Re: Wally -- religion & intelligence?

[Guest guest]

Wally -- religion & intelligence?

>

>

> > Numerous studies and polls have shown that intelligence is

> negatively

> > related to religiosity. (There is a review of the evidence in the

> Spring

> > 1986 issue of Free Inquiry.) So one could argue that IQ is somewhat

> > inheritable, and IQ is crudely associated with intelligence, which,

> in turn,

> > is (inversely) correlated with religiosity.

> >

> -----------------

>

> This sounds preposterous to me, and in fact culturally biased.

> Talmudic scholars, for instance, are very highly intelligent, and the

> research and logically ordered thought processes involved in Talmudic

> debate would undoubtedly correlate very closely with the high scores

> produced by ordered, logical thinking on IQ tests. Yet most if not

> all Talmudic scholars are extremely religious.

>

> I'd like to see such " studies " and dissect them.

Back issues of Free Inquiry are available via

http://www.secularhumanism.org/fi/ but the article is not online.

Since religion is a cultural phenomenon there will undoubtedly be a

'cultural bias' in some sense, and perhaps there are cultures in which the

correlation goes the other way. The studies cited in the FI article all

relate to the USA in the 20th century. Also there is a sort of bias that

results from people being considered 'less religious' merely because their

beliefs are more sophisticated and less literal. I don't get the impression

from that article, though, that the effect results from the personal biases

of the investigators. (About 30 distinct studies are cited, going back to

1927.)

>

>

> > It wouldn't be totally surprising to find religious traits being

> directly

> > inheritable aside from the intelligence connection. For example,

> there might

> > be structural characteristics of the brain which predispose people

> to such

> > tendencies as hypnotic suggestibility and 'mystical' experiences. I

> don't

> > know of any scientific evidence that this is so, though.

> >

> ------------------

>

> Such a viewpoint leads to the conclusion that all " primitives "

> who highly value mystical experience are of low intelligence and

> inferior genetic stock -- an indefensible point of view, certainly,

> outside of racist circles.

>

That paragraph was pure speculation. I don't see at all how it " leads to the

conclusion " that only dummies value mystical experiences. That conclusion

would be, among other things, obviously false :-) To restate my point, what

I'm saying is that it would be " interesting " if there were aspects of

susceptibility to religious experience that were (a) inheritable and (

*completely distinct* -- neither positively nor negatively correlated --

from what we normally think of as 'intelligence.'

--wally

>

> > I'm kind of dubious about the 'policical conservatism' thing. One

> problem is

> > that beliefs considered 'conservative' flip-flop from time to time.

> E. g. a

> > Jeffersonian 'liberal' shares many beliefs with a

> Reagan 'conservative.'

> >

>

> Exactly, Wally -- cultural values have EVERYTHING to do with

> these kinds of things.

>

> ~Rita

>

>

> > Any citations of evidence on these topics would be welcom to me too.

> >

> > --wally

> >

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