Woot; atheists are smarter than agnostics

[ImaginalDisc]

I assume you mean 130 and 70, given that some frequently used tests have a sd of 15.

That was a typo. Thanks, I've fixed it.

In any case, there is no requrement that any cut off point for high IQs be tied to a failure to get any coherent answers from people with IQs below, say, 55. No requirement at all. People with IQs above 145 most certainly could be included.
I really am puzzled about where you picked up this strange notion.

Sorry if you missed it, my original point is pages ago. Namely, that people several standard deviations above the norm ought to be removed from the data pool before any statistical analysis is conducted in some cases, and IQ test data is almost certainly one such case because of the relatively small number of questions in most IQ test, and confounding with other abilities, such as education or practice at taking IQ tests, can skew the data and give you too many high values. I'm not sure whether or not this is the case with this evaluation, but it's not uncommon. IQ tests that give what might be called statistically robust data are exhaustive and lengthy. Something like five in a thousand data points in a normally distributed set are expected. If the distribution of the sample differs significantly from this, there's a problem.

There are good reasons to include outliers when systematic errors have been addressed, but claiming that some outliers are too stupid to have an opinion about religion is ridiculous. Religious beliefs don't require sophisticated thinking. Anyone so mentally handicapped as to unable to even understand or articulate any opinion on the subject would be unable to take the test. Their scores wouldn't be low, they'd be nonexistent. It's possible that someone with a specific mental condition might be able to take the test depending on its format, but be autistic or have some kind of aphasia, but those conditions are not severe mental retardation. If you have the mental faculties to take the test, you certainly have the requisite faculties to say something about religion.

Therefore, I can't think of nor have read here any basis for dismissing extremely low scores while retaining high ones.

 

[Jeff Corey]

Where do you think they get all the below 55 scores in the distributions shown in every texbook. Not from the WAIS II or the Raven Progressive Matrices. The numbers at the bottom are bogus.
I had to assign IQ scores when I worked for the state in a "School For The Retarded". The Vineland ""Put the block on top of the other block" was used to assess their IQ.These people were in no way able to express their opinion about their religious beliefs. Or any other abstract concept.
My contention is that the people who are unable to express their choice about religiousity must not be counted with those who just don't give a dump.
Excluding those who are more articulate strikes me as silly.

 

[bpesta22]

Everytime I have to read what complete laymen do when trying to interpret statistics, or even worse already interpreted statistics, I ultimativley come to hate "public sociology" and the internet, journalism, sensationalism and/or "opinionism" a bit more than I already do.

"Cum hoc ergo propter hoc."
Learn it and love it, at least when you want to be a self-identified skeptic braging about your intelectual superiority-by association on the internet.

I can forgive you for not wanting to read beyond the OP, but if you did, you might see I was being a bit tongue in cheek.

You must be an agnostic.

 

[bpesta22]

I think a standard IQ test like the WAIS would do a very poor job discriminating people much lower than 70 or higher than 130.

Even if the study used only people in the range of 85-115, that wouldn't invalidate the conclusions (or the study's internal validity). It would just limit the generalizability of the results to that range of IQ.

I'm comfortable claiming this study probably doesn't generalize to the subclass of people around 70 and below, and around 130 and above. Assuming this study is replicated, there seems to be a small difference within the normal range of white IQs favoring atheists, then agnostics, then the rest.

 

[Clonk]

You must be an agnostic.

Strawman?

Tounge in cheek or not, this is an issue with all the threads you started, that I read so far:

State something outrageous and then retract a bit and clarify later if you can't get away with it.

I never thought you could have been a colleague of mine, and I didnt ment to discredit you in any way, but your approach to statistics and the sensationalism you are using is a hughe concern to me and honestly a disgrace to the entire field you are being associated with.

What I find shocking is, and this is just a guess, is that after spending such an amout of time on IQ and theism you havent even cared to investigate on what this correlation may cause other than "religiosity". Confirmation Bias, much?

