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In other words, probably not a linear relationship. In my experience, theists are overrepresented at both extremes of accomplishment, among those who are poorly educated and among the most brilliant, typically innovators or outside-of-the-box thinkers.
The general idea is that those in the former group represent people who are religious because they lack scientific education. The latter group represent people who are intelligent enough to see through secular presuppositions and realize the limitations of science.
Before this thread gets derailed into a to-and-fro about racism (or Dawkinsisms such as "all religious people are stupid"), most of the criticisms against the OP's arguments have yet to be properly addressed:
The following posts point out methodological errors, implying a false or weak correlation: 4, 8, 11, 13, 14, 16, 17, 23, 33, 38, 55
The following posts claim correlation-causation errors, such as confounders and reverse causality: 6, 7, 20, 37, 43, 49, 64
Last edited by CTDominion; 12-06-2016 at 01:17 AM..
Reason: archived link
Here is a clip in the heart of Dublin Ireland. It shows that Ireland is still religious with some of the responses compared to the majority of European countries.
Except the video shows no such thing. Quite the opposite. It showed that of a randomly interviewed TINY section of the public they could find ONLY ONE person who still goes to church because they actually believe and want to go there.
How does that show that "Ireland is still religious"? Did you watch the same video as me?
Actually the opposite is true. Bums on seats in churches are down. Priests taking second jobs to make ends meet. Vocations to seminaries like Maynooth are down. Calls for the separation of the church and education are getting louder. "Educate Together" schools are on the rise and their admission lists are over subscribed. Votes backed by the church are being lost (such as the recent Referendum allowing gay marriage). And when a loop hole was shown in the catholic church doctrine that allowed people to defect from the church....... the church had to CHANGE canon law on the matter in order to close it because so many people were rushing to avail of it.
Religion and the relevance of the church is so dilute in Ireland that it is in it's death throes.
So tell me again how Ireland is still religious? SURE it has a blasphemy law which needs to be repealed and it takes a religious oath to enter the, mostly ceremonial, position of President. But by all means show me where the religion is in my home country that I clearly know a LOT more about than you. Regale me. I am agog.
In other words, probably not a linear relationship. In my experience, theists are overrepresented at both extremes of accomplishment, among those who are poorly educated and among the most brilliant, typically innovators or outside-of-the-box thinkers.
The general idea is that those in the former group represent people who are religious because they lack scientific education. The latter group represent people who are intelligent enough to see through secular presuppositions and realize the limitations of science.
Before this thread gets derailed into a to-and-fro about racism (or Dawkinsisms such as "all religious people are stupid"), most of the criticisms against the OP's arguments have yet to be properly addressed:
The following posts point out methodological errors, implying a false or weak correlation: 4, 8, 11, 13, 14, 16, 17, 23, 33, 38, 55
The following posts claim correlation-causation errors, such as confounders and reverse causality: 6, 7, 20, 37, 43, 49, 64
Jayvanderbilt is talking about populations. You are citing individuals. Yes the most intelligent person may well be religious. But so what? And to conclude there is not a linear population relationship based on a study, if that's what it is, with an n of 10? Is that because you are religious and consider yourself at the top of the intelligence rankings? Its ironic you would cite that, then go through the trouble of trawling through posts to attribute methodological errors.
I don't really understand your connection of scientific understanding and religious beliefs anyway. Science essentially answers the how questions, not the why. While most religious how's have turned out to be bunk, the religious why's are not challengeable in that way. An appreciation of the limits of scientific understanding doesn't somehow automatically lead to a religious belief to fill in the gaps. But for those who necessarily have to have an answer (which, psychologically speaking, may exist in a preponderance of the population), it can lead there for sure. There is a strong emotional basis in humans for religion, and in the human world emotion supersedes intelligence repeatedly.
Read the study more closely. As I pointed out, the critical age was between 2 and 7. The studies couldn't properly account for that due to the age variation in adoption. In addition, the parenting style is important. In fact - that's the all of it from 2 to 7. The genetic component is determined at conception, so the impact environmentally of the parents is all in their parenting style. The parenting style of the adoptive parents was not quantified or measured in any way. In addition, see my comments about the affect of childhood trauma on IQ. Adoption by two non-birth parents in itself, especially at ages after the child becomes what we consider fully conscious, is itself traumatic. Chronic trauma is prevalent in adopted children. Add the component of the child and the parents being of different races (especially in the US sociological background of black & white racial dynamics) and you get a confounded mix.
The study says some things, but it certainly does not stand for the proposition you are stating it does.
Jayvanderbilt is talking about populations. You are citing individuals. Yes the most intelligent person may well be religious. But so what? And to conclude there is not a linear population relationship based on a study, if that's what it is, with an n of 10? Is that because you are religious and consider yourself at the top of the intelligence rankings? Its ironic you would cite that, then go through the trouble of trawling through posts to attribute methodological errors.
He is actually making a type of claim known as a universal generalization. I am showing him how easy such claims are to falsify.
