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?

[JoeyKnothead]

From [url=viewtopic.php?p=1039802#p1039802]Post 10[/]:

I agree IQ tests aren't the 'be all end all' when it comes to 'smarts'. But they're a good barometer and should be interpreted only as measuring someone's overall general intelligence.

'Overall' and 'general' according to whom?

I can make me up a test on the stuff I think it's important to know. Does that mean if folks can't cook em up a batch of liquor they have em a low IQ?

I rail so often about arguments against 'educational elites', and all such as that, but IQ tests are a form of it.

Who here is so proud to declare, "Ya got ya a low IQ if ya don't know ya this stuff here I'm using me to test ya about it"?

Who here is so proud to declare the test they use to determine someone's IQ is an -ahem- high IQ test of it?



Especially as relates to our debates on this site... What about the biblers who think some of us atheists have us a low IQ cause we don't know as much about the bible as they do?

Surely biblers think that's some pretty important stuff to know.

Nobody needs to know 2+2=4 to know dead folks don't just hop em up and stroll through town. Ah! But the bibler'll think they do, and then think, "Look at ol' Joey there, he means well, but he thinks dead folks don't hop em up and stroll through town. I reckon it is, his IQ is lower'n it something that's really, really low. Poor ol' means well, low IQ Joey. But I'm proud to see he passed him that whole 2+2 burden!"


I just think it's counter-productive to carry on about thisn's IQ, or thatn's IQ within these debates.

It's ideas and arguments and conclusions, and all such as that I think we should be doing most our carrying on about.

I don't care if the rhetorical you is the lowest IQer I ever met in all my born days, if your ideas are sound, if your arguments are sound, if your conclusions are sound, well how bout that.

There's a good many biblers on this site who could run intellectual rings around a good many of some others of us. To imply they suffer em a lower IQ is just as goofy as implying I have me a higher one of em.

[Difflugia]

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.

[nobspeople]

From [url=viewtopic.php?p=1039802#p1039802]Post 10[/]:

I agree IQ tests aren't the 'be all end all' when it comes to 'smarts'. But they're a good barometer and should be interpreted only as measuring someone's overall general intelligence.

'Overall' and 'general' according to whom?

I can make me up a test on the stuff I think it's important to know. Does that mean if folks can't cook em up a batch of liquor they have em a low IQ?

I rail so often about arguments against 'educational elites', and all such as that, but IQ tests are a form of it.

Who here is so proud to declare, "Ya got ya a low IQ if ya don't know ya this stuff here I'm using me to test ya about it"?

Who here is so proud to declare the test they use to determine someone's IQ is an -ahem- high IQ test of it?



Especially as relates to our debates on this site... What about the biblers who think some of us atheists have us a low IQ cause we don't know as much about the bible as they do?

Surely biblers think that's some pretty important stuff to know.

Nobody needs to know 2+2=4 to know dead folks don't just hop em up and stroll through town. Ah! But the bibler'll think they do, and then think, "Look at ol' Joey there, he means well, but he thinks dead folks don't hop em up and stroll through town. I reckon it is, his IQ is lower'n it something that's really, really low. Poor ol' means well, low IQ Joey. But I'm proud to see he passed him that whole 2+2 burden!"


I just think it's counter-productive to carry on about thisn's IQ, or thatn's IQ within these debates.

It's ideas and arguments and conclusions, and all such as that I think we should be doing most our carrying on about.

I don't care if the rhetorical you is the lowest IQer I ever met in all my born days, if your ideas are sound, if your arguments are sound, if your conclusions are sound, well how bout that.

There's a good many biblers on this site who could run intellectual rings around a good many of some others of us. To imply they suffer em a lower IQ is just as goofy as implying I have me a higher one of em.

IQ tests aren't perfect by any means. It's hard to determine what intelligence is, exactly. But that doesn't mean they should be discounted simply because one doesn't do well with them, nor should they be exalted because one does good at them. Like most all things in life, the truth - the 'meat' - falls within the bell curve.

Belief often times dulls one's intelligence, ability to think logically and function normally. We see people killing for beliefs now and in the past (how many virgins will you get in heaven?), for example. People believing a man was a god and died then came back to life. I think that's stupid, but if it gets those people 'through life', who cares what I think?
It's utterly ridiculous but, as you indicated, ridiculous to whom?
Perception.