I am not sure how milieu-studies are treated in your exact field but I would explore in this way a bit, to potentialy get rid of some hidden correlations* that render all your nifty findings to a scientific joke.

Oh and by the way, did you know that penis lenght has a ~0,8 correlation with nose lenght(I honestly cant remember the exact correlation nor does it matter or have any merit)? You can guess why that is the case and why that paper would never have made it through peer review and was only published by the yellow press and some internet blogs.

* = Income-disparity, homeschooling, education, etcetera

I'm comfortable claiming this study probably doesn't generalize to the subclass of people around 70 and below, and around 130 and above. Assuming this study is replicated, there seems to be a small difference within the normal range of white IQs favoring atheists, then agnostics, then the rest.

No, IQ is not favoring atheists, then agnostics, then the rest.
This is a faulty assumption and portrais your missconception of what can be expressed with statistics and why, the exact thing I was aiming at quite well.

"Cum hoc ergo propter hoc." The Wiki-pedia article should suffice.

 

[Zelenius]

The way I see it, the religious beliefs of the mentally disabled are irrelevant, and should be excluded. The religious beliefs of people who can function independently in society should be relevant in studies of IQ and religiousness, regardlessof their views being arrived at rationally or not.

We all fully realize that people with slight to moderate mental retardation can be taught to parrot the religious beliefs of their family or friends, or whoever has the most influence over them(indeed, a retarded person with atheist parents might claim to be an "atheist", but he truly doesn't understand what an atheist is and did not arrive at this through logic or rational thought of his own). Of course, some would then claim, aren't all the normal, functioning people who are religious just parroting the beliefs of their parents? Or do they really believe on a deep level, demonstratably different from the mentally disabled person's "beliefs"? I realize this can be tricky. Atheists often claim that otherwise mostly normal people who are religious are that way due to brainwashing; but can't a child also be brainwashed into being an atheist? Some highly intelligent people are religious or claim to be a member of a certain religious group. People like this are almost always fully rational when it comes to most things, but turn off the rational part of their brain when it comes to religion or other woo.

A related issue is religiosity and mental illness; the mentally ill should be excluded as well, although it would be fascinating to examine, in a separate study, the religious beliefs of say people with schizophrenia, and bi-polar disorder and see how this relates to religious beliefs and maybe even IQ. Are high IQ schizophrenics less religious than low IQ schizophrenics? Maybe we will even find significant differences in brain structure between high IQ atheists and high IQ religious Christians. Race of course should be controlled for. But is homosexuality a complicating factor as well, considering what so many mainstream religions think about homosexuality?(as a heterosexual atheist, I often find the existence of religious Christians who are homosexual mind-boggling). Alcoholism/drug addiction may also be considered within this group of studies on mental illness.

It would also be interesting to see if there are correlations between religiosity and personality: The Type A personality, introverts, extroverts, people who are very shy, people who are very social, narcissism, people who are big risk takers, etc.

Above all, these studies should only examine the beliefs of adults(the severely mentally disabled are like infants or young children) who are more or less rational and can function in society independently. Just my two cents.


p.s - A question I sometimes like to ask the religious is: What does God do with the mentally disabled when they die? Does he judge them like everyone else? If the God of the Bible existed, it would be extremely cruel to send a mentally disabled person to hell for not believing in him. Similarly is their "soul" also mentally disabled?

 

[bpesta22]

Clonk.

Thanks for your opinions. I don't think I've been overly sensational, especially given this is an internet discussion board. I also don't think I'm that bad a scientist, but I guess it's not for me to judge.

I have an article under second review which gets into why I think disbelief is associated with higher IQ. If it gets accepted, I'll post it here.

 

[ImaginalDisc]

I had to assign IQ scores when I worked for the state in a "School For The Retarded". The Vineland ""Put the block on top of the other block" was used to assess their IQ.

