Are you an atheist? (3 Viewers)

[KenHigg]

I would hate to think that people are voting here out of a wish to seem intelligent.

A 3 point spread, with 30 people out of 40k hardly seems an adequate sample to draw any conclusions - ?! Plus I'd say Europeans in general are less religious than Americans... Maybe not. Just my guess.

 

[Darth Vodka]

It is very unlikely that the same macro mutation would keep recurring. Mutation are by their nature random. Believing that most changes are likely to be small does not exclude the rare occasions when a macro mutation does hit it lucky.

a mutation may go unused for many many generations before being expressed

you have two copies of almost every chromosome, if one copy is mutated, it may be the non dominant copy or the mutation may be in junk DNA

it's not like Heroes where all of sudden someone can walk through walls...

chances are a mutation is lingering away doing nothing, you have a load of kids and in one of them the mutation is expressed, maybe even by combining with the same mutation from the other parent (if it doesn't kill you have 2 copies of it like Sickle Cell Anemia or Tay Sachs syndrome!)

 

[Darth Vodka]

A 3 point spread, with 30 people out of 40k hardly seems an adequate sample to draw any conclusions - ?! Plus I'd say Europeans in general are less religious than Americans... Maybe not. Just my guess.

 

[Rabbie]

a mutation may go unused for many many generations before being expressed

you have two copies of almost every chromosome, if one copy is mutated, it may be the non dominant copy or the mutation may be in junk DNA

it's not like Heroes where all of sudden someone can walk through walls...

chances are a mutation is lingering away doing nothing, you have a load of kids and in one of them the mutation is expressed, maybe even by combining with the same mutation from the other parent (if it doesn't kill you have 2 copies of it like Sickle Cell Anemia or Tay Sachs syndrome!)

Darth, I agree with what yousay. I was in fact replying to Mike's post where he postulated the same macro mutation occuring every 100,000 time or whatever. This part of the thread seems to be becoming becalmed on the evolution issue. As I know religious people and non religious people who believe in evolution I am struggling to see its relevance in this discussion.

If you have read my posts you will realise I am not suggesting macro mutations are a solution for anything - not even for people who walk through walls

 

[Alisa]

A 3 point spread, with 30 people out of 40k hardly seems an adequate sample to draw any conclusions - ?! Plus I'd say Europeans in general are less religious than Americans... Maybe not. Just my guess.

The porportion of atheists in the U.S. population hovers under 5%. I don't know what it is in the European countries . . .

 

[Alisa]

I see someone has already answered my question - the picture didn't load for me at first. Interesting graph. What is the source? Is that the U.S. normed IQ test or is there some internationally standardized IQ test out there?

 

[Darth Vodka]

I see someone has already answered my question - the picture didn't load for me at first. Interesting graph. What is the source? Is that the U.S. normed IQ test or is there some internationally standardized IQ test out there?

google images.google.com for "religion vs intelligence"



here's another good one

 

[dan-cat]

I would hate to think that people are voting here out of a wish to seem intelligent.

LMAO

You mean the poll could be seen as prejudical? Noooooo

The link between intelligence and atheism was deemed irrelavent to the thread remember?

 

[Rich]

That's why digital tuning was added

Correction, I actually should have said evolved, my bad

 

[Rabbie]

I suspect that the number of atheists is greater than simple statistics show. I suspect that in certain parts of the world many atheists conceal their atheism for a variety of reasons such as not wanting to upset their religious friends/neighbours etc. It may well be that this has a distorting effect on the apparent intelligence of atheists. I would not not claim to be more intelligent than other people and I find it cringeworthy when people appeal to intellectual snobbery to justify their lack of belief. It may well be that the percentage of atheists is just as high or even higher in lower intelligence groups, but these people lack the desire to express their views in a discussion. After all it is nobody else's business what other people choose to believe or not to believe. It only becomes a matter of public concern when it leads to actions that are injurious to society. Freedom of belief is the hallmark of a civilised society.

 

[Alisa]

I suspect that the number of atheists is greater than simple statistics show. I suspect that in certain parts of the world many atheists conceal their atheism for a variety of reasons such as not wanting to upset their religious friends/neighbours etc. It may well be that this has a distorting effect on the apparent intelligence of atheists. I would not not claim to more intelligent than other people and it find it cringeworthy when people appeal to intellectual snobbery to justify their lack of belief. It may well be that the percentage of atheists is just as high or even higher in lower intelligence groups, but these people lack the desire to express their views in a discussion. After all it is nobody else's business what other people choose to believe or not to believe. It only becomes a matter of public concern when it leads to actions that are injurious to society. Freedom of belief is the hallmark of a civilised society.

