…and this is a 
Tainted by its authorship
Category: Religion
Posted on: June 12, 2008 4:02 PM, by PZ Myers
Many people have been sending me this article about how high IQ turns academics into atheists. I'm afraid I don't trust it at all: the author is the infamous racist, Richard Lynn, and carries all the baggage of his peculiar notions of genetic determinism and narrow views on the significance of IQ.
I don't think the religious are necessarily stupid, and I most definitely do not believe they are born stupid. I do believe they are saddled with a set of foolish misconceptions that can throttle their intellectual development and send them careering off into genuinely weird sets of beliefs, but this doesn't make them stupid. I also think that IQ tests are written by people who promote an implicitly scientific perspective (which is a good thing!), and it's therefore not surprising that a group in which a significant fraction of its membership actively reject science will do poorly on such tests.
While I can see where accepting the handicap of faith might lead to poor performance on non-faith-based tests and scientific thinking, I reject Lynn's usual premise of a biological basis for such ability.
Comments
Instead of implying some genetic component to atheism wouldn't the correlation between atheism and high IQ more likely indicate the ability to see through illogical belief systems? We've obviously seen people who believe in gods reason their way out of religion.
Posted by: Schmeer | June 12, 2008 4:09 PM
Hmm, has this been true throughout history, say 500 years ago?
As usual there are too many confounding factors for Lynn's simplistic notion of IQ being "the cause." Maybe IQ is the effect of atheism (seriously, IQ might go up slightly if one is more free to think).
Academics are more secular because they're smart enough (combination of nature and nurture, most likely), and because they have learned how to evaluate evidence. The social nature of academia is far more accommodating as well, and intelligent educated people are hardly without a strong socially-influenced dimension to their beliefs.
If somehow Lynn had taken care of all of the confounding factors (as if he could), then its conclusions might be more sound than simply being a rehash of what we've always known, that intelligent educated people are more secular than society.
Glen Davidson
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
Posted by: Glen Davidson | June 12, 2008 4:10 PM
By the way, I wouldn't care who Lynn was, or what his previous papers covered, if I thought his research had the proper controls to make his conclusion legitimate.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
Posted by: Glen Davidson | June 12, 2008 4:13 PM
Or as RAH said: Geniuses and supergeniuses always make their own rules
they're just generally smart about not making it obvious to those less smart.
For the rest of us - we just get crucified for being different!
Posted by: tony (not a vegan) | June 12, 2008 4:21 PM
Ah, it's good to hear this from an atheist -- I'm sick of people saying that somehow, by declaring my atheism, I'm claiming to be smarter than religious folk. I get it all the time: "Only atheists would be that arrogant," "No wonder you can't accept God, you atheists are too obsessed with yourselves," etc etc. Which is silly, because dumb atheists are just as prevalent (if the internet is any judge) as dumb theists. There are smart and dumb people, not more and less secular ones.
The study is, for the record, not near rigorous enough to even suggest anything, regardless of who had authored it. IQ tests, for one, aren't really indicators of intelligence. I hate obnoxious atheists; they make the rest of us look bad. Thanks, PZ, for not being one. ::sigh of relief::
Posted by: Jata | June 12, 2008 4:23 PM
Hang on there, I am too an obnoxious atheist! And very proud of it, too!
Posted by: PZ Myers | June 12, 2008 4:39 PM
the handicap of faith
Well put, Prof. Myers. Well put.
Posted by: Mooser, Bummertown | June 12, 2008 4:46 PM
There ARE less intelligent people who really believe in fairies and demons and then there are highly intelligent people who know which way their short-term bread is buttered. The idea that being intelligent is all it takes to give up religion is silly, even nonsensical. I know many highly intelligent people who are determinedly religious and they think it helps them here and now. What is dumb about that?
Posted by: omar ali | June 12, 2008 4:48 PM
Stupid is as stupid does, regardless of IQ.
Posted by: CalGeorge | June 12, 2008 4:50 PM
I was saddled with a set of foolish misconceptions that throttled my intellectual development when I was young as have many of us, but have managed to slough it off with the innate intelligence I was born with and can never admit to possessing more than a standard IQ. That adequate intelligence made it possible to question and evaluate that stunted religious upbringing by my own volition with the same materials that are available to those who remain stunted by religious nonsense. Does this make my intelligence suspect if I were to claim that little more I do posess has made it possible to enhance that intelligence without a smug appearance at being smarter than those who do not utilize an equal intelligence?
Posted by: Holbach | June 12, 2008 4:51 PM
I, too, was skeptical of the link between religious belief and IQ until I read the comments at the bottom of the linked article. Check them out. They strongly confirm the hypothesis.
