Thread: intelligence correlation

IQ Study: Liberals And Atheists Apparently More Intelligent
(London) -- A study by a behavioral scientist in England suggests that atheists and liberals have higher IQs than average.
Satoshi Kanazawa of the London School of Economics & Political Science examined data gathered over the course of more than a decade.
He found that young adults who describe themselves as atheists had an average IQ of 103 during adolescence, compared to an average IQ of 97 for those who said they were "very religious." That's a six-point difference.
Young adults who said they are liberal had an average IQ of 106 during adolescence, while their conservative counterparts had an average IQ of 95, a difference of eleven points.
The study also found that men with higher IQs tend to be what the researcher calls "sexually exclusive," or being true to one's mate and refraining from philandering.

http://tristatehomepage.com/content/...xt/?cid=134992

It makes me snicker, yes, but I do have some reasonable degree of academic integrity and have to concede that the effect was pretty minimal... only like 6-10 points... Not much to write home about.

Liberals and atheists tend to, on average, have higher IQs, but not by a whole lot.

All sorts of questions come to mind - what if you're a liberal and a believer, or a conservative atheist? Are there any conservative atheists? What of people who start out liberal and become conservative later in life? Or of atheists who convert?

But I have to say I'm not in the least surprised at this result. :P

6 points may be minimal, but I'd love to have another 6 points added to my IQ.

I wonder about the distributions within each group. Hard to imagine a genius being a believer, and that will pull the average on the nonbelievers higher.

Originally Posted by free radical

Hard to imagine a genius being a believer, and that will pull the average higher.

Would graduating from Harvard Law School Magna Cum Laude require a genius IQ?

Originally Posted by Bunbury

Originally Posted by free radical

Hard to imagine a genius being a believer, and that will pull the average higher.

Would graduating from Harvard Law School Magna Cum Laude require a genius IQ?

hardly.

Originally Posted by free radical

Originally Posted by Bunbury

Originally Posted by free radical

Hard to imagine a genius being a believer, and that will pull the average higher.

Would graduating from Harvard Law School Magna Cum Laude require a genius IQ?

hardly.

Just as I thought. Obama's a dummy.

Originally Posted by Bunbury

All sorts of questions come to mind - what if you're a liberal and a believer, or a conservative atheist? Are there any conservative atheists? What of people who start out liberal and become conservative later in life? Or of atheists who convert?

But I have to say I'm not in the least surprised at this result. :P

I'm a conservative atheist.



Sorry: Post count; I was born this year

Originally Posted by Bunbury

Originally Posted by free radical

Originally Posted by Bunbury

Originally Posted by free radical

Hard to imagine a genius being a believer, and that will pull the average higher.

Would graduating from Harvard Law School Magna Cum Laude require a genius IQ?

hardly.

Just as I thought. Obama's a dummy.

Mmm yes those are the only two options.

I just felt like trying a logical fallacy to see what it's like. 8)

By the way, this article gives a bit more explanation about the study and the interpretation of results.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0224132655.htm

"more intelligent people are no more or no less likely to value such evolutionarily familiar entities as marriage, family, children, and friends"

yet

"men with higher IQs tend to be what the researcher calls "sexually exclusive," or being true to one's mate and refraining from philandering."



Reading between the lines: They would if they could, but the intelligent men simply aren't getting much. "refraining"

"evolutionarily familiar entities" how cold of a phrase for every one meaningful in life, Antony Flew came around, and hes Dawkin's big daddy.

Do you also post in English?

Just to hammer an old hobby horse.

I don't think those IQ differences are much at all. However, being intelligent is not the same as being rational. Intelligence is about the ability to manipulate data mentally. If that data is crap, the GIGO principle applies.

Lots of highly intelligent people believe weird things, such as religion. Surveys of Mensa Clubs have shown this clearly.

