members as well as a recipient of the MacArthur Foundation Genius Award; in general, the folks who work here (as faculty and/or research staff, plus the grad students) are pretty bright. According to the OP, we should (nearly) all be atheists, but that isn’t so. In fact, a number of the more prominent folks sing in one of the local church choirs, with the MacArthur Foundation Genius accompanying on the organ. My conversations with people here have revealed a small group that are clearly atheistic and willing to argue with you about the “irrationality” of religious belief; a roughly equal population makes a point of attending religious services regularly. Most are indifferent to religion or are holiday church-goers at best. Frankly, this sort of distribution of belief/non-belief/indifference doesn’t strike me as being much different from the corporate office in which I used to work (where I can assure you there were a number of not-so-bright bulbs who, by the analogy the OP makes, should have been fervent worshippers).
Are we representative of other institutions in terms of religious belief? Don’t know that, but then the best way to find out would be to have a survey of a much larger population of scientists. The links that Satan provided are interesting, but you’ll note that many of the studies had quite a small sample population. I’d also like to know how the definitions of “intelligent” and “religious” differ from study to study, and how those studies lumped people who were not at the extreme ends of the belief/non-belief spectrum. (BTW, anyone else catch that speculation in the 1960 Warren and Heist study that leadership qualities, etc. could counteract lower intelligence in the National Merit Scholarship competition? :rolleyes: )
I don’t think that basing the OP’s premise on the results of the NAS survey really holds much water, either, because no one asked WHY the scientists responded the way they did. So what if you can make the argument (from those survey results) that high intelligence = lack of religious belief. Having had the opportunity to meet several current members of the NAS as well as some who aspire to be (that’s right, some folks politic their butts off in hopes of being elected to the NAS by the existing members), I can say that a large proportion of these intelligent folks are also ambitious, self-centered jerks. Would it be appropriate to say then that there’s a strong correlation between ambitious, self-centered jerks and atheists? Of course not.
Stephen Jay Gould, famous biologist and NAS member, has tried to bridge the gap between the worlds of science and faith. I happen to think that the effort is unnecessary. The process of science and the world of faith rely on completely different methods of arriving at their respective “truths,” and the method for one simply doesn’t apply to the other. That’s why, IMHO, attempts to use science to find God or use the Bible to understand the physical world are equal wastes of time. Since I’ve come to this board, I’ve seen lots of threads in GD that try to accomplish both those things… you folks are just knocking your heads against the wall for nothing. How intelligent a move is that? 
Actually, there are cases of savants, who show high intelligence in one area, and extremely low (measured) overall intelligence, so this is not always true.
This actually is a niggling point, but my point in making it is to counter The Ryan, who seems to be picking and choosing random points to debate, but not really making a clear, concise statement about anything.
So The Ryan:
Do you believe that atheists are, as a rule, more intelligent than people exhibiting religiosity? What are your reasons for believing or not believing this?
You’re right about the correlation showing what the people manipulating the statistics wanted it to show. The problem with correlations is that people often misinterpret or misrepresent them as being proof: If A, then B type of thing, rather than simply being correlations. Sometimes there is a reason for the statistics to correlate (but not always the reason the researcher posits) and sometimes there isn’t.
My mother was an excellent debater, and could hold her own with attorneys, teachers, and people from all walks of life. She could win a point, and then switch sides and win again.
You seem to be trying to win, point by point, here, although I’m not altogether sure of your direction. But just because you can argue well doesn’t make you right.
Well RaptorMeister, I don’t quite understand your post. You say that you trashed the surveys because they were “biased in a big way,” but you failed to provide a single valid criticism. Furthermore, you even stated that you are unwilling to pursue them, but you’re sure that they have methodological flaws. It seems to me that you’re just rejecting the studies out of hand because you don’t like what they say.
Also, if you had read my arguments with more careful attention to detail, you’d have noticed that it is quite a strawman to compare my position to those of Christians who get “warm fuzzies” whenever they learn that a certain famous person is a Christian. I’m not just pointing out: “Look! All of these famous, brilliant people are atheists. How wonderful.” Rather, I’m saying that the fact that people who have studied the universe the most are the least likely to believe in God, which is a problem for theism.
Let’s take another analogy. Many Christians believe that the Bible is inerrant, that is, that it contains no errors of logic, science, contradictions, failed prophecies, untruths, etc. However, a 1987 survey of 10,000 clergy members found that:
95% of Episcopalians,
87% of Methodists,
82% of Presbyterians,
77% of American Lutherans, and
67% of American Baptists
do not believe the Bible to be inerrant. (Source: http://www.religioustolerance.org/inerrant.htm#clergy) These numbers are consistently higher than the number of general churchgoers who believe that the bible is errant. This presents a problem for inerrantists: Why is it that those who have studied the Bible the most are less likely to consider it inerrant? Although there are many possible answers (liberal seminary schools, etc.) the most obvious one is that the Bible is indeed errant.
