Belief in God is associated with lower scores on IQ tests

[nobspeople]

Articles are from about 2010-2018:
“It is well established that religiosity correlates inversely with intelligence,” note Richard Daws and Adam Hampshire at Imperial College London, in a new paper published in Frontiers in Psychology.
"Daws and Hampshire surveyed more than 63,000 people online, and had them complete a 30-minute set of 12 cognitive tasks that measured planning, reasoning, attention and working memory. The participants also indicated whether they were religious, agnostic or atheist. As predicted, the atheists performed better overall than the religious participants, even after controlling for demographic factors like age and education. Agnostics tended to place between atheists and believers on all tasks. "

The article makes a case for logic and reasoning vs. intuition.
https://neurosciencenews.com/religion-a ... ence-8391/

This article also says "...the proportion of people with a religious belief is growing: by 2050, if current trends continue, people who say they are not religious will make up only 13 per cent of the global population."
https://www.pewforum.org/2011/12/19/glo ... nity-exec/

So, if religious people are 'less intelligent' and if Christianity is 'growing', that means, without interruption of some type, humanity will decline in regards to intelligence.

In the USA, we have been seeing the ground work being laid for things like Creationism and ID being taught along side, or in place of, science for a while now.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/4450533?seq=1
https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/202 ... ols-teach/
https://www.theintell.com/article/20160 ... /301229829

Are we seeing the dumbing down' of the USA more recently, has it been happening for decades now, or is it all hype, with little to nothing to support this idea?

[Purple Knight]

I just don't hold much truck with IQ tests. I never went to high school. Can't tell what the inside of one looks like. But in order to get in the Army I had to score higher than the average high school graduate on the Army test there. I got in. That dang sure ain't me bragging. That's just to say we all have stuff we find important to know, or just to wanna know, and other stuff we couldn't give us the first care for.

You're describing having a high innate intelligence, as opposed to accumulated skill and/or knowledge. Innate intelligence is best known as IQ.

[JoeyKnothead]

I just don't hold much truck with IQ tests. I never went to high school. Can't tell what the inside of one looks like. But in order to get in the Army I had to score higher than the average high school graduate on the Army test there. I got in. That dang sure ain't me bragging. That's just to say we all have stuff we find important to know, or just to wanna know, and other stuff we couldn't give us the first care for.

You're describing having a high innate intelligence, as opposed to accumulated skill and/or knowledge. Innate intelligence is best known as IQ.

I'm ahoping someone'll light up this alley, but it's my position that nigh on all tests are tests of IQ.

I remember one time in school, I had to take me an art class. In that class, I was given this notion that 'art is in the eye of the beholder'.

I failed that class. Art. Eye in the beholder. I flunked out of me the one class it was within my eyes alone to judge on whether I did or not.

Then there was that time the music teacher there, she ran us all in one by one to sit on the bench there beside her, at the piano there. And sing us the song on that page there, while she played along.

Come to find out it, the folks who already could sing, well she fetched em on in the music class. The rest of us that didn't already know how to sing, well, I think maybe we got us a coloring book or something.

My point there is to never trust the one testing your IQ, or your ability. Your IQ and ability will shine in your works.

[Athetotheist]

"Daws and Hampshire surveyed more than 63,000 people online, and had them complete a 30-minute set of 12 cognitive tasks

So there was a time limit? That isn't necessarily the best way to measure intelligence.

It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer.

--Albert Einstein

[nobspeople]

[Replying to Athetotheist in post #24]

So there was a time limit? That isn't necessarily the best way to measure intelligence.

There's a time limit for everything - nothing last forever.
If they gave double the time, would it be enough? I wonder how that would have changed the outcome (or if).

[Athetotheist]

[Replying to Athetotheist in post #24If they gave double the time, would it be enough? I wonder how that would have changed the outcome (or if).

I wonder how Einstein, who couldn't find his house after dark, would have done.

[nobspeople]

[Replying to Athetotheist in post #24If they gave double the time, would it be enough? I wonder how that would have changed the outcome (or if).

I wonder how Einstein, who couldn't find his house after dark, would have done.

https://www.biography.com/news/albert-einstein-iq

An interesting read on the subject

“If you google ‘Einstein's IQ’ you get plenty of results, but nothing that I would consider credible,” says Dean Keith Simonton, a professor emeritus of psychology at the University of California, Davis and author of The Genius Checklist: Nine Paradoxical Tips on How You Can Become a Creative Genius.

[JoeyKnothead]

There's a time limit for everything - nothing last forever.

You've obviously never argued with my old lady

If they gave double the time, would it be enough? I wonder how that would have changed the outcome (or if).

Yep.

If the old lady runs us both out to the doghouse, am I smartern you to have built me one to begin with?

[help3434]

But in order to get in the Army I had to score higher than the average high school graduate on the Army test there. I got in. That dang sure ain't me bragging. That's just to say we all have stuff we find important to know, or just to wanna know, and other stuff we couldn't give us the first care for.

IQ tests (and the ASVAB, for that matter) aren't designed to test for what you know or have learned, but are supposed to measure something innate. In fact, whether or not the goal is accomplished in practice, the results shouldn't theoretically be affected by things like level of education or cultural background.

But of course in reality IQ tests ask certain types of questions, and if you train in answering the type of logical, pattern recognition questions that IQ tests ask you will score higher because of that training rather than from something innate.

[nobspeople]

[Replying to JoeyKnothead in post #28]

You've obviously never argued with my old lady

Truer words have never been spoken.

[Mithrae]

Regarding the thread topic, I don't think anyone has yet responded to the insightful possibility Purple Knight raised in post #5:

“It is well established that religiosity correlates inversely with intelligence,” note Richard Daws and Adam Hampshire at Imperial College London, in a new paper published in Frontiers in Psychology.

If what correlated with high intelligence was simply the tendency to turn away from the belief you were born into, what this quote says would seem to be true, but it wouldn't be. It would make it seem as though whichever belief was the utmost minority (which is atheism if I'm not mistaken) would get the most proportionate influx of geniuses. This is true even if the geniuses convert to other beliefs at the same rate as those beliefs occur in the general population. All that matters is that they're more likely to convert at all, so the belief the genius converts end up with is more likely to be the minority belief than the general population, because they disproportionately select something other than what they were born with.

If the population is 90% Christians, and geniuses are simply likely to convert no matter what they were born into, Billy the Genius who was raised by two atheists decides to convert to Christianity, and he does this simply because geniuses convert more. So atheism loses Billy but gains nine other atheists whose genius brains were simply blasé to the belief they were born into and converted out of boredom.