Woot; atheists are smarter than agnostics

[Skeptic Ginger]

Drawing arbitrary lines post-hoc is not skeptical.

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.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

We do not know, do we? I thought there was not enough information to show which groups, if any, had been excluded from the sample. For example skeptigirl quoted a bit which said that it only included "non-institutionalised" youth living in the united states, in the main sample. That would not necessarily exclude the mentally disabled but it might exclude those attending very expensive boarding schools. So I do not see how your point applies here?

Reform schools might be considered institutions by this definition but I doubt boarding schools were intended to be in that category.

 

[CFLarsen]

Excluding a group from a representative population study of IQ because the particular group is too stupid, is selecting the data. A no-no in science, and most unskeptical.

Can a person with an IQ of 50 "understand" what "God" is? Since we must go with the actual claim, much better than the learned ones:

Mar 10: 13 And they were bringing children to him that he might touch them, and the disciples rebuked them. 14 But when Jesus saw it, he was indignant and said to them, "Let the children come to me; do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God. 15 Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it." 16 And he took them in his arms and blessed them, laying his hands on them.

Mar 9: 33 And they came to Capernaum. And when he [Jesus] was in the house he asked them, "What were you discussing on the way?" 34 But they kept silent, for on the way they had argued with one another about who was the greatest. 35 And he sat down and called the twelve. And he said to them, "If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all." 36 And he took a child and put him in the midst of them, and taking him in his arms, he said to them, 37 "Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me, receives not me but him who sent me."

Mat 18: 1 At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, "Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?" 2 And calling to him a child, he put him in the midst of them 3 and said, "Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. 4 Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. 5 "Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, 6 but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.

Luk 9: 46 An argument arose among them as to which of them was the greatest. 47 But Jesus, knowing the reasoning of their hearts, took a child and put him by his side 48 and said to them, "Whoever receives this child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me receives him who sent me. For he who is least among you all is the one who is great."

Are we, skeptics, the ones to tell religious people that they don't understand their own gods?

 

[ImaginalDisc]

Because people with IQs below 50 aren't likely to be capable of even knowing what god beliefs were.

Have you and Claus never seen people who are severely mentally disabled?

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. 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.

 

[westprog]

SG I know hardly anything about sampling. My understanding is they took some type of sectional sample from the entire data set, where each data point used represented 100 cases in the NLSY.

I have no idea with whether an expert would quarrel with how they did it, but their n sizes are still pretty large, and I can't imagine it wouldn't represent the NLSY population well.

The typical statistical error of the amateur is to equate a large sample size with accuracy. What's important is to choose a representative sample. A small, representative sample is nearly always better than a huge, skewed sample.

 

[ImaginalDisc]

The typical statistical error of the amateur is to equate a large sample size with accuracy. What's important is to choose a representative sample. A small, representative sample is nearly always better than a huge, skewed sample.

What's particularly troubling is this "My understanding is they took some type of sectional sample from the entire data set, where each data point used represented 100 cases in the NLSY."

The could have been done well, or it could be cherry picking and conflation, I wouldn't know without looking closely at the methodology.

 

[westprog]

What's particularly troubling is this "My understanding is they took some type of sectional sample from the entire data set, where each data point used represented 100 cases in the NLSY."

The could have been done well, or it could be cherry picking and conflation, I wouldn't know without looking closely at the methodology.

Press reports of surveys are rarely accurate. The first thing the press reports do is throw away the conclusions in the report and substitute their own.

 

[bpesta22]

The typical statistical error of the amateur is to equate a large sample size with accuracy. What's important is to choose a representative sample. A small, representative sample is nearly always better than a huge, skewed sample.

Agreed-- but, assuming random selection from the population, which is more likely to be accurate, the small one or the larger one (even recognizing diminishing returns on increasing n size)?

The article is vague on how exactly it sampled. The NLSY sample though is professional. I believe what that author here did is weight by religious affiliations then randomly select within affiliation.

26% of the NLSY kids are roman catholic, so 26% of this sample was roman catholic too.

Then he analyzed only whites w/in each religious denomination.

I dont see a problem with this, but I'll defer to any sampling people.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

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. 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.

I understood what you meant and maybe that is a reasonable thing to do with a sample. But it remains apples and oranges to equate the outliers since those with very low IQs cannot comprehend what god beliefs even are. That disqualifies them from the sample because contrary to Claus' ignorant claim they need to be included, which group, agnostic or atheist, are you going to put them into?

