Talk:Religiosity and intelligence/Archive 1

message: Some of the citations of this article link only to hearsay about studies, instead of the original studies.  This should be avoided when you're talking about the content of the study itself.   Citation #7 links to a short summary that doesn't link to the study to which it refers, and that study isn't on Google Scholar.   Please find the original study that's referred to in http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/050811_scientists_god.html .   If the original study cannot be found, the paragraph should be removed. 130.126.245.188 02:10, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  avoid hearsay, link to original studies  

message: Educational attainment and IQ are associated strongly. The mean IQ of scientist, the college educated, individuals with professional degrees, etc. are all much greater than average. The source of this relationship has even been examined by the methods of behavior genetics and found to be greatly heritable. For example, see:
* Rowe, D. C., W. J. Vesterdal, and J. L. Rodgers, "The Bell Curve Revisited: How Genes and Shared Environment Mediate IQ-SES Associations," University of Arizona, 1997
* Tambs K, Sundet JM, Magnus P, Berg K. "Genetic and environmental contributions to the covariance between occupational status, educational attainment, and IQ: a study of twins." Behav Genet. 1989 Mar;19(2):209-22.
The relationship between occupation, income, education and IQ is well established. --Rikurzhen 19:16, May 28, 2005 (UTC)
: Individual correlations may be well-established. However, correlation is not transitive: that is, you cannot draw the conclusion that because A is correlated with B, and B (or let's say B', since in separate studies the factor will not be quite the same thing: different populations, different methods, etc.) is correlated with C, you cannot draw the conclusion that A is correlated with C. It requires a separate set of data to establish that correlation; and it's why we should be careful in the article not to smear measurements of different things (level of education, for example, or membership in certain societies) together. Demi T/C 21:23, 2005 May 29 (UTC)
:: That's fine. Except some studies find correlations between high IQ and low religiosity. I haven't looked hard enough to see if multiple-correlation studies have been done. You could help by looking into the literature. --Rikurzhen 21:52, May 29, 2005 (UTC)
:: Oh, I guess you're wondering why I mentioned IQ and education... because they are both highly heritable. While heritability is a correlation as well, the direction of causation is almost certain (from genes to phenotype). It all paints an interesting picture, but I fear the final research needed to say something meaningful has not been done. --Rikurzhen 21:57, May 29, 2005 (UTC)
::* Well, I confess I'm not sure how the two sources above relate to the "Genetics" section you've added: this article is ostensibly on intelligence and religiousness, so I'm not sure how establishing the heritability of intelligence (or the other factors you mention) adds to this article (maybe it belongs in Intelligence quotient or another subarticle? I'm also not clear on how the claim that religiosity is inherited is supported--is that also in the two sources above? Demi T/C 01:34, 2005 May 30 (UTC)
:::* The article is on religiousness and intelligence, and both have been shown to be heritable.  This seems germane to establish in the article.  Excerpt from the reference:
:::: "A study published in the current issue of Journal of Personality studied adult male monozygotic (MZ) and dizygotic (DZ) twins to find that difference in religiousness are influenced by both genes and environment. But during the transition from adolescence to adulthood, genetic factors increase in importance while shared environmental factors decrease. Environmental factors (i.e. parenting and family life) influence a child’s religiousness, but their effects decline with the transition into adulthood. An analysis of self-reported religiousness showed that MZ twins maintained their religious similarity over time, while the DZ twins became more dissimilar. “These correlations suggest low genetic and high environmental influences when the twins were young but a larger genetic influence as the twins age” the authors state." TRUE
::: --Nectarflowed T 07:26, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  IQ and education 

message: I have restored the previous version, as it appears from the edit summary that the previous reversion was due to a misunderstanding rather than an editorial decision; it is perfectly acceptable to delete content from articles on VfD if that is done to improve the article by removing unsourced and/or POV material rather than as vandalism to make the page appear worse. If it was an editorial decision, please indicate as much; I won't concern myself further with it.  Mindspillage (spill yours?) 19:59, 28 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Deleting content on articles up for deletion 

message: Currently, I think this article is in depserate need of balance. Part of that is of course, I think its reasonable to suspect the original authors had a POV. The other part is that the article is a bit thin. It needs to clearly establish what religiousness is, what intelligence is, and how that is diffrent from education and superstition. Furthermore, it needs to define what degrees of intelligence and religiousosity we're talking about and so on and so forth.
Also. Just to see if you're truly NPOV, think about what you would want to see on an equivlent article: Religiousness and morality--Tznkai 5 July 2005 16:27 (UTC)
: One issue is that it kind of is treating "religious" as monolithic in a way even the studies it cites do not. I mentioned a bit about how five of the studies only indicated that smarter kids had "more liberal religious views." Anyway there are many religious which reject modern science or education. The Amish, Primitive Baptists, etc. However there are other denominations that embrace science wholeheartedly. From what I've read in encyclopedias and other sources Quakers were overrepresented in science academies compared to their population numbers. To give a sense of that estimates indicate there are currently 300,000 Quakers in the world and in least one of them is a Nobel Prize winner in Physics. Now there's estimated to be in least 200 million outright atheists in the world. So there'd have to be about 660 Nobel Prize winning atheists to have the same rate per-capita and that's virtually impossible. The Zoroastrians I believe are also overrepresented in science. I'm just not sure how to write something up to show the non-monolithic nature of being "religious."--T. Anthony 09:57, 26 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Thoughts on balance and accuracy 