This is precisely one of the reasons I am stunned that IQs are taken seriously. The Vineland test measures "those everyday things a person does that help him or her maintain self-sufficiency" not a person's advanced reasoning capacity. A person being evaluated with the Vineland is not suitable for use with a standard IQ, and mixing data from the two tests would be just as invalid as including people with IQ's several standard deviations higher than the norm.

I am not against attempting to measure mental ability, I'm against the idea that one score provides a sufficient picture of person' range of abilities or worth, and I'm against the idea that IQ tests and studies have more precision than they do - given confounding with education, test biases toward people with practice on the specific skills evaluated, and so on.

 

[Clonk]

bpesta22,

I totaly get that this is just an internet forum, nontheless you are functioning not as any random member of it but as a member who also happens to be a scientist. Therefore higher standards apply to you as you automaticaly (on a board dedicated to skepticism hopefully less) benefit from scientific authority. If you dont like that I would suggest to never mention your profession again.

With all that being said, the way you are trying to mount your horse is still from the reverse. While I might agree with you that disbelife might be associated with higher IQ this is still scientific meaningless (assuming your wording wasn't tongue in cheek again and the ideas/theories/assumptions dont differ to much from those in your threads on this forum).

With all that being said, do what you want and the way you want it.
You should have learned it better by now and I am not going to try to help someone understand the basics when he is already publishing, at least not without getting paied for that.

 

[bpesta22]

bpesta22,

I totaly get that this is just an internet forum, nontheless you are functioning not as any random member of it but as a member who also happens to be a scientist. Therefore higher standards apply to you as you automaticaly (on a board dedicated to skepticism hopefully less) benefit from scientific authority. If you dont like that I would suggest to never mention your profession again.

With all that being said, the way you are trying to mount your horse is still from the reverse. While I might agree with you that disbelife might be associated with higher IQ this is still scientific meaningless (assuming your wording wasn't tongue in cheek again and the ideas/theories/assumptions dont differ to much from those in your threads on this forum).

With all that being said, do what you want and the way you want it.
You should have learned it better by now and I am not going to try to help someone understand the basics when he is already publishing, at least not without getting paied for that.

I don't think too many posters here are impressed by scientific "credentials" (the JREF itself certainly is not). You might also underestimate the regulars if you assume they give weak arguments a pass because the poster has a degree.

I start IQ threads here because I've not come across a group of people that bring more to the table-- intellectually-- than the jref does. To me, this is an ideal way to test the validity of my world view.

Except for the OP to this thread, I hope I don't come across as arrogant or high-horsish. I realize my world-view is not very popular here, but I've tried to post as a skeptic first (who believes what he does because of evidence). I dunno if my nemeses here would agree, but that's what I think I have done (even if it turns out my world view is wrong).

I've been interested in IQ all my adult life; actually devoting research efforts to it never occurred to me til posting ad naseum about it on the jref. That's another reason why I post lots about IQ here.

I still don't understand your criticism of the research, beyond just saying that correlation doesn't imply cause. I personally don't think atheists are smarter than agnostics, but I think the literature pretty clearly shows a group mean difference favoring non-believers over believers.

You don't need to elaborate on why you think my research is sophomoric, unless you want to.

 

[bpesta22]

This is precisely one of the reasons I am stunned that IQs are taken seriously. The Vineland test measures "those everyday things a person does that help him or her maintain self-sufficiency" not a person's advanced reasoning capacity. A person being evaluated with the Vineland is not suitable for use with a standard IQ, and mixing data from the two tests would be just as invalid as including people with IQ's several standard deviations higher than the norm.

I am not against attempting to measure mental ability, I'm against the idea that one score provides a sufficient picture of person' range of abilities or worth, and I'm against the idea that IQ tests and studies have more precision than they do - given confounding with education, test biases toward people with practice on the specific skills evaluated, and so on.

More and more, the field's relying on Elementary Cognitive Tasks to measure IQ. They suffer from none of the biases mentioned in your post.

