PZ's concerns:

I think these comments have more to do with the sampling of a single individual, not the collective sampling of multiple individuals. In particular, one's score on an IQ test varies with all sorts of variables (fatigue, time of day, time since the last meal, etc) which are very likely not controlled in the sampling. This means that you can take the test twice and get two different scores. I couldn't find any information about the level of variation specifically on IQ tests based on these factors, but I do know that there have been a multitude of studies on the performance of children on tests that shows a significant shift in their performance based on the conditions.

Given Dr. Kanazawa's apparent inability to properly analyze data, it's not at all clear whether his claim of statistical significance is mathematically valid, let alone methodologically sound.

This connects to the question of methodologically sound, and the commentary I linked to on the other post. It seems that the assumptions he makes regarding the nature of intelligence are not consistent with the field (in particular, not empirically supported), so that his conclusions regarding the connection between IQ and intelligence may be completely meaningless.

I think this is the statement that links to your original comment:

It's not so much about statistical significance, but rather it's whether the statistically significant data means anything relative to the claims being made. Here's an example:

In town A, a sample is chosen and the average household in the sample makes $50,000. In town B, a similar study is conducted, and the average household makes $100,000. This study turns out to be statistically significant in the sense that the samples were large enough it's unlikely that the error will make a significant change in the computed averages. One might try to claim that this shows that the people in town B are wealthier.

But the reality is that the cost of living in town B is several times larger than the cost of living in town A, so that those living in town A actually have more spending power (ie, wealthier) than those living in town B.

This type of distinction is important when you're considering sociological data (psychometrics, in this case) because the thing you're measuring may turn out to be different from the thing that you're really trying to address.

fwiw, i would assume that atheists are more intelligent even beyond this IQ study. Atheism has been shown to be far more common the higher up you go into the education tree. People with grad degrees are more likely to be atheist than just undergrad degrees. People with undergrad degrees are more likely to be atheist than just HS degrees. and so on.

Related question:

Does IQ really = intelligence or is it just how developed you are at the skills they're testing?

Obviously if you do great at IQ tests you're not dumb, but if you do average does that mean you have average intelligence? Or are you just average at the skills they're testing for?

For example, people can obviously learn how to reason better and learn how to solve problems in a more methodical, systematic way. Has their "intelligence" gone up when they do this, or did they just use their intelligence to improve these skills?

What hinders us to believe is : Our ego. The more intelligent someone is, the more his ego has something to eat.
Each of these or food for our ego, the more we have from each of them, the less we believe: Power, Knowledge, Intelligence, Wealth.

For all you ppl who dont know how research work, these results are statistically significant. Thats what they're tested at.

@SixT4
IQ is intelligence in general.

Obv you cant derive from this if atheism causes higher IQ or higher IQ causes atheism or if something else is causing both, but imo, its probably higher IQ which causes the atheism.

You're not saying that atheists are more intelligent. You're saying that more intelligent people are atheists. I do think there's some merit to that, in particular I think the NAS study is much more interesting than this one, but it still doesn't have any concrete implications.

Not to thread derail, but IMO the worst part of the American political climate is that politics and religion are seemingly inseparable.

A Republican is in the same camp as a Christian Fundamentalist, and a Democrat is in the same camp as an Atheist.

I'm willing to bet a lot more would actually get done if political parties could stop pandering to peoples beliefs on wholly non-political issues.

[ ]These studies asked people if they call themselves "atheists"

IQ is clearly an attempt to measure intelligence but does it do it anywhere near well enough where you can say IQ = intelligence?

If you simply define intelligence as "a person's capacity to (1) acquire knowledge (i.e. learn and understand), (2) apply knowledge (solve problems), and (3) engage in abstract reasoning" (from wikipedia article on IQ) then I guess IQ does probably equate quite well to intelligence.

However, a person's ability to acquire knowledge, apply knowledge and engage in abstract reasoning is not necessarily fixed. Say you have two people with the exact same brain chemistry and raw "brain power" or intellect. One has been fed lots of knowledge that they were required to learn and were presented with related problems they had to solve. The other is encouraged to live lazily and has absolutely everything provided for them and never needs to think much.

Clearly the first person will have more opportunity to test and improve their ability to not only learn stuff, but to apply it. Hence they will have a higher "intelligence".

The point I'm getting at is that IQ tests measure someone's skill at thinking and not necessarily the ability or "power" of their brain. There's obviously a relationship between the two but it's not necessarily a direct correlation. According to Wikipedia the guy who invented the IQ test seem to agree.