message: See the full article here: 
Rice University recently released a study on religiousness among scientists. It seems that the findings are worthy of mention here. A couple of points pulled from the news story:
* "social sciences are more likely to believe in God and attend religious services than researchers in the natural sciences"
* "nearly 38 percent of natural scientists ... only 31 percent of the social scientists do not believe"
Feco 20:24, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I put it in. I feared I'd bias it too much the other way, but for balance I switched the one link from IQ scores by nation to TIMSS. The reason I see that as "balance" is TIMSS is more credible then a site saying most Africans are effectively mentally challenged or retarded. (Whichever term is preferred)--T. Anthony 09:34, 26 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  New study worth inclusion 

message: I worry about saying this, but I wonder about some of the inclusions of Jewish scientists. As this is about religiousness and intelligence it seems like Jewish Nobel Laureates should be limited to people who are known to be of the Jewish faith. I believe many Jewish Nobel Laureates are Jewish by ethnicity and religiously are agnostic or atheist. Still in the "intellectuals who are religious" category I probably should've added Isaac Bashevis Singer or Marc Chagall. I just worry the lists in this article could lead to a kind of "list war" which benefits nothing.--T. Anthony 08:38, 31 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Good point. Also worthy of thought is that these arguments always end up being Christian vs. non-Christian or not-so Christian, etc. but all Western nonetheless. The lists, while perhaps not completely irrelevant, are counterproductive. I also don't see names such as the Muslim al-Khwarizmi, or the "apostate" Khayyám. And I don't know what else to use besides Nobel Laureates anyway. The only two non-Europeans I can think of off the top of my head besides Tutu and Annan are Tagore and Gandhi. Why is this relevant? Because, while in India Parsis may be the most educated (and education and intelligence are two seperate things - you can have one without the other), they aren't calling the Hindus stupid and in turn the Hindus may have a history of communal violence with Muslims but they aren't arguing about who has the bigger I.Q., etc. Yes they argue about many things, but only extremists deal in absolutes (forgive the platitude). Add in Sikhism, Jainism and Buddhism and we've got ourself quite a few different belief systems similar to (the varying shades of) Christianity, Atheism, Agnosticism, Deism, etc. I would also imagine many Japanese to be intelligent right? Where are the Shintoists, Zen Buddhists, etc. And so on and so on around the world. So either rename this 'Christianity and intelligence', or get rid of it. The "see also" links don't exactly cut it for me.  Khirad 11:54, 15 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  You are correct that it is essentially "Christianity and intelligence" although there's a brief mention that kids more devout in their Judaism are allegedly dumber than the ones not. Still mostly it's studying a very Judaeo-Christian world and making points based on that. Even at that the ultimate point is even more specific and essentially equals "Religious Right and Intelligence." It doesn't say that outright, but several of the studies it mentions indicate those with a "liberal view of their religion" do fine. Actually it's really more specific still and amounts to "Conservative Judaeo-Christianity and Math/Science aptitude" as it has little to support the idea in other academic fields.  Personally I'd be for dumping it, I can't imagine this in a a real Encyclopedia, but it apparently survived a delete vote. What can you do?--T. Anthony 15:40, 18 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Recent additions 

