http://hypnosis.home.netcom.com/iq_vs_religiosity.htm

Shocking

most countries that are in a state of oppressive religious rule are also not advanced enough to have a great education system

i think in the next 50 years or so there will be a massive decrease in religious people. You simply don't see any meaningful number of school age Christians. I certainly know more Hindus and Muslims and I live in a very white area. The Muslims I know were sheltered more in Muslim communities where the kids really aren't allowed a great deal of outside interaction growing up and so would be arguably in an easier situation to manipulate.

Ultimately though religion is on the decline. Hopefully that means the second coming.

If this was in a different forum I would add some much needed names on there.

Or less wars.

Countries don't have religious beliefs, individuals do. Yes oppressive regimes can dictate what beliefs the people are required to endorse, but the decision of what to believe is still an individual decision. So why break it down by country? And also...

that best fit line was quite unnecessary.

And if they don't put it there then they get criticized for that.

Relax.

YOU RELAX OK BUDDY

Misleading as well, I think. It seems to me there are two distinct populations, the correlation is much stronger amongst nations with a high proportion of people who find religion important. Amongst the "religion-is-not-important" nations the correlation is very weak. This gets lost by imposing one line of best fit.

We had a thread in SMP a while back where they had an IQ graph against various christian sect. Showing a coorelation againt literalism, anybody want to find and post that as well?

Without clicking the link, I'm guessing the country in the red circle is the US. Am I right?

Obv the U.S. is the outlier, we're smarter but more stubborn about it.

LOL....this graph is reminiscent of the one that Madoff was mailing his clients with a perfect 12 percent dividend return annually....

If its too good to be true then....

A frustrated umbrella salesman in Senegal: "You hold it above you. Other way, use the handle. No, no, you've got to open it up first."

But the correlation also exists in both clusters independently. Anyhow, you know just like everyone else that there's more where this came from.

I love all that people have tried to do so far is drag the validity of this down instead of objectively accepting the information it's gathered.

Personal bias much?

Is that seriously your best argument to drag this graph down? If so, you've already lost.

the graph is very interesting. it would indicate a pattern that those with a higher iq are less inclined to be religious. my question is, is it better to be smart or dumb?

Smart............................................. ..

Proof for the graph.

I didnt mean misleading in the sense that people who are religious are not really more likely to have a lower IQ - they are. (Although this study is a measure of mean IQ within a country, rather than individuals, I nonetheless have no problem conceding that point, such as it is).

I meant it was misleading in that it conceals valuable information (although when you say the correlation exists in both clusters - I'm not so sure there is a statistically significant correlation amongst the countries whose citizens are less likely to rate religion as very important, just by eyeing the data and considering the sample size).

In fact, amongst countries with a large proportion of citizens who rate religion as very significant (including the US) the correlation is even stronger than the graph suggests.

does it also rate the culture of those respective countries?