Posted by: Tex | June 12, 2008 4:54 PM
Actually no, I don't know any highly intelligent people who actually believe their religion helps them now, either in a "prayer works" or in a "I'm more moral then you" way.
I do know highly intelligent religious people - but they recognize that their religion is mostly a personal choice and that insofar as we have common human morality it is a universal human thing rather then a consequence of any religion, or lack thereof.
As for what's dumb about believing in magic (or prayer if you want to put it that way) well, is there really much of a need to address that?
Posted by: Coriolis | June 12, 2008 5:08 PM
I have no idea what to make of this study, but anybody whose interested in it might also be interested in studies that show that academic and especially scientific achievement are inversely correlated with religiosity.
Whichever way the causality goes, nontheists are way more likely to be scientists than theists, especially at the higher levels of science. In the National Academy of Sciences, atheists are wildly overrepresented and non-atheists are wildly underrepresented, so that atheists are overrepresented relative to theists by a factor of around 100. That's just enormous.
Press around the RAAS (Religion Among Academic Scientists) study makes it sound like that's just because scientists come disproportionately from irreligious or liberally religious or not-very-religious households.
Even if that were true, it would still be very interesting---why are irreligious households producing 100 times the top scientists (per capita) that religious ones are?
But it's not true. If you actually look at Ecklund & Scheitle's RAAS paper, as I have, you see that their own data in table 4 show a strong tendency for scientists to become irreligious at some point. They may be relatively unlikely to come from strongly religious backgrounds, but the large majority start out Christian, and about three fifths of those stop being Christian.
That's not enough to explain the huge correlation between advanced science and non-theism, so the causality appears to go both ways. Science does seem to substantially erode religious belief, and less religious people are far more likely to make it in science. (And much more likely to be high achievers.)
This isn't just a matter of fundamentalists being at a disadvantage. Atheists are overrepresented relative to agnostics, agnostics are overrepresented relative to liberal theists, and liberal theists are overrepresented relative to orthodox theists.
Factors like race, sex, income level, and even having a graduate degree don't come anywhere close to explaining the unreasonable effectiveness of atheists in science. For example, if we just look at (American) white men with graduate degrees, the large majority are religious. But the large majority of elite scientists are not, and the vast majority of top scientists aren't. Clearly it's not just a matter of atheism and science being correlated with the "usual suspects" like being white and male, or well-off and educated.
See the comments on this thread over at gene expression for more detail and links to papers, etc.
Posted by: Paul W. | June 12, 2008 5:08 PM
I would say that education and training in critical thinking leads to atheism. There is a correlation between more education and higher intelligence, but intelligence and atheism aren't the linked parts.
Posted by: Carlie | June 12, 2008 5:19 PM
Well, I do recall, on several ocasions, reading that atheism and IQ are correlated. Not that one causes the other, but there was a correlation. The same was said for atheism and education level.
But, I can offer some speculation as to why atheists are generally more educated. It's not that difficult, someone who wants to learn, who wants to know, will find out. If you take everything that's tossed at you from authority, be it in church or in school, you're unlikely to learn as much as someone who is willing to go out and look for answers themselves.
Of course, I'm far to lazy to retrieve said research, so feel free to show me horribly wrong.
Posted by: Alcari | June 12, 2008 5:20 PM
Why use the lable "racist" to describe Richard Lynn? Just because his research on IQ and race are uncomfortable and politically incorrect does not invalidate his scientific findings.
Living in snow white Minnesota allows a certain distance from the everyday intuitivness regarding race that those of us in more diverse areas experience.
Posted by: Alex | June 12, 2008 5:21 PM
Posted by: Sven DiMilo | June 12, 2008 5:23 PM
Exactly. Why, I was just telling my friend that anyone with half a brain can see that bigots are generally stupider than non-bigots. Of course, conservatives'll jump all over you for saying it because it's not politically incorrect to point that out....
Posted by: Brownian, OM | June 12, 2008 5:30 PM
In my experience, so far, I have yet to meet an unintelligent atheist. Mere anecdote, I know, just an observation.
Posted by: GOPnot4me | June 12, 2008 5:32 PM
I don't see how this can be considered controversial. It seems pretty self-evident: the smarter you are the less likely you will fall for non-sensical and illogical arguments. (I.e., your reasoning ability will be sharper).
Clearly high intelligence is neither sufficient nor necessary to be an atheist, but its not surprising that there is a strong correlation. And the proposed causal mechanism is reasonable, given what many believers claim are the reasons they believe.
Posted by: Divalent | June 12, 2008 5:34 PM
P.Z., I'm not clear on what premise you're rejecting here.