message: I think this article is an incorrect and illogical attack on people who hold traditional religous beliefs. For example it says Jewish achievments have nothing to do with their religion because many of the people are 'strongly athiest'. First off, strongly athiest means you strongly believe there is no God, this is still a religous position, a position of faith. Only agnostics should count as non-religous people. But this is a silly topic since all people have some sort of ideology based on what they see around them, often non religous people are socialists, or environmentalists, or athiests. Every single human whose ever lived comes to ideological positions based on information they recieved, and if they are intellectually lazy it seems like common sense, usually they never realize the leap of faith they have taken. More importantly, what the example shows is that many of these so called non-religous people who are called smarter, were raised religous and left their religion. This is ignoring the fact that religion may still be a big factor why they seem so intelligent. I think non-religous people should also have to be raised as agnostic for their intelligence to count as seperated from religion. I mean how many athiest civilizations have arisin in history? Religions form a natural organization and an educated and scholared class. I could argue that religion makes a collective society more intelligent, and is the reason for their success.
People who think intelligence can be summed up by a number, I have to question their intelligence. Suppose hypothetically an intelligence test was designed by a creature of perfect intelligence (God) that outputs a single number. Even in this case IQ tests are flawed and show nothing. We are all different, and better at somethings worse at others. This one number does not tell if we are good at math or english, logic or art, quick witted or a deep thinker, genius at certain things or all around intelligent. If it is true that education increases both IQ score and the likelyness of rejecting religion, I will argue that this is not because education makes you more intelligent, but because schools are dominated by socialist dogma, and socialists indoctrinate people against religion. If education increases IQ score, this at least shows that IQ scores do not measure inate intelligence we are born with but rather learned behavior 71.108.194.98 19:58, 6 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree this article is, or in least was, basically ridiculous. I haven't checked it for awhile though so maybe it's improved. Mostly though it was based on intensely biased, and deeply misleading, studies. However atheism is so small in the US I guess they feel the need to speak out as much as possible on the Net.(Why many atheists in Britain are almost as outspoken is more of a mystery to me) Still there are studies that indicate atheists are more suicidal and more likely to get drunk. I would never ever think of starting "Atheism and suicidal ideation" or "Atheism and Alcoholism" article out of respect for them. It's disappointing that only goes one way.--T. Anthony 10:59, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  I agree these articles are often started with an agenda, but I think that unlike the topics you mention there is a case for having this article, don't you? It is, if nothing else, a commonly debated and researched topic. Thomas Ash 13:27, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

text: First, atheism is not a religion.  You are using a weak definition of "faith" in order to sneak in your stronger version.  Look up the general requirements for a religion, including but not limited to codified traditions, supernatural trappery, etc, and tell me how atheism conforms at all.  Secondly, I would not support an article titled "atheism and suicide" or "atheism and alcoholism", because that's only representative of one set of beliefs.  Rather, "suicide and religion" (already exists) or "religion and alcoholism" would be appropriate titles where the same content would be applicable. -- goatasaur 04:28, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Which is a nice way to make it where nothing bad can be said of atheists. Still how about "Secular Humanism and alcoholism" or "Marxism and suicide." Added to that no, "religion and blank" doesn't work much better than "atheism and blank." Religion is a broad thing which means all kinds of things. For example is this article really dealing with religion in general? Is there any evidence here that applies to all religions? Added to that if you read this article you'll see that in many cases it's clearly equating generalized theism with lack of intelligence. If generalized atheism is too broad, why isn't generalized theism too broad? There are non-religious theists and there are also religions which are not theistic. Like Buddhism or Jainism. What in this article shows that Buddhism negatively correlates with intelligence? This article is trollery. I know because I've been on forums where an earlier variant of it was used and that was the whole point of it. The purpose is to tick off theists and make atheists feel good. It's just the kind of trollery this place can live with it. I'm not editing it or do anything to it as I concede it represents something about this place.--T. Anthony 04:57, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I'm not looking for an "out" for atheists and I don't understand how you came to that conclusion.  The hypothetical "religion and x" article can include information on atheists, religious-atheists, whatever, as long as it's sourced and relevant.  Those would all be in the context of religion.  I also don't understand how you can call the article a troll.  There are caveats in every section and nothing seems particularly baited. -- goatasaur 11:19, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

text:  Flashed back to when it started, sorry. It is improved from the original version. At heart I don't think this is encyclopedic and I think "religiousness" is a very broad term as is "intelligence." So although I still think it's inherently pointless it's not as bad as all that. I just get in a mood sometimes.--T. Anthony 14:35, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

text: Goatasaur's is correct about atheism. And I don't think this is "trollish" in the slightest, if anything Race and intelligence as a topic is more controversial so does that mean all the researchers involved are trolls? This topic simply documents the relationship between two variables – something that is widely done in science. Skinnyweed 16:17, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Atheism is religious and intelligence is not a number 

message: The second paragraph begins by saying that many intellectuals are religious. The next sentence offers a number of lists of people. Notice for example "List of Jewish Nobel Prize Winners". By doing so, the reader gets the impression that these lists support the idea that many intellectuals are religious. This however, doesn't follow! Remember that being a jew does not simply refer to a religion, but also to an ethicity. Thus, it is possible to be a jew but not be religious. In fact, on this very list ("List of Jewish Nobel Prize Winners") Steven Weinberg is mentioned. A man who is quoted in the first section as having said that "religion is complete nonsense"! It is my opinion that this paragraph has to be changed. PJ 22:49, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I concur. --Rikurzhen 23:43, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

text: Nobody's responded to this for fifteen days, so I'm removing the paragraph. -- Schaefer 19:20, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Comment on section Opinions of famous intellectuals 