What I would like to see done as a study is for someone to design a test to measure RQ - rationality, which is the ability to see what is real, rather than just manipulating data. Then test to see if people with a high RQ are more likely to be atheists.

skeptic - the problem with an RQ test is that the test only recognises what the designer of the test considers rational.

sox

That applies to a degree to any test. That is why we need better tests.

its not the philosophy that decided the IQ i don't believe but rather the pondering of philosophy lol

People whom are devoutly religious or conservative or are liberals or atheist's

Will have put more time into considering philosophy and problem solving as people with higher IQ's naturally ponder more sophisticated concepts.

While the majority of people are only slightly religious and really never put there thought to much of any belief.

I my self am a person who believes in every thing in the new testament and would consider my self a liberal-conservative or more so a libertarian.. My IQ is 169, truly intelligence has nothing to do with belief.

Originally Posted by An inconvenient lie

its not the philosophy that decided the IQ i don't believe but rather the pondering of philosophy lol

People whom are devoutly religious or conservative or are liberals or atheist's

Will have put more time into considering philosophy and problem solving as people with higher IQ's naturally ponder more sophisticated concepts.

While the majority of people are only slightly religious and really never put there thought to much of any belief.

I my self am a person who believes in every thing in the new testament and would consider my self a liberal-conservative or more so a libertarian.. My IQ is 169, truly intelligence has nothing to do with belief.

And apparently nothing to do with grammatical skills either.

Personally, I try not to read too much into IQ tests since intelligence has proven to be too dynamic and multi-dimensional to be confined to a single numerical expression.

Let's hope he didn't pay for the test.

At any rate, there's a lot to be said regarding belief and intelligence, but only at the extremes of belief and only with correlations that don't reveal actual causations. I've cited here previously the Nyborg data that revealed, using ASVAB and another frequently administered test to show a very significant correlation between conservative religious beliefs and lowered intelligence.

While atheists and agnostics scored significantly higher, they were actually outdone, albeit ever so slightly, by Jews and Episcopalians.

But, the more fundamentalist/conservative the religion was, the lower they scored on standardized tests of intelligence. Again, this doesn't imply causation. Did superstition cause low intelligence? Did low intelligence give rise to superstition? Is there another, as yet unknown, factor?

New Scientist journal does not believe that high IQ necessarily means you are smart!
http://www.newscientist.com/article/...ure-smart.html

and also
http://www.newscientist.com/article/...esting-iq.html

A survey of Mensa Club members in Canada showed 44% believed in astrology. I am struggling to think of any greater stupidity than believing in astrology.

Inconvenient lie appears to think that his high IQ (if we believe him!) makes his belief in the New Testament credible. Hardly. If he reads the account of Judas death in Matthew, and compares it to the same thing in Acts, he will find a total contradiction. Anyone who believes that a book that describes the same event as happening in two totally different ways, is actually accurate - well, that guy aint so smart!

As I have said before, rationality is more important than IQ. And high IQ people are not necessarily rational.

Originally Posted by SkinWalker

While atheists and agnostics scored significantly higher, they were actually outdone, albeit ever so slightly, by Jews and Episcopalians.

Karl Marx was a Jew and I once met an agnostic episcopalian.

Originally Posted by free radical

Hard to imagine a genius being a believer

I once visited the Museum of Atheism in Lviv (then the USSR, now independent Ukraine). I wondered why they had a whole room dedicated to a Roman Catholic clergyman. A guy called Nicholas Copernicus.

Originally Posted by Leszek Luchowski

Originally Posted by free radical

Hard to imagine a genius being a believer

I once visited the Museum of Atheism in Lviv (then the USSR, now independent Ukraine). I wondered why they had a whole room dedicated to a Roman Catholic clergyman. A guy called Nicholas Copernicus.