If it's a strongly biologically determinist thing with a substantial correlation with race, then I too would be very skeptical.
I don't find it at all implausible that there's a moderate correlation between atheism and intelligence (or some better measure of native "smartness"). Do you?
When you look at the strong predictiveness of atheism for scientific achievement, what would you conclude? It isn't mostly about race, sex, family income, or even getting a graduate degree. It's mostly something else.
Maybe it's about being in the "evolutionist class." :-)
I wouldn't be surprised if it's substantially about being smart, with the smartness being socially amplified by being around other smart people. So partly native smarts, and partly the effect of an environment in which smart people question and criticize ideas.
I don't know how to establish the direct causal links, but that doesn't seem like a hypothesis that should be rejected out of hand.
Posted by: Paul W. | June 12, 2008 5:38 PM
If that is truly the premise, there are so many things wrong with it, I wouldn't know where to start.
However, Occam's Razor applies IMHO.
Abrahamic Religions teach comic book stories to children about Ark's, and Babels, and Adams and Eves. Once you become educated enough in geology anthropology, biology, and so forth, you realize that you have BEEN LIED TO!!! And if all that was lies, it follows that all the Jesus, Mohammed, Moses stories, which have exactly the same 'ring', are lies, too.
It's the fault of religion that learning leads to Atheism, they should make up better stories.
Posted by: scooter | June 12, 2008 5:45 PM
ANY FAVORITE DAWKINS SPEECH??
I'm starting a radio series on 'The New Atheism', as it has become known. Starting with Dawkins tonight, any particular audio to recommend?
Posted by: scooter | June 12, 2008 5:50 PM
"Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful." - Seneca the Younger (4? B.C. - 65 A.D.)
It's hardly new to see a correlation between atheism and intelligence.
Posted by: Margaret | June 12, 2008 5:52 PM
I think he's rejecting a biological basis for performance differences in "non-faith-based tests and scientific thinking", not a biological basis for differences in religiosity (although I think he has previously said he is skeptical of the latter, too).
While skepticism is probably warranted for most claims of biological differences leading to different mental abilities, I don't see how this possibility can be summarily "rejected".
Posted by: windy | June 12, 2008 5:58 PM
And that's not a new observation either. PZ has a quote in his currently inaccessible collection that says that, while not all conservatives are stupid, stupid people are generally conservative, and calls this latter such a well-known fact that "no gentleman" could deny it.
Posted by: David Marjanović, OM | June 12, 2008 6:02 PM
High IQ turns American acedemics into atheists. In secular Europe, it may well turn them into theologians, philosophers of religion, etc.
It's all about going against the flow and the above-average intelligence that requires. Even neo-Nazis have a higher average IQ than the general population.
Posted by: Marius Andersen | June 12, 2008 6:04 PM
David Marjanovic at #26: That was J.S. Mill. "Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservative."
Of course, he meant the conservatives of his day - reactionaries who wanted to maintain aristocratic rule and the "old order" across Europe. Modern conservatism, ironically, perhaps owes more to the libertarian ideas of Mill than to any other thinker. But I digress, and I'm going to try not to take this thread off-topic (as I've inadvertently done with several others).
Posted by: Walton | June 12, 2008 6:09 PM
Correlation between A and B can be interpreted in 3 different ways:
1. A causes B
2. B causes A
3. There is an unknown C, which causes both A and B
So if intelligence and disbelief are correlated, we have following options:
1. intelligence makes you an unbeliever
2. disbelief enables you to be smarter (no handicap of faith)
3. Something unknown (C) causes intelligence and disbelief
What could be the C? Individualism? Effort to control instead of being controlled? Curiosity? (not being satisfied with the unknown/mystery)
Any ideas?
Posted by: Infidel Michael | June 12, 2008 6:13 PM
May, schmay. Do you have any evidence suggesting that this might be the case?
Posted by: windy | June 12, 2008 6:15 PM
Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons?
Posted by: Brownian, OM | June 12, 2008 6:17 PM
if i may quote Gould:
"...the abstraction of intelligence as a single entity, its location within the brain, its quantification as one number for each individual, and the use of these numbers to rank people in a single series of worthiness, invariably to find that oppressed and disadvantaged groups--races, classes, or sexes--are innately inferior and deserve their status"
i'm surprised no one has brought up the fact that IQ, while not meaningless, is not actually a measure of 'brainpower' or 'raw intellect'
Posted by: pnu | June 12, 2008 6:21 PM
After going on for a while about IQ & religious belief, the article claims:
??? How does one use the normalized IQ distribution to determine whether an entire population has "become more intelligent"? What does this even mean? We've definitely become more knowledgeable, but more intelligent?