message: i'm moving this text from the criticism section to be worked on:
: Another Gallup International study indicated that internationally the highly educated are slightly more likely to describe themselves as "a religious person" than those with only a secondary education. Although the difference is insignificant and the most educated describe themselves as "a religious person" 12 percent less often then those with little or no education. They are also twice as likely to identify as atheist. There was no discernable difference in percentage terms between those with secondary education and higher educations on the issue of self-identifying as either "a convinced atheist" or "non-religious."
this data supports the reported IQ-religiocity correlation, here are the data tables for education and income:
Table 2: Education
Category, Total, No education / only basic education, Secondary school, High level education
* A religious person, 66%, 76%, 62%, 64%
* Not a religious person, 25%, 18%, 27%, 27%
* A convinced atheist, 6%, 3%, 7%, 7%
* DK/NA, 3%, 3%, 3%, 2%
Source: Gallup International Association – Voice of the People 2005
Table 3: Household Income
Category, Total, Low / Med Low, Med / Med High, High
* A religious person, 66%, 70%, 63%, 62%
* Not a religious person, 25%, 22%, 28%, 28%
* A convinced atheist, 6%, 5%, 6%, 8%
* DK/NA, 3%, 3%, 3%, 2%
Source: Gallup International Association – Voice of the People 2005
religiocity drops from 76% to 64% from low to high education and 70% to 62% from low to high income --Rikurzhen 01:31, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: A problem with the text you quoted was that it was ridiculously confusing, giving decidedly mixed messages. Well moved. Thomas Ash 10:24, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  moved from criticism section 

message: A survey of members of the United States National Academy of Sciences showed that 72% are outright atheists, 21% are agnostic and only 7% admit to belief in a personal God. (Note that the belief in a personal God and the belief that a supreme being exists are two very different different questions. When the later question is asked the above poll numbers are nearly turned upside down, as shown in the links below.)
The extra notation there looked like it referred to the dataset in question, but the Nature report says nothing of the sort. I removed the notation, as the below links don't actually appear, and doesn't have anything to do with the Nature report on the subject.
: Probably a good idea. The main, and possibly only, purpose of this article is to encourage pride in being non-theist. Anything that diminishes the thesis that atheists really are smarter I've noticed is pretty much always removed as it does sap the point of the thing. (I'm tempted to create an "atheists and suicide" article so theists can feel good too, but I won't)--T. Anthony 12:18, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Such an article already exists: Suicide and religion. From a page linked to at the end of that article: "The United States exhibits typical rates of youth suicide [...], which show little if any correlation with theistic factors in the prosperous democracies [...]." From later in the article: "Youth suicide is an exception to the general trend because there is not a significant relationship between it and religious or secular factors." If you have evidence that contradicts this, it might be worth mentioning over at Suicide and religion. This is getting a bit off topic for this talk page. -- Schaefer 21:18, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Nevermind the bit about the article. It just now got redirected to Religious views of suicide. Still, I'm personally curious what studies exist that suggest a correlation between secularism and suicide rates. -- Schaefer 22:03, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  First youth suicide isn't the main factor in suicide in most nations. Middle age or older suicide is usually more common. I believe New Zealand is an exception to that as their rate of young male suicide is high. Anyway studies consistently show atheists and secularist have a less negative view of suicide. Added to that suicide rates are consistently higher in Eastern Europe and Scandinavia. Both those regions have high rates of atheism according to Gallup International. Granted correlation isn't causation, but to a large extent this is also working on correlation. There was also some study I read in Free Inquiry that did indicate a higher rate of depression and suicide among atheists. In any event I'm not really interested in doing an article on this as these "X groups are dumb, depressed, or generally bad" articles strike me as unencyclopedic activism.--T. Anthony 04:05, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  According to the study "Religious Affiliation and Suicide Attempt" (K. Dervic MD et al.), published in the The American Journal of Psychiatry, there is a positive correlation between religious affiliating and a lower tendency of suicide (http://www.adherents.com/misc/religion_suicide.html, http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/abstract/161/12/2303). However, the conlusion in particular was that atheists have "fewer moral objections to suicide". Thus, the study does not show that atheists are less happy than belivers. A more reasonable conclusion, I believe is that a person below the threshold for what constitutes a life worth living often has an additional reason reason for not committing suicide if he/she is a believer, i.e. a moral reason. But whether there should be a moral reason for living besides life quality is a different and equally controversial topic (see e.g. "Euthenasia", http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthanasia). So I don't know why theists would feel particularly good about the proposed article "atheists and suicide". PJ 14:28, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Actually that's what I thought, although I thought they also a higher depression rate. As a theist I would be pretty good with such an article. Although that could be the problem with it. Atheists being more okay with euthanasia strikes me as a big negative to atheism. Chucking out because of an inability to deal with suffering, as a guy who has had 200 bone fractures, strikes me as kind of pathetic. So I wouldn't create such an article. That said I think this article inherently has all kinds of POV issues. They have been dealt with well enough no one is protesting it, but it's not just great. "Religiosity" is after all rather open to interpretation even moreso than intelligence and the initial article was largely based on disparagment. I still feel that ideally this shouldn't exist, but my ideals can't be made the norm here nor should they be.--T. Anthony 07:19, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