And, as you pointed out, one can be intelligent at one thing, and a moron at another. Does that mean they're a genius? An idiot?
Again, perception.

[Paul of Tarsus]

Perception, I think, is key here. What some see as 'precious' others see as dumb (maybe even stupid).
I've always said stupidity doesn't discriminate.

That's correct. I used to be a Pentecostal.

Frankly, when people allow teaching of something so stupid as creationism and ID along side science as science, that's alarming and points to the dumbing down of society due to something they may see as 'precious'.

I don't think that I'd describe creationism and ID as stupid. Some of the greatest minds ever have been creationists. There's nothing inherently stupid about seeing design in nature and concluding that the designer is God. That said, creationism and ID as they are practiced today can be deceitful. It's also often a very clever form of pro-theistic propaganda that's meant more to indoctrinate than to inform.

Allow me to share a recent experience of mine in which I argued that the apparent design in nature is not what we should expect from a perfect God who should be able to do better. I used cancer as an example of such imperfection. I linked to a creationist article on the JW website, Your Cells—Living Libraries!, which tells us that only an all-mighty God could have designed and created cells. I explained to a Jehovah's Witness that if that article's claims are true, then God designed and created cancer cells! Of course, the article does not mention cancer cells, and therefore is telling a lie of omission. In other words, by failing to mention such an important and illuminating fact as the existence of cancer cells, the article misleads people into thinking that since cells are presumably always good, then a good God created them.

Anyway, creationism and ID are so very often misleading if not downright deceptive. The "intelligent design" I'm seeing is the design of very clever propaganda. You need to be pretty darn smart to come up with a way to deceive people like that.

[nobspeople]

[Replying to Paul of Tarsus in post #15]

Some of the greatest minds ever have been creationists. There's nothing inherently stupid about seeing design in nature and concluding that the designer is God.

I call that spiritual pareidolia. And no, it's not stupid in seeing design in things, but it's stupid, to me, to attribute that to one particular, actual being that one thinks they have a real relationship with.

The "intelligent design" I'm seeing is the design of very clever propaganda.

Exactly

You need to be pretty darn smart to come up with a way to deceive people like that.

No. All you need to be is somewhat charismatic and luck in finding people to believe in it. Pretty darn smart is then, convincing people to give money to your sky dwelling magician. And, while these are part of the same, they're not exactly the same.

[brunumb]

No. All you need to be is somewhat charismatic and luck in finding people to believe in it.

You really just need to get them while they are young and hard wire their brains. It then becomes independent of intelligence. The geographical and social distribution of religious beliefs speaks to indoctrination during childhood as the primary method of inculcating such things into the vulnerable mind.

[nobspeople]

No. All you need to be is somewhat charismatic and luck in finding people to believe in it.

You really just need to get them while they are young and hard wire their brains. It then becomes independent of intelligence. The geographical and social distribution of religious beliefs speaks to indoctrination during childhood as the primary method of inculcating such things into the vulnerable mind.

Let's not forget brainwashing of adults. While it may not be as easy as with children, it still happens. Intelligence (or lack of) as well as the person's individual situation and needs play almost equal parts from what I've experienced.

[Athetotheist]

I wonder if they assume that Thomas Paine would have scored low on an IQ test.

Martin Luther King Jr. believed in God and I'd say that his coordination of the civil rights movment showed a fair command of planning, reasoning, attention and working memory.

[JoeyKnothead]

I wonder if they assume that Thomas Paine would have scored low on an IQ test.

Martin Luther King Jr. believed in God and I'd say that his coordination of the civil rights movment showed a fair command of planning, reasoning, attention and working memory.

I'd fret it pretty bad if folks were to just dismiss other folks because they thought anyone 'low IQ'.

Fret it in fear it was low IQ folks athinking it.

[nobspeople]

I wonder if they assume that Thomas Paine would have scored low on an IQ test.

Martin Luther King Jr. believed in God and I'd say that his coordination of the civil rights movment showed a fair command of planning, reasoning, attention and working memory.

You know what they say about 'assuming'....
Anytime anyone 'assumes' to 'know' something it's a red flag IMO.