Woot; atheists are smarter than agnostics

CFLarsen said:
If we only include those capable of coming to a rational conclusion on the subject on belief, it discounts those who have religious beliefs.
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So Claus... how would Jesus you process survey results from those with sub-60 IQs?
 
CFLarsen said:
If we only include those capable of coming to a rational conclusion on the subject on belief, it discounts those who have religious beliefs.

People aren't religious because they are rational - quite the contrary.
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I said people capable of coming to a rational decision. Your personal interpretation of whether or not their decision on any given subject is rational is completely irrelevant. It's the capability that counts.
 
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bpesta22 said:
I guess I'm not following the sub argument here. They didn't throw out low IQ people to skew the results. They just restricted the sample to whites only. The sample did have low scoring whites (but likely not mentally retarded whites, as I don't think they are included in the NLSY)

They did this because race / IQ / religious affiliations would otherwise be confounded.

For example, Baptists are 40% black; Mormons are only 2% black. How would you interpret an IQ difference (if all races were included) between Baptists and Mormons (given a black white difference in the literature of about 15 points)?

There are a few acceptable ways to deal with confounds. They could have statistically controlled for race; they could have made race a factor, or they could have looked at just one race. They did the latter.
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Please provide an accurate and precise scientific definition of White which does not include at least some Hispanic people.

That would be required to reach the conclusion presented.
 
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wollery said:
I said people capable of coming to a rational decision. Your personal interpretation of whether or not their decision on any given subject is rational is completely irrelevant. It's the capability that counts.
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Please explain what a rational belief in god consists of, and why some people can have one, but others cannot. Furthermore, precisely relate that to IQ.

That would be required to justify a minimum IQ threshold below you which could ignore people for the purposes of the survey.
 
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Are religious believers capable of coming to the decision that their religious beliefs are rationally based?

No, they are not. If they were, they wouldn't be religious.

Are religious believers capable of coming to the decision that their religious beliefs are not rationally based?

Sure. That's why they are religious.
 
ImaginalDisc said:
Please provide an accurate and precise scientific definition of White which does not include at least some Hispanic people.

That would be required to reach the conclusion presented.
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My precise definition would be only those people who selected the "white / non-hispanic" box to self-report their race.
 
ImaginalDisc said:
Perhaps I wasn't entirely clear. People three standards deviations above the norm should be discarded from the data analysis for mathematical reasons; outliers skew data.
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Don't you see that this suggestion only further alters the normal distribution (which has already happened) of this population? Why would you want to continue narrowing your population?

ImaginalDisc said:
If you're going to claim that people with very low IQ's have religious beliefs that are incomprehensible, or irrelevant that's well and good, but the mere presence of outliers, either way above or below the mean can skew the mean. It's good statistical practice to remove any outlier.
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Are you aware that "good statistical practice" is to divide your normally distributed population into sub-groups and apply your mean and range calculations to each?

Surely you understand that simply truncating data that is counterintuitive, misunderstood or simply unsettling is sloppy and errant statistical practice?
 
skeptigirl said:
You get so carried away with your fantasy you are not wrong in these discussions it is mind boggling the lengths you go to rationalize.

Your claim was not practical that people with an IQ of 50 or lower should have been included in this study and such an argument the study should have included profoundly mentally disabled people is ludicrous. It's that simple.
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Do you not see that it is your argument that is untenable?
What possible effect could those responses (from the mentally ill) have on a NORMALLY DISTRIBUTED POPULATION?
 
ImaginalDisc said:
Please provide an accurate and precise scientific definition of White which does not include at least some Hispanic people.
or black for that matter

That would be required to reach the conclusion presented.
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Would you please define your ideal population for this study?
 
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bonch said:
Some of the dumbest, beer-drinking rednecks I know are atheists.
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Actively atheist? (i.e.they have considered the evidence and formed an opinion)

Or passively atheist? (e.g. new born children that have neither the need nor the skills to assess the credibility of claims such as talking snakes)
 
ImaginalDisc said:
Please provide an accurate and precise scientific definition of White which does not include at least some Hispanic people.
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White is precisely defined as any people with 255,255,255 skin tone.

Which includes absolutely no Hispanic people (or any other people).

More usefully, you could do a general definition of "European descent, non-Hispanic, to 4 generations" which would work fine.

Most usefully you could let people self-identify.
 
Smart's not all it's cracked up to be. Frankly, smart doesn't do much for anyone, really. I'm smarter than a lot of the folks I know here at home. Yet, they're the ones with homes and cars and food on the table.

Smart's just not all that.
 
six7s said:
Actively atheist? (i.e.they have considered the evidence and formed an opinion)

Or passively atheist? (e.g. new born children that have neither the need nor the skills to assess the credibility of claims such as talking snakes)
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They drink, smoke weed, and party every weekend, and they'll tell you Christianity and other religions are bogus.
 
bonch said:
six7s said:
bonch said:
Some of the dumbest, beer-drinking rednecks I know are atheists.
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Actively atheist? (i.e.they have considered the evidence and formed an opinion)

Or passively atheist? (e.g. new born children that have neither the need nor the skills to assess the credibility of claims such as talking snakes)
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They drink, smoke weed, and party every weekend, and they'll tell you Christianity and other religions are bogus.
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:confused: Is there an end point or direction to this line of thought?
 
bpesta22 said:
My precise definition would be only those people who selected the "white / non-hispanic" box to self-report their race.
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This just encourages me to rotate which box to select when I have to, "self-report," my race.

ETA: So just out of curiosity, when do we get the companion thread to this where you celebrate how smarter whites are?
 
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Anakritis said:
Would you please define your ideal population for this study?
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I would never propose such a simplistic study to begin with. Compounding the questionable science of IQ with anything is a recipe for disaster, and adding the unscientific concept of human race to it just makes it worse.
 
LostAngeles said:
This just encourages me to rotate which box to select when I have to, "self-report," my race.

ETA: So just out of curiosity, when do we get the companion thread to this where you celebrate how smarter whites are?
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He already supports The Bell Curve, so I think that base is covered.
 
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