text:  This is probably not the right forum for this discussion, but I will give a short reply anyway. I don't see how you, as a theist, can be happy about such an article. It shouldn't move you either way, in my opinion. Having a moral reason not to committ suicide, is to have a moral duty not to committ suicide. That means that someone else is stipulating when it is OK for you to die. No matter if you perceive your live as torture, you are still obligated to go on living in order to please someone else. Your pain and suffering is just not enough to decide the case. Now you probaly say, as a theist, that this obligation is to a god (e.g. Yahweh, Allah, Zeus.), and that this shows that belief in a god is good. But this is merely to beg the question. You are assuming what you are trying to prove, i.e. that suicide is morally reprehensible. An atheist who does not think that there is a moral duty to go on living under any circumstances, could with the same logic say that this shows why belief in a god is bad. Thus, the argument shouldn't move you either way. Consider, for example, the following sitution: you live in a country ruled by a dictator who commands you to go on living no matter what, or he will punish your family for your disobedience. (Remember that your moral actions decide the outcome for you in your after life - i.e. reward or punishment - so the situation is analogous.) Would you say that this command adds any credibility to the dictator? I would think not. PJ 14:42, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  "belief in a personal God and the belief that a supreme being exists" 

message: Several people in the VfD discussion noted the title of the article was less than ideal, and a couple of alternatives were suggested.  Because the nature of the discussion was not movement of the article, nothing was formalized.  Noting that we have an article on religiosity but not religiousness, and that the words have two different meanings, I think "religiosity and intelligence" is a more applicable title. -- goatasaur 19:31, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree. -- Schaefer 01:04, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

text: Agree --Rikurzhen 01:06, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposed move 

message: No sample sizes are given, nor any information about how the research was conducted.  How statistically reliable are these studies?  Particuarly as one of the studies was carried out by the magazine Sceptic we can not assume that the research would not have been deliberatly biased so that they had a nice article that proved the magazine's aims.  Also, nothing states what is considered to be an "eminent" scientist, if the person who did that study just decided what they personally considered an eminent scientist to be then they may let their opinion that beliving in God stops you from being creditable bias the study.
-I think this is a valid point
:I'm also critical of this article. I've seen older versions of this article, it existed before there was a Wikipedia, and angering religious people is its main purpose. However I think there could be a shred of truth to it to an extent. I think for an uneducated or unintelligent person religion could be more necessary than for most people. If you are slow or illiterate churches provide programs you may find beneficial. Atheism/Agnosticism/Deism won't and for that matter it probably can't. Those are philosophical positions not organized anythings. Added to that more people will be born into religion then will be born into atheism. Atheism is largely a faith of converts. Converting to something does require a strength of character and to a degree intellect. If you look at List of Roman Catholic converts you'll find some pretty bright people listed. The ability to figure out what you personally believe is something atheists, and other converts, share. However most religions are dominated by non-converts. (I am a non-convert myself, but my Dad being a convert changes the dynamic some)--T. Anthony 10:52, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: WIth every kind of statistics, there's a possibility that they are corrupted but if we were to be so distrustful all the time advance would come slowly. People tend to, hypocritically, distrust sources that go against their beliefs but support those that follow their beliefs. Personally I do believe there may be a link but only because of the general religious POV. I do not have any reason to underestimate someone simply because he is religious, however, the way most people tend to be religious would, to me, support low intelligence. As in general, the religious people I have met base themselves on faith, dogma and  even organised religions, but for those who have a more deistic and personal point of view, I have no reason to underestimate them. I will, however, support the thought that if you average all of those who have religious thoughts together, it's going to be lower than the atheists/agnostics. But if you look at individuals, you will find brillance and stupidity on both sides. Many atheists, such as many people of religion, are so because of their family - and these kinds of people are no different in intelligence. --A Sunshade Lust 20:58, 6 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statistical Accuracy 

message: I wrote the Christian Response section a few months ago, but on reflection it is more of a personal opinion than something that should be included in wikipedia, I was thinking of deleting it but wondered if anyone had any comments on this? 155.198.63.111 17:52, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Deleted. Icek 22:43, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Christian Response Section

message: Two of the external links in this section are broken, and the one that works links to the homepage of NCLS, not to the mentioned study. Could the author provide a link to the specific study? Icek 22:43, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed, I thought this research looked a bit questionable.--Hontogaichiban 23:21, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

