At my other weblog Jason Malloy points me to Half Sigma who crunches the data from the GSS and finds that yes, religiosity is a predictor of lower intelligence. One of the most googled postings of mine from years back is where I showed that there is a positive trend for mean national IQ to predict mean national religiosity. Of course, by the numbers, most high IQ people are still religious, they are simply less religious than those of lower IQ. Anyway, here is a follow up rant from Half Sigma.
Of course, another fact is that the non-religious also probably like confirmation of the fact that they are brighter!
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In Expelled, Richard Dawkins recounts how learning about science "killed off" his faith. And PZ Myers tells us that the more science literacy we have in society, the less religion we will have, and the more science, resulting in a nice feedback loop.
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I cited this fact on the evolutionary psychology message board a while back, and you'd think I said the sky is green. Lot's of weird objections; Charles Murray objected. It's like come on, you wrote The Bell Curve and now you get PC.
I'm sure those who hew to any ideological deviation from the social norm are brighter than those who accept the common sense of their society. I possess highly reliable anecdotal evidence that Trotskyists, libertarians and transhumanists do better on IQ tests than people with less exotic belief systems. Doesn't make them right.
Doesn't make them right.
of course, you've have to stupid to think so! :)
How do you explain the many consipracy theory crackpots ?
I'm sure those who hew to any ideological deviation from the social norm are brighter than those who accept the common sense of their society.
It's likely, but I don't think it's necessarily this broad. As Razib notes, mean IQ correlates negatively with religious views across countries. In other words, countries where the social norm is not to be religious have a higher mean IQ than countries where the social norm is to be religious.
I cited this fact on the evolutionary psychology message board a while back, and you'd think I said the sky is green. Lot's of weird objections; Charles Murray objected. It's like come on, you wrote The Bell Curve and now you get PC.
It's not particularly surprising that people with strong political biases will ignore scientific studies that conflict with their biases.
Just curious, did you realize you were punning on the 'bright' thing? http://www.the-brights.net/
If you were, nice touch. If you weren't, great accident!
Doug
Just curious, did you realize you were punning on the 'bright' thing?
yes.
what happens when you control for SES? I'd think that that'd erase much of the correlation.
and then you'd just have elitist leftists beating up on economically disadvantaged republicans (joke)
what happens when you control for SES? I'd think that that'd erase much of the correlation.
i suspect so....