I would call myself an atheist.
Having said that if someone could prove to me, today, that God existed I still wouldn't see any real conflict between science and religion. Altho' I find it impossible to believe that some entity called "God" exists, cares about individuals, and "intrudes" into the universe, for example, by having an input into the process of evolution, I do not find it is absurd, stupid, or ridiculous to believe in something called "God" as the first cause of the universe. It's just I don't believe it myself, but have no problem in accepting intelligent people do.
I think it was Mitchell McKain who said, in some other thread, that it was right to argue strongly against those who used their religious ideology to attack well established scientific theories. I agree absolutely with that view, but sometimes there are posts, on this Forum, exhibiting what I would call an unattractive strain of militant atheism.
And, for me, these posts are almost as annoying as those advocating "Creationism".

Originally Posted by Leszek Luchowski

Originally Posted by free radical

Hard to imagine a genius being a believer

I once visited the Museum of Atheism in Lviv (then the USSR, now independent Ukraine). I wondered why they had a whole room dedicated to a Roman Catholic clergyman. A guy called Nicholas Copernicus.

Newton was a believer. So were Kepler, Descartes, Maxwell, plenty of others. Mendel and LeMaitre were priests.

Originally Posted by skeptic

A survey of Mensa Club members in Canada showed 44% believed in astrology. I am struggling to think of any greater stupidity than believing in astrology.

How about believing in the results of polls?

Originally Posted by skeptic

Anyone who believes that a book that describes the same event as happening in two totally different ways, is actually accurate - well, that guy aint so smart!

How about this then? Quantum Mechanics. Wave particle duality pretty well demands that we think of things in two contradictory ways. Does this mean most physicists and chemists aren't so smart?

Ophiolite

I assume you are just trying to be cute. You understand the subject too well to mistake the dual nature of sub atomic particles for a story telling of a man who hung himself to death, but also died by falling over and dashing out his guts. An electron can be two different places at once. A man cannot.

As for polls, do you really disbelieve the idea that high IQ people can, and do, also believe weird things?

Sort of related, a new survey finds that atheists know more about religion in general than religious people do.

http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/wx...owledge.survey

Originally Posted by skeptic

I assume you are just trying to be cute.

Aw, shucks. It's a gift.

Originally Posted by skeptic

You understand the subject too well to mistake the dual nature of sub atomic particles for a story telling of a man who hung himself to death, but also died by falling over and dashing out his guts. An electron can be two different places at once. A man cannot.

1. We are not quite sure where the dividing line comes. Given that there is uncertainty ( ) in where we place that line then I cannot wholly rule out the possibility you proposed - I mean either way, he's dead.

2. The Many Worlds interpretation allows precisely for the man meeting his end in many ways.

3. So, either way you are correct - I was using my partial knowledge of the subject to point out some possible (but uncertain) consequences.

Originally Posted by skeptic

As for polls, do you really disbelieve the idea that high IQ people can, and do, also believe weird things?

The construction of questions in polls is extremely difficult. The wording and the context in which the questions are placed can have massive effects on the outcome.

The presentation of the results of polls without clear reference to question form and context can easily lead to misinterpretation of the results.

That is what my question about polls was designed to communicate. Or rather, the question should have generated in the skeptic a series of questions that would have led to the same general conclusions about polls and their results.

Originally Posted by inow

It makes me snicker, yes, but I do have some reasonable degree of academic integrity and have to concede that the effect was pretty minimal... only like 6-10 points... Not much to write home about.

Liberals and atheists tend to, on average, have higher IQs, but not by a whole lot.

What an absolutely ridiculous statement to make, the pretty minimal 6-10 points as you say, could be the difference between an Einstein or refuse collector. Or put another way, above average or below, where would you, like to be sitting.

I'd like to be sitting in a position where my comments are valid and accurate. Oh... wait. That's EXACTLY where I'm sitting.

It was humorous, but not significant, especially considering the limits of IQ testing.

Originally Posted by The_only_stephen

Originally Posted by inow

It makes me snicker, yes, but I do have some reasonable degree of academic integrity and have to concede that the effect was pretty minimal... only like 6-10 points... Not much to write home about.

Liberals and atheists tend to, on average, have higher IQs, but not by a whole lot.