text: It won't be deleted if it is not POV, original research and most importantly is cited from reliable sources and independent studies. Whether the thesis is patronising or not is irrelevant, what is important is whether it is true. The independent studies do seem to show that it is true to a significant extent.--Hontogaichiban 17:13, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

text: NCLS is a primarily church-funded organization (see http://www.ncls.org.au/default.aspx?sitemapid=22) and hardly independent. What do you mean exactly with A set of surveys collated by "Skeptic" magazine is highly likely to have a POV? Not being associated with the object of study makes them certainly more independent than NCLS. Icek 04:48, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

text: I think you'll find most rational scientists are actually agnostic. Being sure there is no god, is just as illogical as being sure that there is a god. Agnostics are often patronising, because we don't understand why religious people can't see this: "When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours." God=Zeus=Shiva=Pan=literary creation, etc. My god is more real than your god, this book says so! Anyway, that's my 10 second summation of a since-prehistoric-times argument. ;-) -Quiddity 19:22, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, there are two issues with the alleged illogicality of atheism. Firstly, god can be ruled out for all practical purposes; e. g. consider the question after you introduced your friend to your parents: "And these people are really your parents?" - most people wouldn't hesitate to give an answer which indicates that they are 100% sure although they haven't done a genetical test. Similarly I don't see any reason not to answer "no" if I'm asked "Does God exist?". Secondly, and even more importantly, I (and presumably some other people) don't quite know what the concept "god" really means - it doesn't seem to be a meaningful concept. Btw, we should talk about that wikipedia article here .... Icek 23:00, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

text: In Australia the Church in Life Survey of 2001  found that 23 % of the churchgoers have a degree qualification, compared to 13 % for the average population. It should be noted however, that as church attendance is so low in both countries there would still have been many more degrees among the non-churchgoers than the attendees. Therefore there may be other confounding effects to account for this. One possible explanation may be that both church attendance and university attendance are partly dependent on class.
There seems to be no independent (i. e. not church-funded) research confirming it. Icek 20:54, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

text: That was likely a good decision. Should Michael Shermer's also be removed as he's not exactly an independent on this issue either.--T. Anthony 02:09, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I disagree strongly with the assumption that NCLS research, being church funded, is biased. It is particularly thorough and extensive research, 'scientific' in its methodology. I suspect that you won't find comparable non- church- funded research simply because the NCLS does such a thorough job of it, matching their survey as closely as possible to the Australian census so that such comparisons can be made as accurately as possible. A specific purpose of the survey is to help churches "check if people's perceptions of their community are up to date" .  The NCLS reports on trends within participating Australian churches- some of which give results the churches like to hear, some of which don't. On the linked page, it should be noted that these results are used more as criticism of the churches (not reflecting the demographics of their communities), not something they would like to show off about. (They also provide some commentary/ explanation as to why this trend exists). WotherspoonSmith 13:29, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, I think that it was a good move to remove material from the article related to studies which do not directly measure the relation between intelligence (that means IQ) and religiosity. Your arguments are probably valid, but it's not really relevant for the article. Icek 21:32, 5 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Counter Trends

message: I did edits in this article trying to differentiate when the text talks about "IQ", "education", "science", or "intelligence" etc. - Those are not the same things and should be treated separately.
I also fixed the undue weight in favor of the 20 years old and non-academic essay from the Free Inquiry magazine.
My modifications were made after I spent some time searching scientific articles on religion. Until now, I found little reference for studies suggesting such supposedly "consistent inverse correlation between religiosity and intelligence". --Leinad ¬  »saudações! 00:05, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks, Anthony. I did some more edits and think that the article is coming closer to express what the sources provided actually say on the subject. For one thing, I added a very important note regarding the fact that studies about other socio-cultural factors can’t be assumed to imply a correlation between intelligence and religion. On the other hand, it wasn’t particularly hard to improve the article, since it was in a poor state before. For example: this study (which is the closest thing we have for a reliable source dealing directly with the topic) was cited without mentioning that it failed to find any significant correlations between religiosity and IQ. Go figure... --Leinad ¬  »saudações! 21:58, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The original was something I'd seen on usenet, I don't post there, and several other places as a way to anger theists. It was created by a Secular Humanist for that express purpose. I wasn't able to argue for editing effectively as I'm rather open about being a Catholic, was too combative against it even existing, and back then I was seeing Wikipedia as being a kind of reference work. (I'm enjoying Wikipedia again, but a valid reference source it is not and whenever I start seeing it that way I know it's time to back off. It's more like a trivia game that's spawned from Net-culture or a kind of Mideast bazaar of information)--T. Anthony 21:49, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  We need more [[Wikipedia:Reliable sources|reliable sources]]. 

