Are Defenders simply incorrigible?

[_Buffalo]

Isn't folk magic condemned in the Bible? Was Joseph Smith a prophet of god or not?

You're showing your ignorance again.

I stand corrected.

I especially liked the ritual to induce an abortion. I guess the Bible is pro-abortion afterall.

Numbers 5:12-31 describes a ritual of black magic that the Priest would perform on a woman if her husband suspected that she he had committed adultery. Verse 17 says: "Then he shall take some holy water in a clay jar and put some dust from the tabernacle floor into the water.." She and her husband would go, with an offering of barley meal, to the tabernacle. The priest would make a magical drink consisting of holy water and sweepings from the tabernacle floor. He would have the woman drink the water while he recited a curse on her. The curse would state that her abdomen would swell and her thigh waste away if she had committed adultery. Otherwise, the curse would have no effect. If she were pregnant at this time, the curse would certainly induce an abortion. Yet nobody seems to have been concerned about the fate of any embryo or fetus that was present. There was no similar magical test that a woman could require her husband to take if she suspected him of adultery.

[_sock puppet]

Isn't folk magic condemned in the Bible? Was Joseph Smith a prophet of god or not?

You're showing your ignorance again.

Simon, I love it when you point me to evidence that the Judeo-Christian religion has been a fraud from the outset.

[_EAllusion]

Is there a correlation between high IQ an atheism? I would expect there to be because atheism correlates with other traits I know correlate with high IQ - such as level of education obtained - but I've never seen any direct data on the subject. And mind you, I read a lot about these kind of things.

In any case, that's not a very good reply. Even if there was a general correlation between high IQ and atheism, it doesn't follow that atheism is the most rational thing to think, nor does it follow that this means the argument, "If Mormonism is an obvious fraud, why do smart people believe it?" is wrong.

That argument is wrong, mind you, and rather obviously so. Smart people clearly have the capacity to believe poor ideas, even obviously poor ideas. Depending on which Simon we are getting in this thread, he'd probably be willing to accept some examples of this. Truly brilliant people with Ph.D. level education in fields like paleontology can believe that the earth is a few thousand years old, so why not Mesoamerican pre-advent Christians? It's generally accepted in cog sci/psych/neuroscience that people form beliefs first, then post hoc analyze and come up with the reasons whey they believe what they do. We hope that that "rational filter" keeps people reasonable, but it is imperfect. That forms the basis for explaining why otherwise highly intelligent people can believe in the most ludicrous things. Being smart doesn't make you immune to cognitive biases nor does it mean everything you think will be carefully thought out, but it does help you think more creatively about rationalizing bad ideas you might be attached to for other reasons altogether. As far as I know, that's still the #1 running theory as to why, as Micheal Shermer puts it, smart people believe weird things.

[_DrW]

The correlation between high IQ and atheism is statistically significant. Statistics is not about absolutes, however, but rather generalities. There are plenty of highly intelligent believers.

Atheism does not cause high I.Q., nor is it caused by high I.Q. Some people who have high I.Q.s are atheist, and some are religious. This is not statistically significant unless you can show me the P values.

Actually, Simon, whether or not you see the P values has no bearing whatsoever on the statistical significance of the findings. Believe it or not, your approval is not required for statistical significance.

____________________

While on this thread mainly to help out Simon, let me point out anyway that among the members of the National Academy of Sciences (arguably the best and the brightest scientists and engineers in the country) 93% do not believe in God.

And as I often say, I am reasonably certain that the other 7% have their doubts.

[_asbestosman]

Is there a correlation between high IQ an atheism? I would expect there to be because atheism correlates with other traits I know correlate with high IQ - such as level of education obtained - but I've never seen any direct data on the subject. And mind you, I read a lot about these kind of things.

In any case, that's not a very good reply. Even if there was a general correlation between high IQ and atheism, it doesn't follow that atheism is the most rational thing to think, nor does it follow that this means the argument, "If Mormonism is an obvious fraud, why do smart people believe it?" is wrong.

That argument is wrong, mind you, and rather obviously so. Smart people clearly have the capacity to believe poor ideas, even obviously poor ideas. Depending on which Simon we are getting in this thread, he'd probably be willing to accept some examples of this. Truly brilliant people with Ph.D. level education in fields like paleontology can believe that the earth is a few thousand years old, so why not Mesoamerican pre-advent Christians? It's generally accepted in cog sci/psych/neuroscience that people form beliefs first, then post hoc analyze and come up with the reasons whey they believe what they do. We hope that that "rational filter" keeps people reasonable, but it is imperfect. That forms the basis for explaining why otherwise highly intelligent people can believe in the most ludicrous things. Being smart doesn't make you immune to cognitive biases nor does it mean everything you think will be carefully thought out, but it does help you think more creatively about rationalizing bad ideas you might be attached to for other reasons altogether. As far as I know, that's still the #1 running theory as to why, as Micheal Shermer puts it, smart people believe weird things.