What an absolutely ridiculous statement to make, the pretty minimal 6-10 points as you say, could be the difference between an Einstein or refuse collector. Or put another way, above average or below, where would you, like to be sitting.

it's actually more like the difference between Newton and Einstein, or the village idiot and the village dumbass. Basically nill. Average is relative, and really encompasses a range, not just one number. You lack understanding of the test as well as an understanding of intelligence on the whole. 95IQ is as average as 105IQ is almost as average as 100IQ. (assuming it's a conformed bell curve, as I've been lead to believe)

Originally Posted by Arcane_Mathematician

Originally Posted by The_only_stephen

Originally Posted by inow

It makes me snicker, yes, but I do have some reasonable degree of academic integrity and have to concede that the effect was pretty minimal... only like 6-10 points... Not much to write home about.

Liberals and atheists tend to, on average, have higher IQs, but not by a whole lot.

What an absolutely ridiculous statement to make, the pretty minimal 6-10 points as you say, could be the difference between an Einstein or refuse collector. Or put another way, above average or below, where would you, like to be sitting.

it's actually more like the difference between Newton and Einstein, or the village idiot and the village dumbass. Basically nill.

Lol!

Originally Posted by Arcane_Mathematician

Average is relative,

Yes, of course, but by using one general average, say for the whole world we can correlate where the peaks and troughs may be, and thus how to rectify them.

Originally Posted by Arcane_Mathematician

and really encompasses a range, not just one number. You lack understanding of the test as well as an understanding of intelligence on the whole.

Do I. You gathered that for one post how astute of you.

Originally Posted by Arcane_Mathematician

95IQ is as average as 105IQ is almost as average as 100IQ. (assuming it's a conformed bell curve, as I've been lead to believe)

Utter rubbish! you have been informed wrong, the US national average is 98 (but this is relative to the rest of the world, which is 100(mensa)) so 6-10 points(104-108) above that is not average, nor is (88-92) average. Mensa defines 148 as acceptable to join there ranks. so clearly 6-10 points below that is not good enough for them.
Now I never stated in any post that this was the only way to define someones abilities, but it is a good indicatory of where to start.

Originally Posted by The_only_stephen

Originally Posted by Arcane_Mathematician

Originally Posted by The_only_stephen

Originally Posted by inow

It makes me snicker, yes, but I do have some reasonable degree of academic integrity and have to concede that the effect was pretty minimal... only like 6-10 points... Not much to write home about.

Liberals and atheists tend to, on average, have higher IQs, but not by a whole lot.

What an absolutely ridiculous statement to make, the pretty minimal 6-10 points as you say, could be the difference between an Einstein or refuse collector. Or put another way, above average or below, where would you, like to be sitting.

it's actually more like the difference between Newton and Einstein, or the village idiot and the village dumbass. Basically nill.

Lol!

Originally Posted by Arcane_Mathematician

Average is relative,

Yes, of course, but by using one general average, say for the whole world we can correlate where the peaks and troughs may be, and thus how to rectify them.

Originally Posted by Arcane_Mathematician

and really encompasses a range, not just one number. You lack understanding of the test as well as an understanding of intelligence on the whole.

Do I. You gathered that for one post how astute of you.

Originally Posted by Arcane_Mathematician

95IQ is as average as 105IQ is almost as average as 100IQ. (assuming it's a conformed bell curve, as I've been lead to believe)

Utter rubbish! you have been informed wrong, the US national average is 98 (but this is relative to the rest of the world, which is 100(mensa)) so 6-10 points(104-108) above that is not average, nor is (88-92) average. Mensa defines 148 as acceptable to join there ranks. so clearly 6-10 points below that is not good enough for them.
Now I never stated in any post that this was the only way to define someones abilities, but it is a good indicatory of where to start.

that depends on your definition of average, sir...

Stephan don't confuse the mean with the range of average.

Most IQ test are scaled so 100 is the mean and 15 the standard deviation. That puts 90-110 as average and representing about half the population.