message: "A caveat is in order. Those who regard church attendance as a measure of religiosity must take into account the fact - noted by sociologists - that people attend church regularly from a variety of motivations: conformity, sociability, status needs, even coercion." I think that statements such as these (as true as they might me) should not be mixed with description of statistical data or study results and conclusions. That kind of discussion should have its own sub-section of the article, because it mixes the objective (actual study results) with the subjective (non-measurable speculations, or information from non-related populations and sources) --164.77.106.168 01:34, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Less interpretation and more description 

message: The following paragraph was taken from the "Counter Trends" section before I edited it:
In 1992, Richard Wootton found that the proportion of LDS scientists who had received baccalaureate degrees from universities in Utah who believed that Joseph Smith was inspired by God in the formation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was 91%.  Belief in God and in the divinity of Jesus Christ showed similarly high numbers.  The percentages contrasted enough with mainstream survey data that the study was performed a second time, with the same results.
These findings are a tautology.  It is expected that LDS scientists would believe that Joseph Smith was inspired by God in the formation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as this is crucial to LDS beliefs.  Same goes with belief in God and in the divinity of Jesus Christ-- LDS scientists would by definition be expected to have such beliefs.  These findings do not necessarily apply to scientists at large, and therefore do not mean anything.  For these reasons, I am deleting the paragraph above. --Uthbrian (talk) 22:17, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: LDS scientists aren't scientists? To me, it seems like there's a problem in saying the data doesn't apply when scientists say they're religious, simply because they hold a certain belief. That's similar to saying the data on scientists who say they don't believe in God is biased because they were asking atheists. Meh. ~ UBeR 01:45, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: LDS scientists are not representative of scientists as a whole.  --Uthbrian (talk) 03:11, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tautological findings 

message: I rewrote this section to try to clean up the block quote and make it more understandable.  I found one other quotation of this text on the web: http://www.skepticfiles.org/atheist/religiq2.htm which varies from this one a little bit.  I don't know which one is correct, but a check against the original might be in order, if someone has it. Cpastern 18:24, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Neither. ~ UBeR 03:31, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Older studies section 

message: The article currently reads: "The studies Beckwith reviewed included Caplovitz and Sherrow's 1977 study, which concluded that students attending higher-ranked schools have fewer religious beliefs than those attending lower-ranked schools."  I haven't seen the study, but can this "fewer religious beliefs" be right?  Would anyone count the number of religious beliefs a person has?  I think this must be a mistake, but since I haven't seen the study, I'm shy about editing it.--OinkOink 06:34, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It doesn't make any sense. Their study seems to be on apostasy and social factors, not intelligence... ~ UBeR 08:23, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Caplovitz and Sherrow 

message: I have removed the contents of the Older Studies section, which were entirely about the Burnham Beckwith essay.  I could think of no reason for this to be retained.  Feel free to restore it if you wish, but please add your reasoning on this discussion page. --OinkOink 22:49, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Not an essay but a scholarly article citing other scholarly articles.Ultramarine 23:12, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

text: Attacking the character or views of the author instead of using factual arguments is ad hominem. For example environmentalists, Marxists, or Catholics publish academic journals where the authors and the journal may share a certain POV. This does not automatically make these journals invalid, what matter is the factual arguments. Free Inquiry is listed in Google Scholar.Ultramarine 12:47, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Older Studies 

message: http://kspark.kaist.ac.kr/Jesus/Intelligence%20&%20religion.htm is a page with different sources. 
It's probably biased but references other sources. Maybe it can contribute to the article. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Beau (talk • contribs) 09:06, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Nope is just a copy/paste of the same Web site that was trying to be referenced. Much of what is stated there is false and pretentious. It's imprudent to think that studies, some over 200 pages long, can be summarized in a six-word quote. In fact, many of studies have qualifiers, which, of course, are not mentioned or discussed. Many actually state the opposite of the message the Web site is trying to impose. Etcetera. ~ UBeR 22:21, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I just wanted to point out it has a list of related papers which are references in itself. Like I said, the page is biased and can not be used as a reference but that doesn't mean the articles themselves can't be valid references, no? You are correct that the six-word quotes can't be used and should be checked/expanded. The articles mentioned on the page are relavent to the article even if the author of the web page interprets them in a very subjective manner.--Beau 15:05, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes the studies are helpful. If you can find them. I've used my University's extensive scholastic resources in attempts to locate and read some of these studies. They are nonexistent or very difficult to find (i.e. dated studies). The mentioned Web site doesn't exactly document the studies well, probably for some obvious reasons. Some studies may be irrelevant to this article, as well (e.g. how conservative some religious people are). ~ UBeR 18:56, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Additional sources 