Now, at this point one can form an objection to this analogy. Clergy specialize in the study of the Bible; scientists do not specialize in the study of God. However, they do study “his handiwork” in great depth! As such, the analogy stands.
Others have pointed out that the evidence for God’s existence may not be of a scientific or even logical variety. That is a legitimate point. But, by admitting such, you are rejecting both the Bible’s argument for God’s existence, and the reason given by the plurality of Americans for their belief.
So, maybe the high rates of non-beliefs among the most intelligent, educated, and scientifically minded among us aren’t evidence for God’s nonexistence. But they are evidence for the failure of one of the most famous and well-known arguments ever assembled for his existence. This certainly does not bode well for theism.
Actually I think a easy explanation would be peer pressure. Scientists are no smarter or dumber than anyone else. You see the problem with smarter or dumber people is a problem of mass, if 2 brains are the same size then logically while each might be better and worse in some areas overall they are equal in smartness.
For example people in the SDMB arent actually smarter, they are just better debaters and happen to think more. (or less for most people in SDMB when it comes to atheism) which I consider the only failing point in this board besides people who point out spelling errors instead of arguing.
I went on a trip with the top 3% of intelligent people in the state and I was suprised by the averageness of the people. Sure they came to conclusions quicker than average but not much else was diffrent.
Not at all am I saying that there should be no discussion. I just said I really don’t care for the whole idea of it. I wouldn’t care for the whole idea of a thread about how studies show blacks are less intelligent than whites either, but I wouldn’t try and stifle the discussion. I am merely revealing my personal distaste with a topic I find to be on dubiously shaky ground.
Okay, since I have to, I’ll point out what I find to be obvious flaws, or at least huge gaps in the information we were given. Firstly, most anyone who has had to take any psychology courses should be aware that intelligence is a hotly disputed term in the world of psychology. There is no universal agreement between the leaders in the field about what intelligence is, let alone whether IQ tests measure it. One “definition” that is used is that “Intelligence is what IQ tests measure.” I remember the quote, and don’t have an immediate cite for it, but will do my best to find it if I need to. There can hardly be a more classic example of circular logic, but there you go. We have no idea exactly what definition of intelligence was used in any of these studies, nor what methods were used to measure it. In some cases it’s SAT scores, in others it’s academic achievement. Most are completely undisclosed on that page.
To mirror the problems with intelligence, we have ill-defined phrases that are to used to refer to religious belief. “Religiously conservative, reality of god, believers, average religiosity, percentage of students who believe in a divine god, students who believe in a Spirit or Divine God, strength of religious values,” and other ill-defined phrases are invoked as if they all mean the same thing. While I am assuming the measures are self-reported, we don’t know exactly how the questions were asked. Yes/No? Rate it on a scale of 1 to 10? One “study” just compared the “Who’s Who” list, with what denominations they claimed for themselves in the list, assigning a sliding scale of how religious they felt the various denominations were!
Methodologically, we have almost no information at all given for the various studies, only conclusions, not all of which support the idea that greater levels of intelligence correlate with lack of religious belief. Of the 27 studies on the page, 5 found no difference to report. Sample sizes were undisclosed for 13 of the studies, and were less than 500 people for 10 of the remaing 14. In the first group of studies, those of students, no less than 6 of them do not even test for belief! They only measure the relative scale between “liberal” and “conservative” religious attitudes. Some of the questions asked would also tend to lump Buddhists, Pagans, New Agers, and Hindus in with the non-believers by their phrasing! Many of the populations sampled were of Ivy League or other prestigious institutions (read: economically biased sample) during their college years (read: age biased sample). And of course, the final seven are all groups of scientists, the objections to which I already posted.
So, there are the reasons more fully spelled out why I find the data presented to be unconvincing. I personally am of the opinion that it is very easy to misinterpret the results of such findings in many ways. Given that the majority of the populace believes in some religious truth(s), and given that the least intelligent members of society, say the bottom 15%, are probably ill-equipped to systematically reject beliefs they have been raised with through deep examination of the ramifications of their faith (2 givens I believe to be true, although I cannot support them empirically), then mathematically there must be some correlation between atheism and intelligence, because the greater part of the least intelligent folks who are unable to adequately question their beliefs would have had some religion instilled in them. Likewise, in a college setting or a research science setting where empiricism and questioning one’s assumptions is part and parcel of daily life, I would expect there to be higher apostasy rates and statements of non-belief, but I do not find it either a necessary or valid conclusion that this is indicative of native intelligence.