The whole study looks rather sketchy, and using IQ as an unqualified measure of intelligence seems questionable. Much more interesting, IMO, would be a study looking at people's logical thinking skills, scientific knowledge, and religious belief.
Posted by: Etha Williams, OM | June 12, 2008 6:24 PM
It seems to me that being religious is not a question of intelligence but of ones emotional makeup.
And I do applaud PZ for rejecting association with an unsavory character like Richard Lynn.
Posted by: Otto | June 12, 2008 6:27 PM
Posted by: Emmet Caulfield | June 12, 2008 6:32 PM
Well, I didn't recognize the name, but it didn't make sense to me; it looked to get the causality all wrong, and there are some other issues.
Posted by: efrique | June 12, 2008 6:34 PM
He's probably referring to the Flynn effect with that 'become more intelligent' bit, though I very much doubt that the much-increased incidence of atheism can really be explained by the relatively minor gains in IQ.
Caveats about what IQ really represents aside, I had thought that IQ, whatever it is, has been pretty clearly shown to be strongly heritable and to correlate with ability to perform various mental tasks.
If we suppose that a big part of what tends to drive conversion to atheism is a tendency to think scientifically, it seems obvious that aptitude for scientific thinking is itself an important factor. And I had thought it was relatively uncontroversial to claim that IQ at least significantly correlated with that sort of ability.
Posted by: Gotchaye | June 12, 2008 6:34 PM
"Please, Alex...DON"T share further.
Posted by: Sven DiMilo"
Please feel free to skip over my posts if they conflict with your politically correct conditioning. However, as atheists we shouldnt let our emotions dictate our acceptance of scientific truths. If we can accept that certain populations are prone to specific diseases (Type 1 diabetes in Northern Europeans and sickle cell anemia in West Africans) then why can't we also accept that science seems to point to differences in average abilities between populations?
Posted by: Alex | June 12, 2008 6:40 PM
I once heard someone ask, "Don't you care if what you believe is true?" It might have been Rebecca on Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast.
When I see any True Believers in the media or on the internet, I silently ask this question and answer for them based on what they say. No, no they really don't, in many cases. This appears to be the case in religion, politics, economics, all sorts of woo (homeopathy, UFOs, etc.) And yet, these people seem to get along just fine. Maybe rationality is not necessary to lead a normal life.
Posted by: Brad | June 12, 2008 6:40 PM
How is it possible to test for IQ without accidentally (or do I mean incidentally?) also testing education?
We clearly veiw them as sperate things but how do you test one without being biased by the other?
Posted by: Lynnai | June 12, 2008 6:47 PM
both A and B (for bullshit) are a result of the reduction of the population of pirates over this same time period.
and also climate change.
and
the Internets
which make you stupid
Posted by: scooter | June 12, 2008 7:04 PM
Lynnai, while it's probably impossible to completely separate IQ and education, it's worth noting that IQ scores tend to be pretty independent of education when you start testing people above a very young age. My understanding of the evidence is that you really can't do much to significantly budge IQ scores after kids become teenagers, though it remains an open question as to how strongly early childhood environment and education can influence IQ. If I recall, you can even try to specifically prepare adults to take an IQ test and you'll only see a small gain in scores, which gain usually disappears if you test them again after some time has passed.
You're right though that we currently have no way of testing 'inborn' intelligence, nor are we sure if it even makes sense to speak of such a thing. It seems clear that, at the least, there are very complicated gene/environment interactions going on, especially, of course, at environmental extremes.
Posted by: Gotchaye | June 12, 2008 7:49 PM
I wouldn't be surprised if there were a correlation between IQ and atheism, but I suspect this has more to do with stupid people believing anything more easily and taking the path of least resistance. Ask a classroom of first graders to give you their thoughts on the pledge of allegiance, for example, and it's only the smarter ones who will give any opinion at all on "under God" -- positive or negative -- because they're the ones who've thought about it. The stupid ones take it at face value, pulling down the average of any smart ones who approve.
Note that Lynn, in saying intelligence "predicts" atheism, may not mean that it causes atheism per se. He may be simply noting it as a correlation, as in, "Give me a person with a high IQ, and I'll predict they're more likely to be an atheist than one with a low IQ".
Posted by: CrypticLife | June 12, 2008 8:02 PM
Alex,
your'e sliding off-topic and taking the thread where no-one wants to go. Give it a rest, mate.
I'm as racist as the next guy, but I would never venture to say that A WHOLE POULATION GROUP varies from another in a measurement as variable as IQ.