Rabbie, I think you are right that there are probably a significant number of atheists out there that don't identify themselves as atheists. I think it is a questionable correlation because what is intelligence? How do you define it? How do you measure it? We already know that our most widely used measure to date, the IQ test, fails to measure intelligence because it is biased towards people of a certain background. In fact, E.D. Hirsch has written some very interesting books showing that a lot of what schools try to measure, such as reading comprehension, has little to do with actual reading skill and everything to do with the student's background knowledge. For instance, if you test someone who knows nothing about baseball for reading comprehension using a passage about baseball, even though that person might be able to physically decode and define every word in the passage, they might score very poorly because they wouldn't have enough background knowledge to "connect the dots" and comprehend the passage. So does the child that lacks background knowledge of baseball (or whatever), lack intelligence? That is what the test will tell you, but that is not the correct conclusion. All of that is to say what I have said before on this thread: I think while the correlation between intelligence or education and atheism does APPEAR to exist, it is probably not causal, and there are probably a lot of other factors that have not been analyzed like the ones you proposed.

 

[Mike375]

In Australia I would say the tendency is for people to understate their belief in God as religion as it is often seen as being a bit girly. Thus the athiest and also agnostic will appear to be more common with men.

In my experience atheists come in two basic types. One type, and the most common, thinks there is no supernatural but it is no big issue with them. They are the counterpart of the average person who believes in God or a god, no big issue. The other type of atheist sees it as a statement. They will tend to use lower case for God, Christian etc. and they are 100% all the way to the point of being dogmatic. Of course they have their counterpart in religions.

I would not equate atheism with intellegence but would certainly equate it with education. I think this is quite natural because the more education a person has then the more answers they have. The more educated also so see God or a god as a bit of voodoo and below their status. However, things appear to change at very high education levels such as medical specialist or actuary. There are perhaps two reasons for this. One is that people with a very high level of education don't worry about what people think. The other reason might be that as more answers become available then it produces doubt.

Undoubtedly occupations produce different experiences and influence people. For example the medical specialist deal with the impossible every week thus the question is always there.....is some outside force at work..

 

[Lister]

Good point Mike, I have called these people Atheistic Zealot in the past. They believe to their very core that you should not believe in anything. And they would, if they could, force you not to believe.
Funny how the balance is kept.

 

[Rich]

Good point Mike, I have called these people Atheistic Zealot in the past. They believe to their very core that you should not believe in anything. And they would, if they could, force you not to believe.

You mean like the Jehovah’s witnesses try and force you to believe their belief?

 

[Darth Vodka]

I would not equate atheism with intellegence but would certainly equate it with education

would you equate education with intelligence?

 

[Rabbie]

would you equate education with intelligence?

To a certain extent. People with a higher intelligence often progress further through the education system than those with lower intelligence but there are significant exceptions to this. Some very intelligent people have not had a lot of formal education.

To refer to an earlier post #681 showing a correlation between poverty and religion I do not find this surprising. If you are living in poverty in this world it must be comforting to believe things will be better in the after life.

Religion has historically been used by controlling groups in society as a means of keeping people in their place and protecting the status quo.

 

[Mike375]

would you equate education with intelligence?

Its a Yes and a No.

Formal education also serves as a filtering system. If you have two people with equal intellect and one has extensive tertiary education then that person is more likely to comply with instructions. They are also more likely to study another course whereas the other person says....90% of this is useless and concentrates on the 10%....This tends to result in the person with tertiary education developing a broader and more balanced knowledge whereas equal intellect without the tertiary eduction is more likely to result in a narrower but deeper knowledge.

But I think it is reasonable to say if someone has tertiary education then their intellect will be OK, perhaps above average whereas the other person is an unknown until tested etc.

 

[Mike375]

To refer to an earlier post #681 showing a correlation between poverty and religion I do not find this surprising. If you are living in poverty in this world it must be comforting to believe things will be better in the after life.

There is some truth there.

In general the more socialist/academic people are the more likely they will be atheist or if not atheist then agnostic and I would think that would match in with Europe. The per capita GDP of the US is close to the highest but it is also big on religion.

It is logical that belief in a supernatural will be common with primitive people because they have very few other answers to what is about them.

 

[Rich]

It is logical that belief in a supernatural will be common with primitive people because they have very few other answers to what is about them.

Gosh, you're not suggesting that Americans are primitive, are you?

 

[Darth Vodka]

Its a Yes and a No.

Formal education also serves as a filtering system. If you have two people with equal intellect and one has extensive tertiary education then that person is more likely to comply with instructions. They are also more likely to study another course whereas the other person says....90% of this is useless and concentrates on the 10%....This tends to result in the person with tertiary education developing a broader and more balanced knowledge whereas equal intellect without the tertiary eduction is more likely to result in a narrower but deeper knowledge.

But I think it is reasonable to say if someone has tertiary education then their intellect will be OK, perhaps above average whereas the other person is an unknown until tested etc.

so if you plotted education levels against intelligence, would you expect a correlation?