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Thread: Liberals and atheists smarter?

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    Liberals and atheists smarter?

    This, from the ScienceDaily (Feb. 24, 2010) —


    More intelligent people are statistically significantly more likely to exhibit social values and religious and political preferences that are novel to the human species in evolutionary history. Specifically, liberalism and atheism, and for men (but not women), preference for sexual exclusivity correlate with higher intelligence, a new study finds.

    The study, published in the March 2010 issue of the peer-reviewed scientific journal Social Psychology Quarterly, advances a new theory to explain why people form particular preferences and values. The theory suggests that more intelligent people are more likely than less intelligent people to adopt evolutionarily novel preferences and values, but intelligence does not correlate with preferences and values that are old enough to have been shaped by evolution over millions of years."
    "Evolutionarily novel" preferences and values are those that humans are not biologically designed to have and our ancestors probably did not possess. In contrast, those that our ancestors had for millions of years are "evolutionarily familiar."
    "General intelligence, the ability to think and reason, endowed our ancestors with advantages in solving evolutionarily novel problems for which they did not have innate solutions," says Satoshi Kanazawa, an evolutionary psychologist at the London School of Economics and Political Science. "As a result, more intelligent people are more likely to recognize and understand such novel entities and situations than less intelligent people, and some of these entities and situations are preferences, values, and lifestyles."
    An earlier study by Kanazawa found that more intelligent individuals were more nocturnal, waking up and staying up later than less intelligent individuals. Because our ancestors lacked artificial light, they tended to wake up shortly before dawn and go to sleep shortly after dusk. Being nocturnal is evolutionarily novel.
    In the current study, Kanazawa argues that humans are evolutionarily designed to be conservative, caring mostly about their family and friends, and being liberal, caring about an indefinite number of genetically unrelated strangers they never meet or interact with, is evolutionarily novel. So more intelligent children may be more likely to grow up to be liberals.
    Data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) support Kanazawa's hypothesis. Young adults who subjectively identify themselves as "very liberal" have an average IQ of 106 during adolescence while those who identify themselves as "very conservative" have an average IQ of 95 during adolescence.
    Similarly, religion is a byproduct of humans' tendency to perceive agency and intention as causes of events, to see "the hands of God" at work behind otherwise natural phenomena. "Humans are evolutionarily designed to be paranoid, and they believe in God because they are paranoid," says Kanazawa. This innate bias toward paranoia served humans well when self-preservation and protection of their families and clans depended on extreme vigilance to all potential dangers. "So, more intelligent children are more likely to grow up to go against their natural evolutionary tendency to believe in God, and they become atheists."
    Young adults who identify themselves as "not at all religious" have an average IQ of 103 during adolescence, while those who identify themselves as "very religious" have an average IQ of 97 during adolescence.
    In addition, humans have always been mildly polygynous in evolutionary history. Men in polygynous marriages were not expected to be sexually exclusive to one mate, whereas men in monogamous marriages were. In sharp contrast, whether they are in a monogamous or polygynous marriage, women were always expected to be sexually exclusive to one mate. So being sexually exclusive is evolutionarily novel for men, but not for women. And the theory predicts that more intelligent men are more likely to value sexual exclusivity than less intelligent men, but general intelligence makes no difference for women's value on sexual exclusivity. Kanazawa's analysis of Add Health data supports these sex-specific predictions as well.
    One intriguing but theoretically predicted finding of the study is that more intelligent people are no more or no less likely to value such evolutionarily familiar entities as marriage, family, children, and friends.
    “- He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.”

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    Funny though, I would have thought the "intelligent" ones would have been agnostic and not atheist... primarily as the article clipping says "General intelligence, the ability to think and reason, endowed our ancestors with advantages in solving evolutionarily novel problems for which they did not have innate solutions"... we can't disprove God and we can't disprove the Big Bang... could be wrong though...

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    Liberals and Atheists Smarter?

    Course! Only dense bogans believe all that stuff they are told to believe...
    . “No pleasure is worth giving up for two more years in a rest home.” Kingsley Amis

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    Quote Originally Posted by mashman View Post
    Funny though, I would have thought the "intelligent" ones would have been agnostic and not atheist... primarily as the article clipping says "General intelligence, the ability to think and reason, endowed our ancestors with advantages in solving evolutionarily novel problems for which they did not have innate solutions"... we can't disprove God and we can't disprove the Big Bang... could be wrong though...

    I'm a genius... in my lunchtime...
    Quote Originally Posted by slofox View Post
    Liberals and Atheists Smarter?

    Course! Only dense bogans believe all that stuff they are told to believe...
    It was written by an evolutionist, what else is he going to write..?

    Is IQ the measure of intelligence it should be? Mine is apparently 134. I don't go much by IQ tests, too dependent upon education.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Edbear View Post

    Is IQ the measure of intelligence it should be? Mine is apparently 134. I don't go much by IQ tests, too dependent upon education.
    As a psychology student (centuries ago now) I studied intelligence tests in some depth. By the time i had finished, my IQ was close to 200 - IF I used a test I knew well...not so crash hot on others though...
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    Quote Originally Posted by Edbear View Post
    It was written by an evolutionist, what else is he going to write..?

