IQ v Religiosity

OffTheBackAdam

http://hypnosis.home.netcom.com/iq_vs_religiosity.htm
Discuss?

timmyturbo

The capability of intelligent logical free thought, and being able to form ones own opinions , should mean HIGHER I.Q = LESS BELIEF , but the cultural significance of different religions and certain enforcement of those religions throughout history to varying degree's make it very hard to pigeon hole data of this nature into absolute specifics , don't you think ?

cheers

finchy

Religion = more important in poor countries in which people have less to hope for during their time on Earth.
IQ = lower in poor countries in which people have less access to education and may spend their childhood battling hunger and disease.

A more interesting study would be intra-national rather than international.

velocestrapture

It is also not clear whether the IQ tests have been culturally adapted. It is well accepted now that the tests commonly used to measure IQ have a cultural bias. i.e. someone from the UK will do better in an IQ test that has been designed by British researchers, than someone from e.g. India. And vice versa.

timmyturbo

its not that simple is it though , if you examine the figures below the graph , there many example of over 20% fluctuation in either of IQ > RELIGION or RELIGION.IQ .

rick_chasey

Surely it's too culturally specific (the religion bit)?

I doubt the chinese are either smarter or not because they live in an atheist society.

mfin

Grammar is a set of logical rules. So, would it be reasonable to suggest someone who has a relatively 'high IQ' would be able to apply these grammatical rules through logic, grasping and displaying the correct use of things such as the apostrophe, or comma?

I think's so,

timmyturbo

Crikey you sound like a 70 year old school headmaster , calm down dear , Its not like its really effecting youre life is it ,? Ormaybee youare that ODC . sorry O.C.D . cheers

neilo23

IQ tests often use puzzles which can be solved using logic (eg shape a is followed by shape b followed by c. Which shape comes next?). There is no logical reason to believe in something for which there is no evidence.

TheStone

As much as I think people with faith leave all logic at the door, I'm not sure that study is particularly valid.

MattC59

See below:

tx14

Just because you don't believe in gods doesn't make you better at logical thinking.
Some people don't believe in gods not because they choose not to, but because they don't know what to believe or what is worth believing. IMO that's the worst situation. I am an atheist btw.

neilo23

tx14 wrote:

Just because you don't believe in gods doesn't make you better at logical thinking.
Some people don't believe in gods not because they choose not to, but because they don't know what to believe or what is worth believing. IMO that's the worst situation. I am an atheist btw.

You're right when you say that not believing in gods doesn't make you think more logically, but someone who thinks logically is less likely to believe.

tx14

neilo23 wrote:

tx14 wrote:

Just because you don't believe in gods doesn't make you better at logical thinking.
Some people don't believe in gods not because they choose not to, but because they don't know what to believe or what is worth believing. IMO that's the worst situation. I am an atheist btw.

You're right when you say that not believing in gods doesn't make you think more logically, but someone who thinks logically is less likely to believe.

yes. I do believe the implication is one way, as you described.

MattC59

why do people believe in God ? Well, for most cases, I'd say that it's because they were told to and accepted it without applying any rational / logical thought to the decision.

I don't think that IQ is particularly relevant here, more the type and level of education. When I say level, I don't mean GCSE, A-Level, degree etc, I mean a modern school as opposed to sitting in the middle of a field recieving basic education with the goats. (The extremes, obviously)

Religion is born out of a lack of, or refusal to accept the underestanding of the world around us.

BiggerBoat

There is no R2 value given.

neilo23

Even Dawkins didn't bang on too much about a similar study (possibly the same one) in his books and lectures, simply mentioning it a couple of times as an amusing "finding".

MattC59

Surely the results for the US of A are irrellevant, as there are huge cultural differences across a huge population. Is the IQ the country average ? Was the study take to represent a balanced cross section of the population ?

LangerDan

The whole things is shambles - they take the results of a Gallup-type poll and link it to the IQ results of groups of 15 year olds.