message: At the end of the paragraph that starts with, "Five of these reviewed studies concerned how liberal or conservative a person's religious views were," there was a hidden comment I just removed that asked, "what does this have to do with liberalism or conservatism?"  Just to clarify, it isn't about liberalism or conservatism in the political sense, it is about how liberal or conservative your religious views are.  A conservative religious view would be strongly religious and would want stricter adherence to their particular religious views, while a liberal view would be less religious and be more tolerant of other religious views.  For example, agnostics would generally on the far end of the "liberal religious view" scale.  Thus, "liberal" would mean "less religious" in this context, and "conservative" would mean "more religious."  Anyways, I just wanted to answer the question and explain why I removed that hidden comment.  -- HiEv 09:30, 13 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I was thinking liberal or conservative as in a theological/interpretation sense. Like "I believe in my holy book, but read it in a symbolic way that's inclusive of modern thought" versus "I believe my holy book is the only truth and is inerrant." A person with a "liberal" interpretation of the Bible or Torah or Qur'an can be as religious as a conservative one. For an Islamic example see Mahmoud Mohamed Taha, in Christianity see Adolf von Harnack or Hans Küng, and in Judaism see Mordecai Kaplan. Also any reference been made to This recent study?--T. Anthony 00:30, 15 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The problem with your interpretation of liberal/conservative in this context is that it only includes theists who have holy books, whereas the studies clearly include atheists, agnostics, and some others as part of the "liberal religious views" group.  As such, that interpretation cannot be correct.  Also, regarding the study you mentioned, it says nothing about the intelligence of the students.  It just says that college attendees are less likely to have a decline in their religion than non-college students, however it doesn't say anything about whether more non-religious or less religious people go to college in the first place.  For example, I was an atheist when I went to college, so there was no decline in my "religion" after I started college because it was already at zero.  Heck, if higher intelligence means that you are more likely to have liberal religious views and are more likely to go to college, then that could be entirely consistent with that study, since more people in that group would start out with less ability to have a decline in their religion.  Based on the data in that study you cannot make any conclusions regarding the existence or non-existence of a correlation between religiosity and intelligence.  -- HiEv 19:58, 16 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Liberal & conservative religious views 

message: This article begins by jumping right into non peer reviewed studies.  Are there any that have been peer reviewed? —WikiMarshall 19:19, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It appears this is just the result of a pov-pushing  campaign going on here. I have the impression that some editors are trying to create a smoke screen by "shooting the messenger". It appears that Bell has reviewed 43 peer-reviewed studies in a respectable magazine. Dismissing this as "a non peer-reviewed study" is inappropriate. It stands to reason that the more intelligent people are, the more complex reservations they will have on questions of spirituality. This does not necessarily mean that intelligence leads to irreligiosity, but statistically it is perfectly plausible that run-of-the-mill religiosity diminishes with increasing intelligence: mainstream religion is cut out for, well, the mainstream, which cannot be expected to follow complex arguments, that's pretty much a tautology. dab (𒁳) 08:36, 19 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Not always the case. See above, re NCLS studies in Australia. Church attenders there tend to be more highly educated, and churches are urged to be less academic/ intellectual in their approach. (See also comments below, under "Removal of Burnhan Beckwith block quote, inclusion of Dawkins")WotherspoonSmith 12:52, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Peer reviewed studies 

message: This article is hard to read, or to take too seriously, as it stands. 
Might I suggest, as a starting point for clean up, that we 
define what we mean by intelligence- the opening line says this is measured by
SAT Scores, IQ, Education, etc. If we're going to dispute whether any/ all of these truly is a measure of intelligence, we should state this early on. Socio-cultural biases in each should be recognised. We should note the limitations of the studies.
Define what we mean by religiosity. Wikipedia's own article on the subject says it includes "numerous aspects of religious activity, dedication, and belief," and goes on to suggest that "knowing (cognition), feeling (affect), and doing (behavior)" are all aspects of religiosity. So we should include these aspects of religiosity in our definition, and, again state whether some of these truly are measures of religiosity. Socio-cultural factors should be recognised here also- as noted above, the studies all seem to have a limited cultural view on what is 'religiosity' (ie Western, predominantly Christian).
There should, surely, be a discussion about whether any of the studies suggest a causitive link between the two concepts, or a discussion specifying that there is no causitive link established or suggested. One way or the other, this should be in the opening paragraph.
I suggest we then break down the collection of studies, and categorise them, rather than list them according to who wrote an article listing them all.
For example, there is already a start on an exploration of the links between educational attainment and religiosity. Some of the listed studies would be best added here.
Likewise, a section on IQ and religiosity.
So, it would look like this:
: introduction (definitions, summary)
: religiosity and IQ
: religiosity and educational attainment
and perhaps:
: other factors affecting religiosity
: other factors affecting IQ (link to IQ page)
Any comments?WotherspoonSmith 15:57, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  let's clean up