Now, I agree, black guys do tend to have bigger diques than white guys - or all that porn involves some kind of unnatural selction that I am not aware of, but I think that there is a trend there.
"Is it twu, what they say about how you people are... gifted?"
Posted by: Dan | June 12, 2008 8:18 PM
In general, I'm instantly wary of someone who tosses around the label "politically correct" as an insult in serious debates, and so far Alex has given me no reason to revise this mindset.
Posted by: Sadie Morrison | June 12, 2008 8:51 PM
CrypticLife
I've known many smart people who weren't raised in an environment that nurtured inquisitiveness and thoughtfulness. They never thought about "under God" at an early age, but this doesn't make them dumb (at least not inherently).
Did it, however, lower their testable IQ?
I suspect that it did (or often does), which is why, it seems to me, there is as much "nurture" as "nature" in the equation of "smartness."
There are people who look at religion and say, "Wait a minute, this is bullshit." I'm not convinced that they were simply born "smarter."
Posted by: RamblinDude | June 12, 2008 9:06 PM
Lynnai,
Differentiating between IQ and education:
IMHO, a valid IQ test should be able to be be assess any group of people in any country on earth regardless of their language or education, i.e., visual spatial or numerical sets designed to test if and/or how quickly one can recognize a pattern and then infer the most parsimonious placement of another element in those pattern.
Using a language and its vocabulary to describe the elements of the sets would make the test one of a mix of IQ and education.
I.e., my view of IQ is the ability to, and how quickly one can, perceive patterns; logic is how parsimoniously one can infer the placement of new information into the perceived pattern.
Will be very interested to hear what others here think about these things.
Posted by: cyan | June 12, 2008 9:44 PM
I question that. Independant of schooling certainly, but believe it or not there are more places to pick up an education then at school. If the child in question has educated parents and spends any time at all in ear shot of them they will pick things up. I know I did.
And there are the different kinds of intellegences, I've done many IQ tests and score so wildly all over the map you'd swear I was cheating for some or drunk for others. Some where little better then English comprehention tests and others the bias swung heavily over to arthmatic. Has this been even remotely standardized?
What your post says to me isn't so much that IQ tests can be moore or less unbiased by education levels but that early education is increadibly important. Of course the problem with bias is that I already believed that anyway. :)
Probably not but we do seem to keep trying don't we?
Posted by: Lynnai | June 12, 2008 9:52 PM
Except that isn't what it is when it is being talked about; although you're right that is what we can test fairly for. But I suspect it will give absolutely no indication about the individuals ability to learn and use language, and despite the bais-engendering are the tests valid without that?
Surely there are also many advanced logical constructs which require use of language.
I am assuming that your preffered tests would have both two and three dimentional spatial acuity? (again personal bias coming in as I'm pretty good at 3d and strangely bad at 2d)
Posted by: Lynnai | June 12, 2008 10:06 PM
Please feel free to skip over my posts if they conflict with your politically correct conditioning. However, as atheists we shouldnt let our emotions dictate our acceptance of scientific truths. If we can accept that certain populations are prone to specific diseases (Type 1 diabetes in Northern Europeans and sickle cell anemia in West Africans) then why can't we also accept that science seems to point to differences in average abilities between populations?
Alex, as has been pointed out numerous times the genetic argument has been made to attempt to explain lower achievement in minority populations, this explanation fails to account for very real socio-economic factors which have been shown to have a much higher correlation. To further damage the genetic argument is the fact that tests showed as early as the 40s (during WWII) that northern educated blacks (IE middle class) consistently outperformed southern whites.
Sorry, but there is far too much evidence for nurture to support a nature argument regarding gaps in achievement levels.
Posted by: dogmeatib | June 12, 2008 10:28 PM
You've also got to consider how religion is presented. If religion is just something a person is aware of, rather than immersed in, that person is going to react differently.
I'm unable to say with surety that I'm an atheist simply because I'm intelligent, or because I do well on IQ tests. I don't know what I'd have done if i'd been more seriously indoctrinated - and, when you look at the more sophisticated apologetics there's a complexity there that could engage a suitably intelligent person enough that the challenge would be at least somewhat compelling.
Plus, how do you separate the truly religious from those who are just giving what they feel is the appropriate, culturally-defined response? I know many people who I'm sure don't 'believe' any more than I do, but who still identify as religious for any number of reasons.
Take any of the so-called 'religious' scientists through history - the ones that are always named to counter arguments of church-supported anti-intellectualism. I'm sure that in a culture where atheism was acceptable many more of them would have identified as such.