 

[CFLarsen]

Gentlemen, pray silence for the President of the Royal Society for Putting Things on Top of Other Things.

 

[ImaginalDisc]

More and more, the field's relying on Elementary Cognitive Tasks to measure IQ. They suffer from none of the biases mentioned in your post.

That's decent news. That reminds me however, are the differences statistically significant? Are the differences between the groups larger than the confidence intervals at, say a standard 95%? If not, then one can't say one group has higher IQ's than the other.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I'm quite aware of what constitutes severe mental retardation, and I'm also quite well aware that people with IQ's as low as 75 are often high functioning enough to have opinions on the subject of religion. 75 is two standard deviations below the norm, so if IQ's as high as 130 are accepted, than IQ's as low as 75 should be accepted.

I know what it's like when a person is essentially incoherent, non responsive, and doesn't react to the world around them. My family tacitly avoids the subject of my uncle's suicide. He was schizophrenic in the extreme, believed he was Jesus, and either killed himself in a lucid state, or to join with God - family stories differ. He was entirely out of his mind, as schizophrenics can be, and yet his religious beliefs were quite plain.

Sigh....

This argument is really getting tedious.

This statement you made is ludicrous:

there's no reason to say a mentally disabled person should be excluded from the survey especially if you're going to include people as many standard deviations above the norm.

You cannot include people who have the IQ of 20-30, are nonverbal and smear feces around when upset in a survey of theists vs atheists' IQs. Are you seriously arguing one should have considered surveying mentally retarded non-verbal subjects for their views on gods relative to their IQs?

 

[CFLarsen]

Just how high an IQ must a person have, before he is intelligent enough to satisfy the test maker's perception of god?

Because that's what it is: He who makes the test is the one whose god beliefs people have to respond to. If the test maker is a Catholic, the test would be about his god - he doesn't understand other gods. Likewise, if the test maker is a Hindu, the test would be about one (or all!) of the millions of Hindu gods.

 

[ImaginalDisc]

Sigh....

This argument is really getting tedious.

This statement you made is ludicrous: You cannot include people who have the IQ of 20-30, are nonverbal and smear feces around when upset in a survey of theists vs atheists' IQs. Are you seriously arguing one should have considered surveying mentally retarded non-verbal subjects for their views on gods relative to their IQs?

I am going to say this as clearly as I can because you obviously don't get it.

Anyone capable of taking the standard IQ test and getting back some score is capable of expressing an opinion about religion, regardless of who they are classified. A non-verbal, feces smearing patient does not have a low IQ, they have NO IQ AS CAN BE MEASURED BY THE SAME IQ TEST ADMINISTERED TO THE REST OF THE SAMPLE POPULATION. The fact that the IQ's of such patients are often guessed at as a means of describing their mental condition is the source of your confusion.

Analogy: You're measuring the speed with which people can dash one hundred meters versus their leg length. Some people are fast, some people are slow, some people have some degree of muscular dystrophy, or club feet - AND SOME PEOPLE HAVE NO LEGS. Anyone who can't run because they are unable to take the test is excluded.

Anyone who can't run BECAUSE THEY CAN'T TAKE THE TEST is excluded.

No one would dare claim that a legless man has "the equivalent running speed of 0.5 miles per hour" because he can't run, but that's exactly what we do when we foolishly describe some people as having an "IQ of 20-30." There's a difference between a low IQ score as measured on a standard IQ test and being unable to understand words, the outside world, or that smearing one's self with feces is bad.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I am going to say this as clearly as I can because you obviously don't get it.

Anyone capable of taking the standard IQ test and getting back some score is capable of expressing an opinion about religion, regardless of who they are classified. A non-verbal, feces smearing patient does not have a low IQ, they have NO IQ AS CAN BE MEASURED BY THE SAME IQ TEST ADMINISTERED TO THE REST OF THE SAMPLE POPULATION. The fact that the IQ's of such patients are often guessed at as a means of describing their mental condition is the source of your confusion.....