--
Mensa accepts the top 2% which is usually somewhere about 130 on an IQ test or its equivalent performance on other types of test which measure knowledge and IQ (e.g GMAT etc).

Originally Posted by Lynx_Fox

Stephen don't confuse the mean with the range of average.

Most IQ test are scaled so 100 is the mean and 15 the standard deviation. That puts 90-110 as average and representing about half the population.

The world average is the 100 it is the mean that they measure from, I've never come across an average range, you are either average or above or below that margin.

Originally Posted by Lynx_Fox

Mensa accepts the top 2% which is usually somewhere about 130 on an IQ test or its equivalent performance on other types of test which measure knowledge and IQ (e.g GMAT etc).

Yes my bad Mensa accept around 130, what I mean to say Mensa defines 148 as acceptable to join there ranks as a genius. However do you notice there's no 15 deviation there, what utter nonsense, you people spout.

Originally Posted by The_only_stephen

Originally Posted by Lynx_Fox

Stephen don't confuse the mean with the range of average.

Most IQ test are scaled so 100 is the mean and 15 the standard deviation. That puts 90-110 as average and representing about half the population.

The world average is the 100 it is the mean that they measure from, I've never come across an average range, you are either average or above or below that margin.

Originally Posted by Lynx_Fox

Mensa accepts the top 2% which is usually somewhere about 130 on an IQ test or its equivalent performance on other types of test which measure knowledge and IQ (e.g GMAT etc).

Yes my bad Mensa accept around 130, what I mean to say Mensa defines 148 as acceptable to join there ranks as a genius. However do you notice there's no 15 deviation there, what utter nonsense, you people spout.

What lack of understanding of statistics, you have

And error bars, apparently.

Originally Posted by Arcane_Mathematician

What lack of understanding of statistics, you have

"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."Charles Wentworth Dilke (1843–1911)(Popularised by Samuel Clemens(Mark Twain)).

Mark Twain was not a statistician.

What the saying should be is :
There are lies, damn lies, and bad statistics.

Statistics, used properly, are one of the great strengths of modern science.

Originally Posted by skeptic

Mark Twain was not a statistician.

What the saying should be is :
There are lies, damn lies, and bad statistics.

Statistics, used properly, are one of the great strengths of modern science.

Neither was Charles Wentworth Dilke

Horrible

An example. a man who is tall is at an average height, but not the mean. Likewise, a man you is tall is average height. And with my original comment. Statistics are a very very useful field of mathematics, one that I am sad to say I am not well versed in (introductory only, it didn't catch my interest so I put it off)

I have a question. What is the difference between whites thinking they are smarter than blacks because or their higher IQ scores, and atheists thinking they are smarter than theists?

Originally Posted by Harold14370

I have a question. What is the difference between whites thinking they are smarter than blacks because or their higher IQ scores, and atheists thinking they are smarter than theists?

Nothing really. Both are somewhat bigoted. However, when going by IQ, that is sadly the way it fleshes out on average.

Originally Posted by Harold14370

I have a question. What is the difference between whites thinking they are smarter than blacks because or their higher IQ scores, and atheists thinking they are smarter than theists?

I don't see any clear reason why a person's cognitive abilities would be related to their skin color. A person's beliefs (including religious beliefs), on the other hand, seem pretty directly related to cognition.

Originally Posted by Scifor Refugee

Originally Posted by Harold14370

I have a question. What is the difference between whites thinking they are smarter than blacks because or their higher IQ scores, and atheists thinking they are smarter than theists?

I don't see any clear reason why a person's cognitive abilities would be related to their skin color. A person's beliefs (including religious beliefs), on the other hand, seem pretty directly related to cognition.

The results of an IQ test are either a valid measure of intelligence or they are not. It shouldn't matter whether the results agree with your preconceived ideas of what should or should not be correlated.

Originally Posted by Harold14370

Originally Posted by Scifor Refugee

Originally Posted by Harold14370

I have a question. What is the difference between whites thinking they are smarter than blacks because or their higher IQ scores, and atheists thinking they are smarter than theists?