 

[ImaginalDisc]

I understood what you meant and maybe that is a reasonable thing to do with a sample. But it remains apples and oranges to equate the outliers since those with very low IQs cannot comprehend what god beliefs even are. That disqualifies them from the sample because contrary to Claus' ignorant claim they need to be included, which group, agnostic or atheist, are you going to put them into?

If you're going to remove very low IQ scores from the sample because you believe they don't grasp the concept of a belief in god, I'll argue that the vast majority of people have only the most vague idea what sort of god they believe in regardless of how smart they may be. One person may believe that there is an all seeing father figure who literally dwells above them who will make life better for them if only they think nice thoughts about that figure and obey what other people report that being's commandments are, and based solely on the description of their belief, I couldn't possibly tell you whether that person is an intelligent and devout catholic or whether that person is an institutionalized mentally handicapped person. Smart people can and often do have the most childish and simple minded of beliefs about god. So if you are arguing that mentally handicapped people should be discarded because their beliefs about god, if any, are naive and nebulous then you should discard practically all theists from the sample.

 

[Delvo]

At very low IQs, people's answers to the questions would reflect not an actual philosophy, but an attempt to guess/figure out what the question meant, or an attempt to say what (s)he thinks (s)he is supposed to say, or what mood (s)he's in, or which side's arguments (s)he's heard most recently...

 

[ImaginalDisc]

At very low IQs, people's answers to the questions would reflect not an actual philosophy, but an attempt to guess/figure out what the question meant, or an attempt to say what (s)he thinks (s)he is supposed to say, or what mood (s)he's in, or which side's arguments (s)he's heard most recently...

Those factors, trying to appear socially acceptable or acceptable to the questioner, are well established as sources for error in polls, surveys, and social interaction of all types and which affect all sorts of people, even if they think they're too smart for it.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I repeat what I said, IDisc, have you no experience with the profoundly mentally disabled? There are many people you couldn't possibly carry on a conversation with, let alone expect them to know what a god belief was.

Severe mental retardation is associated with infantile behavior throughout life. That means the vocabulary of an infant, or maybe of a toddler.

I can't believe we are even having this discussion.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

At very low IQs, people's answers to the questions would reflect not an actual philosophy, but an attempt to guess/figure out what the question meant, or an attempt to say what (s)he thinks (s)he is supposed to say, or what mood (s)he's in, or which side's arguments (s)he's heard most recently...

Or maybe no answers at all. At IQs less than 40 you might easily see no verbal ability at all, zip, nada.

 

[ImaginalDisc]

I repeat what I said, IDisc, have you no experience with the profoundly mentally disabled? There are many people you couldn't possibly carry on a conversation with, let alone expect them to know what a god belief was.

Severe mental retardation is associated with infantile behavior throughout life. That means the vocabulary of an infant, or maybe of a toddler.

I can't believe we are even having this discussion.

And if they have any beliefs about gods, they're probably quite similar in sophistication to the beliefs most theists have.

 

[wollery]

I agree completely with Skeptigirl on this. A survey based on belief should only include those capable of coming to a rational conclusion on the subject, which discounts those with severe mental disabilities. You may not agree with the conclusion that many people come to, and their conclusion may be wrong, but that does not mean that it was not arrived at rationally.

If you're going to equate theism with mental disability then your data will be completely skewed, and you'll simply arrive at your own predetermined conclusion. Hardly scientific.

 

[bpesta22]

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.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I guess I'm not following the sub argument here. ...

It's a bit of a sidetrack as we who have only read the abstract have limited information about the study population. It started when some people questioned why the IQs in question were > 100 if an IQ of 100 was the mean. I said the mean reflected people who's IQs were too low to have been included and Claus and ImaginalD seemed to think it was possible to have included people in the study so profoundly retarded as to have the communication skills of an infant.

 

[CFLarsen]

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.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

So you are arguing they should have included people so profoundly retarded they are unable to speak? Really?

How about this gentleman?
Risperidone for the treatment of fecal smearing in a developmentally disabled adult.

Summary: A 36-year-old Caucasian man had a history of fecal smearing when he did not get his way or was upset. The patient had profound mental retardation, had an IQ in the range of less than 20 to 25, and was nonverbal. For this patient, fecal smearing was not only a behavioral issue but also a medical concern because.....