Finally, I will venture a personal opinion on the whole issue regarding intelligence and religion. Intelligent folks can and do believe in all sorts of things, from religion to atheism. Unconsidered adherence to dogma, whether religious or secular, that is a sign of lack of intelligence.
**
Gee… Bob and John over there don’t go to church like I do. I better stop going now! I mean, they’re geological engineers and all… I want to be just like them!
**
My brain hurts from that paragraph…
Yer pal,
Satan
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No, sorry, that isn’t the way brains work. It’s really the complexity and degree of functionality of the brain and the amount devoted to particular areas. If you have two brains of exact same mass and complexity, without either being damaged or having development problems or having an unusual amount devoted to smelling or somesuch–yeah, their overall “intelligence” is probably quite similar, although “intelligence” is such a fuzzy term anyhow. But please, do not pull things like “equal brain mass==equal intelligence” out of thin air–do you think my 22-year-old cousin who functions at about a five-year-old level literally has a brain one-fifth the size of mine? It may be “logical” to you, but it’s far too simplified to bear up to even a cursory examination. Greater brain size has on occasion been shown to correlate with higher intelligence–I don’t believe anyone’s done an unassailed study on this, on either side–but two people can have the same size brain and one be clearly smarter than the other, and there are people with significantly smaller brains yet normal intelligence (at least to all apparent IQ tests and observation of their functionality).
But why would we expect a low intelligence in this second area to be more common among those with a high intelligence in the first? That makes no sense. If someone is good at Math, does that mean they’re probably not good at English? Maybe according to conventional wisdom, but in this case conventional wisdom is wrong.
No, I didn’t. In fact, I implied the opposite.
No, I didn’t. Sweet_Lotus asked how personal belief can conflict with rationality. I explained how they can. I never said that Sweet_Lotus had made unsupported assumptions, just that doing so is a way that beliefs can get in the way of rationality.
Always a nitpicker, isn’t there? Fine. Suppose there is someone with personal faith that Christians are less intelligent than atheists. Quicksilver would judge this person on the basis of his personal faith, something which Quicksilver said intelligent people don’t do. Happy now? Sheesh.
How so? If God is rejecting the intelligent because It prefers love to intelligence, does that not imply that intelligence and love are at odds with another? That or else God has limited space in Heaven, and doesn’t have room for the intelligent after stocking up on the love-filled.
No, it’s supposed to be a question, hence the hook surmounting a dot, referred to as a “question mark” because of its use as an indication that a question is being asked.
Why?
Yes, I have. Is that supposed to make me automatically agree with you?? (Note the double instance of “question marks”, denoting extra emphasis of the questioning nature of the sentence).
Individual cases do not disprove statements about the general population.
I don’t consider my selection of points to be random; I choose basically on two criteria:
I don’t see what’s so great about a clear, concise statement, especially in a thread like this (as an atheist, I have no statement regarding Satan’s original question, since it does not apply to me). Sticking to one side of a debate often leads to people to support arguments that help them regardless of whether they are valid, and to attack arguments that do not support them, regardless of whether those arguments are valid. I don’t use arguments that I don’t believe are valid, and I don’t attack other people’s arguments unless I honestly believe that they are flawed. Furthermore, I often attack arguments that support my side, if I consider them to be invalid. I suppose that means I am “arguing point by point”, so to speak; while I do look for points that support my position, the matter of whether they support my position is not as important as whether they are true. I don’t consider it to be “switching sides” to point out the flaws of the argument of someone that agrees with me; I consider it to be intellectual honesty.
Keep in mind that these are reasons, not proof, and the list is not exhaustive:
Well, I already considered myself to be right. I’m glad you think I argue well, too :).
Ptahlis:
I’m sorry if I sounded combative before, but I really don’t understand this position. Just what is wrong with discussing whether whites are more intelligent than blacks?
Keep in mind that I wasn’t claiming that the studies had no flaws, only that the issue of correlation vs. causation is a matter of interpreting the studies, and not inherent to the studies themselves.
Is 500 small? How many would you have liked? With 500 people, the standard deviation is less than 2.5%. Of course, that’s not very meaningful, since the exact percentage difference was not mentioned in very many studies (a valid concern that, strangely enough, I don’t recall anyone else mentioning. I wonder if my pointing out additional flaws in studies that support my position will confuse Spider Woman even more.)
This would reduce the sensitivity of the study. If the study noticed a difference despite this reduced sensitivity, that suggests that the difference is rather large!