I don't see any clear reason why a person's cognitive abilities would be related to their skin color. A person's beliefs (including religious beliefs), on the other hand, seem pretty directly related to cognition.

The results of an IQ test are either a valid measure of intelligence or they are not. It shouldn't matter whether the results agree with your preconceived ideas of what should or should not be correlated.

Its an hypothesis, but one that is more than simply a "preconceived idea." Clearly race cannot be determined by intelligence. These are two variables that are undeniably independent. Beliefs, however, are clearly influenced in varied degrees by intelligence and, thus, easily argued to have some dependence on each other as variables. We could, therefore, have two hypotheses when it comes to intelligence and religion: H0, which is that there is no relationship between intelligence and religious belief; and Ha, which is that there is a relationship between intelligence and religious belief.

In order to reject the null hypothesis (H0), a statistical test would need to show that there is no statistical difference (within an acceptable probability of error) between the religious and the non-religious with regard to intelligence. Thus far, several statistical tests have been published which do show a relationship between religiosity and intelligence (I mentioned Helmut Nyborg's test and one other in another thread), it doesn't reveal any causality. So, while we can easily associate attributes like increased knowledge, education, and critical thinking to intelligence, we can't immediately assume that these are the causes for reduced religiosity. These would be additional hypotheses outside the parameters of the original statistical test and require tests of their own.

On the matter of theist versus atheist, the cause and effect relationship runs - higher IQ means more chance of rejecting religion. In fact, it is more likely that a stronger relationship exists between rationality and atheism, than between IQ and atheism. High IQ does not stop people having silly ideas, as witness the Mensa Club members who believe in astrology. However, highly rational people are less likely to accept silly ideas.

The relationship between high IQ and high rationality is present, though perhaps not as strong as we would expect. High rationality usually means higher than normal IQ The rationality means more chance of rejecting religion. Hence the IQ/atheism relationship.

On race : it is fairly widely accepted that this is more a relationship between lower socio-economic status and IQ than between race and IQ. Since African Americans on average, live poorer lives than whites, this is reflected in lower ability to cope with the kind of abstractions found in IQ tests. They have simply not learned to think that way.

I also point out the Flynn Effect, in which each generation averages higher IQ than the previous. This is suposed to be due to better learning of abstract ideas.

Originally Posted by Harold14370

The results of an IQ test are either a valid measure of intelligence or they are not. It shouldn't matter whether the results agree with your preconceived ideas of what should or should not be correlated.

I agree. I haven't bothered to look up any studies on race and intelligence, but if properly-controlled studies show that people of a certain race are on average less intelligent than people of another race, then I guess that's what the science shows. I'm not going to stick my fingers in my ears and hum loudly to drown out the mean old science just because objective reality doesn't conform to someone's ideas about social justice, or whatever. As I said, however, I don't see any reason why someone's skin color would correlate to their intelligence, so I would personally be surprised if proper studies show such a correlation.

I also have to note that it's somewhat ironic that you say "It shouldn't matter whether the results agree with your preconceived ideas of what should or should not be correlated," yet in your post previous to that, you said

What is the difference between whites thinking they are smarter than blacks because or their higher IQ scores, and atheists thinking they are smarter than theists?

Although you don't come right out and say it, I get the impression that you're saying we shouldn't take a correlation between race and intelligence seriously because that would make us somehow racist or bigoted - as if we should automatically dismiss any scientific studies on race and intelligence simply because they don't fit with our preconceived notion that all races are equally intelligent. So...which is it? Should we dismiss studies showing that certain races are less intelligent (should such studies exist) out of hand because we already "know" that all races are equally intelligent, or should we go with the premise that "It shouldn't matter whether the results agree with your preconceived ideas of what should or should not be correlated"?

Originally Posted by Scifor Refugee

I haven't bothered to look up any studies on race and intelligence, but if properly-controlled studies show that people of a certain race are on average less intelligent than people of another race, then I guess that's what the science shows.