I don't really understand your connection of scientific understanding and religious beliefs anyway. Science essentially answers the how questions, not the why. While most religious how's have turned out to be bunk, the religious why's are not challengeable in that way. An appreciation of the limits of scientific understanding doesn't somehow automatically lead to a religious belief to fill in the gaps. But for those who necessarily have to have an answer (which, psychologically speaking, may exist in a preponderance of the population), it can lead there for sure. There is a strong emotional basis in humans for religion, and in the human world emotion supersedes intelligence repeatedly.
Most educated atheists today subscribe to some type of scientism, usually some variation of logical positivism.
These are the ones who posit that religion's hows have been falsified by science, like you, and that religion's whys are cognitively 'meaningless' so not even worth addressing in the first place. In reality, neither religion's hows nor whys are disprovable by science.
The reason why many think that the hows of religion can be addressed by science is because science, under the (mis)guidance of positivism, has been extruding into metaphysical domains for which it is fundamentally unequipped, for example in the study of origins.
Despite the fact that it's an obsolete doctrine, positivism has been acting as a type of pall over all knowledge, crudely blotting out the evidentiary and rationally intuitive inferences to a theistic world view, or to an agency basis for existence.
In my experience, those who understand the limits of science and the obsolescence of logical positivism aren't using "God of the Gaps" reasoning. They are merely opening themselves up to suppressed knowledge. This is the same knowledge discussed by the pioneers of rationalism, such as Descartes, Kant and Leibniz, who considered belief in God inseparable from the foundations of reason.
Last edited by CTDominion; 12-06-2016 at 12:19 PM..
These are the ones who posit that religion's hows have been falsified by science, like you, and that religion's whys are cognitively 'meaningless' so not even worth addressing in the first place.
Actually the more common atheist position that I am aware of, having worked very closely with a relatively very large number of them, is not that the "why" is meaningless and not worth addressing...... but that the "how" and the "why" are essentially the same thing and are VERY much worth addressing in the first place.
But my all means do not let atheists telling you what they think get in the way of you telling people what they think.
Quote:
Originally Posted by CTDominion
In reality, neither religion's hows nor whys are disprovable by science.
In reality, there is simply not a shred of argument, evidence, data or reasoning on offer to suggest the core claim of many religions are true. That being that the explanation for our existence lies in a non-human intelligent and intentional agency.
And I predict you will join the throngs of people who will either ignore that fact, or entirely fail to offer a SHRED of such argument, evidence, data or reasoning.
Good luck with that.
Quote:
Originally Posted by CTDominion
science, under the (mis)guidance of positivism, has been extruding into metaphysical domains for which it is fundamentally unequipped, for example in the study of origins.
Yet outside of your navel out here in reality science has very much been studying origins and studying the history of our universe. And we are getting steadily but SLOWLY closer to answers every day. Which can not be said of religion which appears to simply make it up, and stick with it despite no evidence and often in the face of it.
But I guess it is easier to attack a label like "positivism" while ignoring the realities outside that label. When you find yourself going after a label and not going after the realities around you, then you are really just on a journey of navel gazing and the self confirmation bias of a narrative.
Quote:
Originally Posted by CTDominion
Among the 10 most intelligent people in the World, at least 8 think God Exists and 6 are believing Christians
Loving your link as evidence of your biases. Go down through it and pretty much every one of them has words like "APPERENTLY" they scored high or "ALLEGEDLY" they score high. No wonder you have such an anti science bias as even a MODICUM of application of the scientific method would require some level of control over how you select your data set to self feed your own narratives. And you would not be doing it based on what is "apparent" or "alleged".
That said there are genuinely good reasons to expect people of higher intelligence to be sometimes more prone to infection by religious memes. Newton, possibly the most intelligent man our species has ever produced, subscribed to some pretty unsubstantiated nonsense too for example. Quite often it is simply Hubris that brings them to this point. Newton for example was so invested in his own brilliance that the only explanation he could think of when he hit the limits of his ability to rationally explain the universe.... was to invoke a god. It barely appears to have occurred to him to consider the possibility that the explanation was simply beyond him. And now in modern times we HAVE rational scientific explanations for many of the things he invoked the hand of a designer to explain.
Actually the more common atheist position that I am aware of, having worked very closely with a relatively very large number of them, is not that the "why" is meaningless and not worth addressing...... but that the "how" and the "why" are essentially the same thing and are VERY much worth addressing in the first place.
But my all means do not let atheists telling you what they think get in the way of you telling people what they think.
In reality, there is simply not a shred of argument, evidence, data or reasoning on offer to suggest the core claim of many religions are true. That being that the explanation for our existence lies in a non-human intelligent and intentional agency.
And I predict you will join the throngs of people who will either ignore that fact, or entirely fail to offer a SHRED of such argument, evidence, data or reasoning.
Good luck with that.
Yet outside of your navel out here in reality science has very much been studying origins and studying the history of our universe. And we are getting steadily but SLOWLY closer to answers every day. Which can not be said of religion which appears to simply make it up, and stick with it despite no evidence and often in the face of it.