You must have missed the beginning of the discussion. The claim was made that all IQ levels should have been included. And the claim was made that because the IQs in the study did not have a mean of 100, the study was flawed.

Regardless of the fact one is only guessing at the IQs of persons unable to take any standardized test, the mean value of 100 includes persons not able to take the tests.

But now that you have clarified what you meant, I believe we are in agreement, mostly. I'm not sure that the researchers needed to include every IQ level in this particular study as long as the subjects were matched on other variables.

 

[mookid]

If we can't agree on the distinction between agnosticism/atheism, then what is the value of this data? It's meaningless and irrelevant.

Where does that leave us ignostics btw? I'm pretty sure we'd be top of the pile. (joke, but not really).

 

[ImaginalDisc]

You must have missed the beginning of the discussion. The claim was made that all IQ levels should have been included.

Yes, all IQ levels as measured by the same test should be included, and outliers on both sides of the mean should generally be dismissed. People whose raw scores are statistically no different from chance, or lower, are generally excluded from the sample pool of any test, but a non-verbal, feces smearing patients wouldn't even score chance. They have no measuable IQ.

And the claim was made that because the IQs in the study did not have a mean of 100, the study was flawed.

Regardless of the fact one is only guessing at the IQs of persons unable to take any standardized test, the mean value of 100 includes persons not able to take the tests.

How? How do you set a mean for a set of test results by including people unable to take the test? Guessing at a persons' IQ because they are unable to take the same IQ as the rest of the population is opening the door to all sorts of errors, from systematic bias to the inherent imprecision and inaccuracy of guessing. "Patient John Doe is illiterate, non-verbal, and spends his time sculpting clay figures of Jesus. Because his doctor estimates his IQ at 30 based on his own opinion, we should include that score?" That's a problem.

The data may have results above the mean in all cases if all the respondents were, say, internet users or college students, who are both not entirely representative groups of the population at large and the two most commonly used groups for such tests as they are cheap and easy for researchers to use. Even if they weren't, self-selection in volunteers for a test on intelligence may include people who fancy themselves bright.

But now that you have clarified what you meant, I believe we are in agreement, mostly. I'm not sure that the researchers needed to include every IQ level in this particular study as long as the subjects were matched on other variables.

Anyone who is able to get a score different from chance and issue their opinion about religion should be included, and/or people enough SD's above and below the mean should be excluded. Those are the best ways to handle such data without introducing systematic bias. Excluding only those a few SD's below the mean without excluding those as many SD's above the mean will almost certainly skew the data. IQ scores have an SD of 15, and unless the test was normed with a vast initial population and contains a huge battery of test items, a score 3 standard deviation from the mean in either direction is being measured quite imprecisely, since only about %0.1 of the norm group should fall into either the 3 SD above or below range. In a norm group of 1000, that's one person at either end. Even two SD's is usually pushing it.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

ID, that's all well and good, but not what I was replying to. If you want to remake the discussion, fine, but don't do it as a reply to my comments as if I was replying to your version of events.

So, taking your version of the issues, are you addressing the study or something else? Do you think the study is applying their conclusion beyond what the data supports or do you think the OP applied the conclusion to a wider relevance than the study claimed?

The study claimed:

using representative data from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth (NLSY97). Atheists score 1.95 IQ points higher than Agnostics, 3.82 points higher than Liberal persuasions, and 5.89 IQ points higher than Dogmatic persuasions. Denominations differ significantly in IQ and income. Religiosity declines between ages 12 to 17. It is suggested that IQ makes an individual likely to gravitate toward a denomination and level of achievement that best fit his or hers particular level of cognitive complexity. Ontogenetically speaking this means that contemporary denominations are rank ordered by largely hereditary variations in brain efficiency (i.e. IQ). In terms of evolution, modern Atheists are reacting rationally to cognitive and emotional challenges, whereas Liberals and, in particular Dogmatics, still rely on ancient, pre-rational, supernatural and wishful thinking.