Posted by: Wowbagger | June 12, 2008 10:36 PM
#29:
I'm surprised nobody else has mentioned the research connecting high rates of atheism with high rates of social well-being -- education, health, life expectancy, low poverty, low crime rates, etc. It would seem to be very pertinent to this question.
And no, the author (citation below) doesn't think atheism causes social health and prosperity -- or that religion causes their opposites. He thinks it's the other way around.
Which is very much relevant to this discussion.
We know, pretty certainly, that poverty, poor health (especially poor health in childhood), and poor education can contribute to lower intelligence. So it seems very probable that this is Infidel Michael's "C". Prosperity and social health make people more likely to be both intelligent and atheist; poverty and other social ills make people less likely to be both.
(BTW: Like other commenters here, I, too, am a wee bit skeptical of IQ as an accurate test of intelligence. But let's set that aside for now.)
P.S. "Atheism: Contemporary Rates and Patterns" was written by Phil Zuckerman, Ph.D. and published in the Cambridge Companion to Atheism.
Posted by: Greta Christina | June 12, 2008 10:43 PM
Somewhat relevant:
"A Federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit by a man who was barred from the New London police force because he scored too high on an intelligence test.
I wonder if he is an atheist.
Posted by: RamblinDude | June 12, 2008 11:19 PM
Surely it's the nature of academia that suits critical thinkers and those who want to discover the world that least to a higher number of atheists than anything to do with intelligence.
Posted by: Kel | June 12, 2008 11:46 PM
"A Federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit by a man who was barred from the New London police force because he scored too high on an intelligence test."
And the police department's justification for rejecting applicants who are too smart is?????
Posted by: plum grenville | June 13, 2008 12:04 AM
I just don't buy the I.Q. thing. I've taken three tests. All of them claimed that I'm just short of having a genius rating. I'm 100% sure that that's bullshit. I'm aware I'm not exactly as dumb as a box of rocks, but genius? No way. I know people who I'd easily put that label on, worked with some of them. Not all of them even match my scores. I know others that supposedly aren't supposed to be that bright, who have phenomenal gifts I can only wish I had. Again, I just don't buy it.
Posted by: Dahan | June 13, 2008 1:00 AM
The demand to be special without merit is no longer limited to the religious. The cult of celebrity (including the BBC's own low standards), the effective giving away of freebie exam passes (when previously exams would have provided valuable feedback on merit) and the existence of the internet at all(!) has allowed more people to be more vocal in their shallowness than ever before. These days one can be an atheist without merit in much the same way as one can be a media presenter or have a singing career without merit.
Posted by: SEF | June 13, 2008 4:40 AM
He's probably referring to the Flynn effect with that 'become more intelligent' bit, though I very much doubt that the much-increased incidence of atheism can really be explained by the relatively minor gains in IQ.
Caveats about what IQ really represents aside, I had thought that IQ, whatever it is, has been pretty clearly shown to be strongly heritable and to correlate with ability to perform various mental tasks. - Gotchaye
The Flynn effect is indeed of great significance in relation to IQ, since it is very strong evidence that population means are strongly affected by environment. From Wikipedia:
"The average rate of rise seems to be around three IQ points per decade. Because children attend school longer now and have become much more familiar with the testing of school-related material, one might expect the greatest gains to occur on such school content-related tests as vocabulary, arithmetic or general information. Just the opposite is the case: abilities such as these have experienced relatively small gains and even occasional declines over the years. The largest Flynn effects appear instead on culture reduced highly general intelligence factor loaded (g-loaded) tests such as Raven's Progressive Matrices. For example, Dutch conscripts gained 21 points in only 30 years, or 7 points per decade, between 1952 and 1982."
More from Wikipedia (Alex, look away NOW if you don't want your prejudices challenged):
"The Flynn effect may have ended in some developed nations starting in the mid 1990s although other studies, such as Black Americans reduce the racial IQ gap: Evidence from standardization samples (Dickens, Flynn; 2006), still show gain between 1972 and 2002."
Of course, none of this means there are no inter-population differences in intelligence, but the confounding factors make it practically impossible to discover, and will do so unless and until racial prejudice and indeed racially-correlated cultural differences disappear.
By the way, Gotchaye, "strongly heritable" is meaningless unless you specify the population you're talking about, since heritability is just the proportion of variance accounted for by innate differences. Gould (The Mismeasure of Man) uses the example of height: within a a sample of (say) rich Dutch or poor Bangladeshis, it may be over 90%; if you take a global sample, pretty low, since height (and probably IQ) are strongly dependent on childhood nutrition.