The good news is that its a game anyone can play. I took the data and cross referenced it with the Per Capita Income data from the UN

1) Having a low percentage of population who say religion is very important is the key to personal weatlh - or not. Bulgaria and Japan have similarly low levels of "religious importance" but the income in one if nearly 7 times that of the other. Or even more striking, the US and Mexico have similar high levels of religious importance, are geographical neighbours but the average USian has 5 times the income of his Mexican counterpart

2) Having teenagers with a higher IQs typically leads to higher per capita incomes. (I'm not sure if the teenagers actually have to work or you can reap the same economic benefit by keeping them in enclosures as some class of financial mascot.). But again, not always. Vietnam has high-IQ teenagers but grinding poverty

3) John Finch's point above about a correlation between IQ and belief looks even more marked for income vs. belief - and probably for the same reasons. If you have an average income of a dollar or two a day, you might as well pray.

There's a good study that can be done on this sort of relationship. I don't think that was it.

morstar

deleted

morstar

Deeletd: access problems

RowCycle

What initially took me was how stupid people are.

The average IQ is stated as 100, so why does the axis go from 110 to 60. Just reminds me there are a lot of stupid people in the world...

rolf_f

RowCycle wrote:

The average IQ is stated as 100, so why does the axis go from 110 to 60. Just reminds me there are a lot of stupid people in the world...

Why shouldn't the scale go from 110 to 60? What would you prefer it to do?

keef66

Well if the average is 100 I'd expect the axis to be the same either side of that, eg 50-150 or 60-140.

buddha

keef66 wrote:

Well if the average is 100 I'd expect the axis to be the same either side of that, eg 50-150 or 60-140.

When you plot a graph, fit the axis to the data (range). Unless you want a page that is almost half empty (in this case).

keef66

I suspect what it shows is how flawed the IQ testing is, or that they've used the data in an inappropriate way.
Average IQ is, by definition, 100. How can a country record a 60% average??

rolf_f

keef66 wrote:

Well if the average is 100 I'd expect the axis to be the same either side of that, eg 50-150 or 60-140.

The numerical average of the scale does not necessarily have to be the same as the numerical average of the data set. Rowcycle has inadvertently highlighted a degree of stupidity in himself by accusing others unjustly of stupidity!

Look at it like this. Imagine you have 100 people. 96 of them have an IQ of exactly 100.

Of the remaining 4, one has an IQ of 60, one an IQ of 80, one an IQ of 105 and one an IQ of 110.

Now then, what scale do you use and what is the average IQ to the nearest whole number?

Or to put it another way, if your average cycling speed over all your rides last year is 15 mph, there might be a few trips where you pootled to the shop at 5 mph. However, there are probably not going to be any trips where you averaged 25 mph. This is skewness - where the distribution of the data is not symmetrical about the mean.

rolf_f

keef66 wrote:

I suspect what it shows is how flawed the IQ testing is, or that they've used the data in an inappropriate way.
Average IQ is, by definition, 100. How can a country record a 60% average??

Quite easily. Average IQ is just determined from a specific data set (probably in the States or UK). If you score 100, then according to IQ testing you are of average intelligence. However, you are only of average intelligence in relation to the group of people who were used to determine the values. Any other group could record different averages.

Because education, culture, learning styles all affect IQ scores, the average IQ within one country will be different to the average IQ in another country. Whether that means that there is a difference in actual average intelligence (as opposed to IQ) is another matter.

In terms of your question - you could adminster an IQ test in that country that scores 60%. You would then get an average IQ for that country and you could set that value to be 100. However, it wouldn't be the same 100 as we are talking about here.

iainment

Isn't this study by Richard Lynn the apologist for eugenics?

priory

I hope they did not spend much money trying to get tribesmen in the backwoods of the congo basin to fill in the IQ tests they use for British research. It is as bogus as testing the skills of a brit at bare-foot hunting for antelope(with a pointed stick).

And declaration of religiosity is totally culture dependent also; and may not reflect the belief of the subject, but what he has learned is the wise thing to say where he lives.
I would say the chart is a waste of effort and so was collecting the data for it.

kentphil

I would describe my self as a Christian. However the more I understand the science of how and why the universe exists in the way it does this started me to question the validity of there being a God. But I now think that the wonder and awe of the universe is God! It amazes me how everything exists in such perfection and works together both on large and small scales from electrons to galaxies.

So to answer the original question perhaps more learned people have such an understanding of science that they do not believe a god exists.
It depends who they questioned in the higher IQ range too. Not sure as I didn't read the whole article.

By the way Brian Cox describes himself as an atheist.