This post is completely unrelated to the OP (aside from both being about intelligence) and is just some general thoughts on the idea of IQ and "intelligence".

Very, very false.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychometrics

General intelligence is known as g:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General...ligence_factor

IQ tests attempt to get at this value, but are not sufficient to measure it completely.

http://www.gifted.uconn.edu/siegle/r...telligence.pdf

Granted, this paper was published in 1996, but I don't think that in the last 14 years that the psychologists have come to a complete consensus on the nature of "intelligence" and it certainly seems false that the consensus is that IQ = g.

Good posts Aaron.

I think it's interesting that the focus has not yet been on the *WHY* part, but just the psychometrics. I don't have access to the actual paper, so I'll use the sciencedaily link:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0224132655.htm

This seems to be the underlying hypothesis that is used to explain the findings:

Here are some specific claims:

I have doubts that there's a clear link between "solving problems" and "recoginzing and understanding" relative to "adopting" novel evolutionary preferences (which would be the causal claim for becoming liberal or atheist). In particular, it's not at all clear that "liberalism" or "atheism" is a long term evolutionary advantage.

I've voiced complaints about evolutionary psychology in the past in SMP (almost a year ago now), and it doesn't seem that there's a lot of support to the idea that these types of claims are particularly testable, which brings to question the validity of such claims. To me, it seems that they are stories that are postulated about the nature of human existence and survival, but that they can never be anything more than a speculation.

I find this type of reasoning to be roughly on the same level as the book "Outliers" where overly simplistic reasoning is used to explain complex phenomena. People like these types of stories because they feel like they can understand it.

But the underlying question remains: Is it true? Is it sufficient in evolutionary psychology to make these claims and use it to attempt to draw inferences? Is there any way of verifying the underlying hypotheses?

I continue to have my doubts about the veracity of such claims in evolutionary psychology, and my doubts that it will ultimately prove to be a valid field of scientific research.

(FWIW - I wouldn't care so much if evolutionary psychology were not considered by many to be a "scientific" field. It seems to be much more about creating a pseudo-scientific meta-narrative for human existence rather than actually being science. The analogy would be that a "futurist" not doing science, so a "pastist" isn't either.)

I know the reason i dont believe is because i have a big ego and think of myself as God. Plus i hate him and i dont like his rules.

One more link regarding intelligence correlations:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/47...race-iq-65260/

The comments are in the context of race (ie, genetics), but since evolutionary psychology has a genetic basis*, then it's useful to compare the conversation in the linked thread to the conversation in this thread.

* If evolutionary psychology did not have a genetic basis, then everything in evolutionary psychology revolves purely around social conditioning and it would not make sense for us to have inherited any innate psychological features from our ancestors.

I take exception to your title. On 'average' atheists are more intelligent than the very religious, but there are certainly exceptionally intelligent and exceptionally dumb in both groups.

We also aren't sure what exactly, what these studies are a measurement of. People from very depressed economic areas of the country are more apt to cling onto religion as a means of hope. They are less likely to be educated and so on. Does this mean they're dumb? Absolutely not. Such studies may be nothing more than a finding of religiosity to affluence, rather than to an intelligence corelation.

It's the title of the article.

The first half of your equation is somewhat reasonable. The second half is utterly laughable. Would that I were so lucky that there were a political party that had divorced itself from religion. The vast majority of Democrats, especially those in politics, are religious, many quite religious. In fact, Barack Obama had one of the most overtly religious inaugurations of any recent President.

I think you are confusing "statistically significant" with something like "clinically significant." If you use a large enough sample size, then a 1 point difference in cholesterol among two populations could be statistically significant. But it is unlikely that this would be CLINICALLY significant, regardless of how large your sample is.

The simple reason IMO is childhood.

Almost nobody would believe in God if the idea was introduced to you at 20 years old.

However a child just absorbs what older people tell them.

For example if a child asks what colour that leaf is. And an adult says green. The child now thinks the leaf is green and does not question it.

If a child asks where the world comes from and an adults says God, the child thinks God made the world.

If you think about things your are likely intelligent. If you question what you are told you are more likely to be intelligent.

Atheists question what they were told when they were young.

Yes, I think you are right. My stats lingo is probably wanting. Thanks.

I bet we could find a correlation between religious and atheists and music preferences in the US. For example, the south has a huge 'religious' population and a fairly strong preference for country music.

Would it be in bad taste to mention low IQ again here?

So atheists don't believe leaves are green?

the problem with this forum is, if you don't know someone well, but have seen what some people post here... it is entirely impossible to tell if the person is joking or not. I would like to assume so but I've seen worse.