Posted by: Nick Gotts | June 13, 2008 5:35 AM
@58: Of course, none of this means there are no inter-population differences in intelligence ->
Of course, none of this means there are no innate inter-population differences in intelligence
Posted by: Nick Gotts | June 13, 2008 5:46 AM
Yes, IQ is known to be dependent on (early) childhood nutrition (NB the research will be long pre-internet). The brain is regarded by the body as a second-class organ - one to be disfavoured when resources are scarce. This applies during both development and later activity (eg eating takes significant supply away from the brain while the gut does the more important digestion thing).
Posted by: SEF | June 13, 2008 5:54 AM
I think Richard Lynn is on to something, but I wouldn't say it's just IQ (as in the ability to score well on IQ tests). It's more about personality. Especially in otherwise enlightened countries, you need to have a certain personality to be religious. In particular, you need to have use what C.G Jung called your Feeling function, rather than your Thinking function, to make decisions on what you believe to be right and true. Religiousness is a personality trait.
Posted by: Gustaf | June 13, 2008 6:03 AM
An atheist I know who was raised in a secular family and raised her own kids in a similar setting, and who possesses at least average intelligence (whatever that means) is an unthinking atheist, atheist by default.
Though intelligent, she seems to have a deference to traditional and authoritative "knowledge" which she regards as true, absolute, and non-changing.
For example, she believes that all cats thrive on milk (and refuses to even listen to recent research contesting that old wives tale), and she opens up small wounds after they have successfully knitted though I have explained why such an activity is countering the enormous effort and energy expended by her body to heal. She insists that her intuition tells her that such wound knitting is bad for health as it will trap dirt and bacteria (and this is after the wound is cleaned!).
Her inability to process new information which conflicts to that which she was instructed decades ago is astounding to me. First. Time. Ever. That I have met someone like this--she can't be the only one! She is literate and lives in a western democracy, and all her kids are university educated and none of them can get through to her.
She reminds me of the Jonathan Haidt profile, of people who base their 'morality'(knowledge) on tradition, authority, and purity. Wonder if Haidt's profile can be used to supplement IQs test, in other words, use it as means of identifying people's inability to process and adapt to conflicting and new information.
Posted by: Logicel | June 13, 2008 6:23 AM
And for another nail in Alex's pseudoscientific "Bell Curve" nonsense, studies have shown conclusively that lower status populations (such as lower castes in india, and suchlike who are the same race as the dominant class) do worse as a population than higher status groups on intelligence tests. The difference disappears when the social pressures are no longer applied, such as when the low status people move to other countries. In addition, research on "stereotype threat" shows that peoples scores on intelligence and other tests can be made to decrease or increase relative to what stereotypes are in force for the group they belong to merely be reminding them (via having to fill in a bubble with their race or gender) prior to taking the test.
So in other words, Alex's belief that black people are stupid is why they do worse on intelligence tests as a group. It's your fault, you racist swine.
Posted by: Gavel Down | June 13, 2008 9:38 AM
The folks in the Southern Baptist churches I grew up in weren't stupid in ways that would have shown on an IQ test. But they were appallingly disinterested in whether their beliefs matched reality, and seemed oblivious to the logical consequences of some of their assertions. They were, however, quite skilled at changing the subject, equivocation, strawmen, and other logical fallacies.
I've never been entirely domesticated; my need for peer approval may be weaker than average. Perhaps that's why their conditioning never really took in me.
Etha, average IQ *has been rising in the last two generations. Remember that IQ is just the score on the IQ test, and it makes sense if you're comparing it to previous generations. It's analogous to the height of the average Japanese increasing some 10 cm from 1900 to 2000. Presumably we are not evolving smarter - not this fast, anyway! This factoid puts the lie to Alex's nonsense. Whatever environmental differences there have been leading to this absolutely swamps the differences that may be lurking inherently between any two large genepools of humans. So far, no evidence for the latter than can be teased out of the larger effects of self-esteem, teacher expectations, income, toxin exposure, education level of parents, nutrition, cultural value placed on academic achievement, etc.
Posted by: Freehand | June 13, 2008 11:47 AM
Posted by: Andreas Johansson | June 13, 2008 1:35 PM
If we're using anecdotal evidence, I have to say I have 5 siblings, all of whom tested higher on IQ tests than I did, all of whom I will happily admit are far more intelligent than I'll ever be. Still, I'm the only atheist in the family and two of the brothers are fundamentalist christians.
I have to agree with Freehand that their religious beliefs have no correlation to their intelligence or education - they are just completely uninterested in whether their beliefs match reality. I flat out asked my oldest brother how he reconciles the book of genesis with the fossil record and his reply was, "I don't really think that's important."