IQ testing does show pretty consistently that blacks score lower than asians or whites. There is a lot of controversy about it, though. First, about whether it can be accounted for by environmental factors, or if there is a genetic component, and second whether it really means that one group is more intelligent than another. Some argue that there is a cultural bias in the test questions, or that the IQ test is not really measuring intelligence, but something else.

I don't want to reopen that debate, but would just observe that if someone stated that whites on average are more intelligent than blacks, they would catch a lot of flak. Probably the flak would come from a lot of people who are feeling kind of smug that atheists score higher on IQ tests than the religious.

African Americans consistently, on average, score lower than European Americans in IQ tests. This is a reality. However, the explanation does not necessarily have anything to do with intelligence. As I pointed out earlier, most 'experts' believe this difference is more related to lower socio-economic status.

After all, comparing low versus high socio-economic status European Americans, shows low to have lesser IQs.

Race is not a biological reality. It is a proxy marker for variation in allele frequency, and a poor one at that, correlated to pre-defined populations. Race is only a useful category in science in so far as we cannot measure such genetic variation easily. When we can (soon hopefully) race will die as a scientific category.

This will leave ethnicity, the idea that populations vary by socio-cultural measures, which is difficult to define as a research variable (but possible and worthwhile). Race and ethnicity do not refer to the same thing.

"Race" research is notoriously biased due to selection bias, confusion between genetic/biological causes and socio-cultural causes and residual confounding (such as socio-economic status, as skeptic pointed out).

Considering others have criticised IQ testing as being a true measure of that elusive concept intelligence, both the independent and dependent variable seem ill-equipped to answer the question.


If any one wants more clarification on why race is not a biological reality i'll start a new thread, since it's a bit off topic and has come up elsewhere.

Originally Posted by skeptic

. On race : it is fairly widely accepted that this is more a relationship between lower socio-economic status and IQ than between race and IQ.

I think that you'd find a very similar correlation between religiosity and socio-economic status.

Originally Posted by Lynx_Fox

Originally Posted by skeptic

. On race : it is fairly widely accepted that this is more a relationship between lower socio-economic status and IQ than between race and IQ.

I think that you'd find a very similar correlation between religiosity and socio-economic status.

Indeed. The more poverty there is, the more religious the area.


http://www.livescience.com/culture/e...ty-except.html

A newly released study from the Gallup organization, based on surveys in 114 countries in 2009, shows globally 84 percent of people say religion is an important part of their daily lives. But what's really interesting about the study is this:

"Each of the most religious countries is relatively poor, with a per-capita GDP below $5,000," Gallup analysts state. "This reflects the strong relationship between a country's socioeconomic status and the religiosity of its residents. In the world's poorest countries -- those with average per-capita incomes of $2,000 or lower -- the median proportion who say religion is important in their daily lives is 95 percent. In contrast, the median for the richest countries -- those with average per-capita incomes higher than $25,000 -- is 47 percent."

Has it occurred to anyone that higher IQ people make better liars. Anyone that can pull off the great imposter act has got to be very high IQ. In order to be high IQ one must have a good memory and that is a definite plus to being a good liar. Anyway why am I bringing this up? If someone thinks they can make a very good living by being a theist, that doesn't mean they're believers. They could be but they don't have to be. It wouldn't take much for a good liar to be convincing. An example would be TV evangelist living high on donations. Also, I wouldn't say all politicians have a high IQ, but in general they must be higher than average because being a good liar is a requirement for the job or they just won't be elected.

Also it's not a requirement that high IQ people be honest. Some of the very best criminals are very high IQ. When you hear that crime doesn't pay, do you ever wonder how many criminals never get caught for the crimes they committed?

Sense they aren't talking we really don't have any way of knowing for sure, but I'll bet it's higher than we think. Where does rationality come into play here?

It only takes one good criminal act from one person to set a family up for a very long time into the future and some very high IQ people might consider that well worth any risk they might be taking.