    Is IQ the measure of intelligence it should be? Mine is apparently 134. I don't go much by IQ tests, too dependent upon education.
    Heh, fair point, but that doesn't mean he's wrong

    Aye... certainly seems to be education and experience specific... i did mine when i was 23 (part of a psycometric test as i got fed up with doing them to get a job, so created a "portfolio"), so 15 years ago, in amongst a group 17 - 18 year olds at a private school and wiped the floor with the little bastards... My score was quite high, can't remember what exactly, but it painted me as a genius and stunned my dad... which, in itself, goes to show how useless IQ tests can be... cause I iz a spaz...
    I didn't think!!! I experimented!!!

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    Quote Originally Posted by slofox View Post
    As a psychology student (centuries ago now) I studied intelligence tests in some depth. By the time i had finished, my IQ was close to 200 - IF I used a test I knew well...not so crash hot on others though...
    Quote Originally Posted by mashman View Post
    Heh, fair point, but that doesn't mean he's wrong

    Aye... certainly seems to be education and experience specific... i did mine when i was 23 (part of a psycometric test as i got fed up with doing them to get a job, so created a "portfolio"), so 15 years ago, in amongst a group 17 - 18 year olds at a private school and wiped the floor with the little bastards... My score was quite high, can't remember what exactly, but it painted me as a genius and stunned my dad... which, in itself, goes to show how useless IQ tests can be... cause I iz a spaz...
    LOL!!! Personally my measure of intelligence is how many of all the people you know, like and respect you, value your opinion and enjoy your company.
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    Quote Originally Posted by mashman View Post
    Funny though, I would have thought the "intelligent" ones would have been agnostic and not atheist... primarily as the article clipping says "General intelligence, the ability to think and reason, endowed our ancestors with advantages in solving evolutionarily novel problems for which they did not have innate solutions"... we can't disprove God and we can't disprove the Big Bang... could be wrong though.
    An atheist is anyone who lacks a belief in a god. One does not have to explicitly disbelieve in gods to be an atheist.

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    Funny ain't it. None of the questions were in Hindi, Japanese or Mandarin...........got to love statistics.
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    Six of my friends hold, or are soon to complete, a Ph.D - broadly in fields of science and language. They are all highly intelligent, worldly, analytical individuals and all but one of these people are Christians who firmly believe in the existence of God and personal salvation through Jesus Christ. Most of my other friends are also very intelligent, some of whom hold degrees in other fields and some of whom also have a strong Christian faith.

    So I'm not convinced that a high level of intelligence, as measured by an IQ or any other test, is a good arbiter for deciding who is likely to believe in the existence of God. It's probably fair to say however, that those of relatively low intelligence are more likely to attribute the origins and workings of the universe to one or more gods.

    For the record I class myself as an Atheist.... and I'm marrying a wonderful Christian girl in November. Being a parent is gonna be extra interesting

    As a foot note I really must have a good conversation with my Christian Ph.D scientist mates some time, as to how they reconcile a scientific view of the universe and it's history with the teachings of their faith and their relationship with their God.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Slyer View Post
    An atheist is anyone who lacks a belief in a god. One does not have to explicitly disbelieve in gods to be an atheist.
    Ahhhhhhh, thanks for that... Definition updated... there's soooo many ifs, ands and gotchas that I never realised where connected with atheism...
    I didn't think!!! I experimented!!!

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    Quote Originally Posted by mashman View Post
    Funny though, I would have thought the "intelligent" ones would have been agnostic and not atheist... primarily as the article clipping says "General intelligence, the ability to think and reason, endowed our ancestors with advantages in solving evolutionarily novel problems for which they did not have innate solutions"... we can't disprove God and we can't disprove the Big Bang... could be wrong though...

    I'm a genius... in my lunchtime...
    The "Big Bang" could be disproved (in the sense that scientific opinion could reject it as a likely, or even plausible, event) by the discovery of new evidence (of sufficient weight) contradictory to that which currently stands. It is a valid scientific proposition as it is falsifiable. The assertion that God exist is unfalsifiable as it cannot be disproved.

    As such, there is absolutely no reason why 'the "intelligent" ones' would be more likely to be agnostic than atheist.

    If you were interested...

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    Quote Originally Posted by avgas View Post
    Funny ain't it. None of the questions were in Hindi, Japanese or Mandarin...........got to love statistics.
    That's the bad thing about Psychological studies - they are usually only relevant to the population used for the sample study. The good thing is that Psychologists know this and don't readily cross-reference research results without further testing. The same can't be said for those at religious extremes (belief or non-belief).

    My guess is that somewhere in the full report it will have said "this research is relevant to men/women aged X-Z from a middle socio-economic background in Western Society". Or something to that extent.
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    Quote Originally Posted by mashman View Post
    Ahhhhhhh, thanks for that... Definition updated... there's soooo many ifs, ands and gotchas that I never realised where connected with atheism...
    An atheist is a person who does not believe in a god or gods. There are no "if"s or "and"s in that definition and I don't see any "gotchas".

    I don't know if atheists and liberals are smarter, but it's well known that reality has a liberal bias these days. But that's more a statement about the conservatives' headlong flight from reality than a statement about liberals.

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    Quote Originally Posted by R6_kid View Post
    That's the bad thing about Psychological studies......"this research is relevant to men/women aged X-Z from a middle socio-economic background in Western Society"
    Its not just limited to them. I have pretty much found every 'statistic' can be questioned.
    I am starting to wonder if a thesis is anything other than a feel good factor for people who feel they need to prove themselves. But I don't have the statistics to prove this yet, something tells me I never will.
    If something told me, "oh but this only fits a very constrained set of parameter" I would question if their result is actually a result, or self-fulfilling prophecy. Sadly science/maths etc can't separate the 2 these days.
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