romansh wrote:Wiki on the subject of IQ and religiosity
Thanks for the link, romansh. I had read it some time ago. While it cites studies purporting to show that atheists are more intelligent, I find the following quotes of far greater import:
...Professor Gordon Lynch, from London's Birkbeck College, who expressed concern that the study failed to take into account a complex range of social, economic and historical factors...
Dr. David Hardman of London Metropolitan University says: "It is very difficult to conduct true experiments that would explicate a causal relationship between IQ and religious belief."
According to biopsychologist Nigel Barber, the differences in national IQ are better explained by social, environmental, and wealth conditions than by levels of religiosity.
And most importantly, right at the very top of the article:
The definitions of intelligence are controversial since at least 70 definitions have been found among diverse fields of research.
To clarify, I am not claiming that there is no difference on average between atheists and non-atheists, there are just too many factors confounding attempts to establish a clear, quantifiable and statistically significant one. In the absence of it, talk of Dawkins's fucking "Brights" and suchlike serves nothing but to give people who make those claims the appearance of smug, arrogant, even ignorant poseurs and wankers.