QFT. As much as I hate to admit it sometimes, EAllusion is usually right on the mark.

My recommendation, Simon, is to ignore Buffalo and DrW here and address where you agree or disagree with what EAllusion wrote.

[_sock puppet]

Is there a correlation between high IQ an atheism? I would expect there to be because atheism correlates with other traits I know correlate with high IQ - such as level of education obtained - but I've never seen any direct data on the subject. And mind you, I read a lot about these kind of things.

In any case, that's not a very good reply. Even if there was a general correlation between high IQ and atheism, it doesn't follow that atheism is the most rational thing to think, nor does it follow that this means the argument, "If Mormonism is an obvious fraud, why do smart people believe it?" is wrong.

That argument is wrong, mind you, and rather obviously so. Smart people clearly have the capacity to believe poor ideas, even obviously poor ideas. Depending on which Simon we are getting in this thread, he'd probably be willing to accept some examples of this. Truly brilliant people with Ph.D. level education in fields like paleontology can believe that the earth is a few thousand years old, so why not Mesoamerican pre-advent Christians? It's generally accepted in cog sci/psych/neuroscience that people form beliefs first, then post hoc analyze and come up with the reasons whey they believe what they do. We hope that that "rational filter" keeps people reasonable, but it is imperfect. That forms the basis for explaining why otherwise highly intelligent people can believe in the most ludicrous things. Being smart doesn't make you immune to cognitive biases nor does it mean everything you think will be carefully thought out, but it does help you think more creatively about rationalizing bad ideas you might be attached to for other reasons altogether. As far as I know, that's still the #1 running theory as to why, as Micheal Shermer puts it, smart people believe weird things.

QFT. As much as I hate to admit it sometimes, EAllusion is usually right on the mark.

My recommendation, Simon, is to ignore Buffalo and DrW here and address where you agree or disagree with what EAllusion wrote.

Good try, asbestosman, and very charitable to your brother in the Fold, but Simon does not heed recommendations unless they are from those to whom he delivers his tithing checks or their uplines in Hierarchy.

[Guest]

The correlation between high IQ and atheism is statistically significant. Statistics is not about absolutes, however, but rather generalities. There are plenty of highly intelligent believers.

Atheism does not cause high I.Q., nor is it caused by high I.Q. Some people who have high I.Q.s are atheist, and some are religious. This is not statistically significant unless you can show me the P values.

No one said anything about causation, but atheism and intelligence are positively correlated, while faith and intelligence are negatively correlated. How you interpret that is up to you.

It IS statistically significant. Your degree of access to the P values (or the T values or the F statistic) does not, in reality, change these numbers. This may come as a shock to you.

[_EAllusion]

I may have missed it in this thread, but has anyone actually linked a study that specifically correlated IQ to nontheism/theism? I've never seen one. Which IQ measure was used? What was the deviation? To what degree was statistical significance born out?

[_MCB]

As usual, the two people on this board with the strongest background in cog. psy. are in agreement.

Even though I am not an atheist, I respect much of what they say.
Religion does not have to put a damper on intellect. In fact, one can have the best of both worlds. It just requires humility, faith, the ability to state one's beliefs in the simplest form, and a good conscience, rather than a panic to please God.

Your degree of access to the P values (or the T values or the F statistic) does not, in reality, change these numbers. This may come as a shock to you.

True. Something, with a large sample, can be statistically significant, but the reason may be obscure and the absolute difference may be minimal.

[_asbestosman]

I may have missed it in this thread, but has anyone actually linked a study that specifically correlated IQ to nontheism/theism?

Buffalo linked to this article discussing it:

Evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa at the the London School of Economics and Political Science correlated data on these behaviors with IQ from a large national U.S. sample and found that, on average, people who identified as liberal and atheist had higher IQs. This applied also to sexual exclusivity in men, but not in women. The findings will be published in the March 2010 issue of Social Psychology Quarterly.

The IQ differences, while statistically significant, are not stunning -- on the order of 6 to 11 points -- and the data should not be used to stereotype or make assumptions about people, experts say.