But I guess it is easier to attack a label like "positivism" while ignoring the realities outside that label. When you find yourself going after a label and not going after the realities around you, then you are really just on a journey of navel gazing and the self confirmation bias of a narrative.
Loving your link as evidence of your biases. Go down through it and pretty much every one of them has words like "APPERENTLY" they scored high or "ALLEGEDLY" they score high. No wonder you have such an anti science bias as even a MODICUM of application of the scientific method would require some level of control over how you select your data set to self feed your own narratives. And you would not be doing it based on what is "apparent" or "alleged".
That said there are genuinely good reasons to expect people of higher intelligence to be sometimes more prone to infection by religious memes. Newton, possibly the most intelligent man our species has ever produced, subscribed to some pretty unsubstantiated nonsense too for example. Quite often it is simply Hubris that brings them to this point. Newton for example was so invested in his own brilliance that the only explanation he could think of when he hit the limits of his ability to rationally explain the universe.... was to invoke a god. It barely appears to have occurred to him to consider the possibility that the explanation was simply beyond him. And now in modern times we HAVE rational scientific explanations for many of the things he invoked the hand of a designer to explain.
Every single argument in this post is based on the presumption of positivism, from the belief that science and religion are mutually contradictory, to your standards of evidentiary proof for theism, to the belief that science can address topics such as origins and unobservables.
This means that all I need to do to dismantle your whole post is to show you that logical positivism is obsolete:
Oswald Hanfling, Chapter 5 "Logical positivism", In Stuart G Shanker, Philosophy of Science, Logic and Mathematics in the Twentieth Century (London: Routledge 1996), pp 193–94.
If you want to discuss it further, you should probably open up a thread on the subject in the philosophy forum, because it is wandering into off-topic territory here.
Every single argument in this post is based on the presumption of positivism
Thank you for making and proving the point I made for me. That your entire MO in the discussion is to dodge replying to what people actually said, by simply erecting a label and attacking the label instead.
You basically hit REPLY on my post then replied to nothing in it, choosing instead to reply to a label YOU are using that I am not.
Quote:
Originally Posted by CTDominion
from the belief that science and religion are mutually contradictory, to your standards of evidentiary proof for theism, to the belief that science can address topics such as origins and unobservables.
Nice of you to dodge my rebuttal of your position by merely restating your position. So I will simply copy and paste what you ignored:
Outside of your navel out here in reality science has very much been studying origins and studying the history of our universe. And we are getting steadily but SLOWLY closer to answers every day. Which can not be said of religion which appears to simply make it up, and stick with it despite no evidence and often in the face of it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by CTDominion
This means that all I need to do to dismantle your whole post is to show you that logical positivism is obsolete:
No that is "all you need to do" to ignore my post and reply to nothing I actually said. Quite the MO to establish for yourself and I am happy to point it out to people as long as you are happy to continue at it. You have replied to NOTHING I said. And what is more comical is I predicted that would be exactly what you would do. It is like I drew the chalk outline of a dead body on the ground and you obediently walked over and lay down in it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by CTDominion
If you want to discuss it further, you should probably open up a thread on the subject in the philosophy forum, because it is wandering into off-topic territory here.
Quite the opposite actually as this thread is about exploring why many measures used show countries with less religiosity do better than countries with high religiosity. And I think divesting our discourse of the kind of dodges and ploys you engage in is VERY MUCH one of those reasons. Moderate Religiosity provides fertile ground for the kind of equivocation, obfuscation and nonsense you are pedaling. It does not just CAUSE such things in our discourse and society, but FACILITATES further versions of it.
But the rational people, states and societies spot these linguistic gymnastics and say "hang on, stop a second, you are not engaging with reality, you are not engaging with what was actually said..... you are merely erecting a straw man label and attacking that instead and simply dodging and talking past the substance of everything that was thrown at you".
And any society that starts doing that, and torching the fertile ground in which such distortions occur, is going to fare better in my guess.
Thank you for making and proving the point I made for me. That your entire MO in the discussion is to dodge replying to what people actually said, by simply erecting a label and attacking the label instead.
[Incoherent and off-topic rambling]
Sorry to break it to you, but on the Spinal Tap amplifier of positivistic zeal, you'd score an 11.
In order to understand why this is all relevant, you need to think one level "meta" from where you are right now. I'm showing you that the very rules and standards by which you demand arguments and evidence are obsolete and untenable.
Ah right so now that I have uncovered your MO of ignoring what I write in order to attack a straw man deflection label you have erected..... you have simply ignored all I wrote and lashed out with a personal comment about me instead. This could not be more formulaic and predictable if you gave me your password and let me write your posts FOR you. You are literally making my point for me better than I am making it myself. Wonderful stuff.
Just because you are unable to provide any arguments, evidence, data or reasoning to support religious thinking.... that does not warrant you merely declaring by fiat that those standards are untenable. They are untenable for YOU because you can not support your narratives within even the most labile of frameworks. So you have to throw them all out and make your own. As I said: Wonderful stuff.
But if you want to pocket the ad hominem throw away comments and actually reply to the now TWO POSTS full of stuff you have entirely dodged.... I am here for you.
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