Posted by: Danarra | June 13, 2008 4:32 PM
I'm not so sure that being more intelligent necessarily leads to increased atheism. It may just allow you to spin more and more elaborate rationalizations for your religious beliefs. Look at theologians...they are often plainly smart and are able to discern subtleties and nuances well beyond me, but they will argue how many angels can dance on the head of a pin without noticing that there are no angels, just pins.
Posted by: Naked Bunny with a Whip | June 13, 2008 5:13 PM
Somewhat relevant:
"A Federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit by a man who was barred from the New London police force because he scored too high on an intelligence test.
Just because the religious are often fools doesn't mean that any given atheist isn't as well. A non-fool would have pointed out the judge's stunning illogic:
Judge Dorsey ruled that Mr. Jordan was not denied equal protection because the city of New London applied the same standard to everyone: anyone who scored too high was rejected.
That's right, folks: it's not discrimination if you won't hire anyone who is {smart, black, female, gay ...}
The fact is that most people are so stunningly stupid that such failures in logic don't pop out at them.
Posted by: truth machine | June 13, 2008 7:51 PM
PZ - You said:
"While I can see where accepting the handicap of faith might lead to poor performance on non-faith-based tests and scientific thinking..."
Wow, with folks spreading this kind of gospel, you should be rid of all those undesirable 'faith' folks in the near future.
Wouldn't want to let someone into the science tent who was a C. Everett Koop (medical pioneer who saved lots of kids), Wernher von Braun (who singlehandedly got us to the moon), Raymond Damadian (inventor of the MRI), or Nobel Laureate Ernest Chain (antibiotics guru).
(all creationists or ID advocates, by the way...)
Just think - THOSE folks added so LITTLE to our science base. Their religion made them utterly incapable of contributing to science, and of course, their IQ must have been horrible. Wonder how they managed to make any name for themselves at all...
I wonder how many more folks like this you could persuade your followers to kick out of science.
Get a clue, you dolt.
Posted by: Kevin Wirth | June 13, 2008 8:16 PM
In my experience, so far, I have yet to meet an unintelligent atheist.
Look in the mirror; only a fool could make such a claim. Here at this site we have seen plenty of moronic atheists who are racists, global warming deniers, Republicans (your ID is ironic) ... and if you argue that instances of unintelligent arguments or behavior doesn't make one unintelligent, you have to apply the same standard to the religious.
Are atheists less likely to be unintelligent? Probably so, but someone who states it as an absolute isn't at the high end of the bell curve of atheist intelligence.
Posted by: truth machine | June 13, 2008 8:20 PM
Alex's first post:
My response:
Alex's response to my response:
My (brand-new!) response to Alex's response to my response to his original post:
You're an ignorant asshole.
Let me explain: Note carefully that the part of your original post I didn't want to hear more about was NOT the part about scientific data and their interpretation, but rather the part about your your "everyday intuitivness regarding race" and how people who live in predominantly European-American areas are not privy to this common-sense wisdom. Gotta tell you that that smells like old-fashioned Archie-Bunker-style bigotry to me. (Not really relevant is the fact that I live in what has to be one of the most racially diverse areas of the US, and yet I do not share your "intuitions," whatever they may be. Hey, are you James Watson sockpuppeting here?)
Your examples of geographic variation in disease susceptibility are single-gene traits, you dipshit. IQ or intelligence or whatever other "abilities" you allude to are far, far more complicated in both genetic and environmental underpinnings.
Believe it or not, and, I guess despite my "politically correct conditioning," I am open to the concept of geographic/population/racial differences in genetically-determined average intelligence. I do not reject that possibility out of hand. However, a) it is nearly impossible to measure the genetic contribution to intelligence because of the many interacting environmental factors that confound it; b) nobody can agree on what the hell "intelligence" means anyway, and (most importantly, in my opinion) c) even if there are small differences in average intelligence among genetic groups, the overlap in distributions is so nearly complete that small differences in the average are unlikely to be finctionally significant in any way whatsoever.
As for skipping your posts, thanks! Don't mind if I do! Not because they "conflict with my politically correct conditioning," though, but rather because you appear to be a stupid, lying bigot and reading anything else you post is very likely to be a waste of my time.
Posted by: Sven DiMilo | June 13, 2008 8:26 PM
functionally.
It was Alex who was being finctional.
Posted by: Sven DiMilo | June 13, 2008 8:30 PM
Fixed.
Posted by: Owlmirror | June 13, 2008 8:46 PM
Oh, and as for this:
Right back at you, you arguer-from-authority-against-a-strawman moron.
Posted by: Owlmirror | June 13, 2008 8:49 PM