The silly season continues
You would think that with carnage in Syria and Egypt, a flurry of news on the economy (most good but some bad), arguments over fracking and the banks in trouble yet again, that the press would have plenty of serious news to write about without the need for "silly season" stories.
And you'd think wrong.
It's all over the media this week that the soldier who gave lots of information to Wikileaks, Bradley Manning, has now decided that he's a woman and wants to be known as Chelsea Manning. It's probably moot since he'll be banged up in prison in the states for the next 35 years and meanwhile Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London for goodness knows how long.
Last week Jeremy Paxman's beard was getting all the attention, and Yougove did a poll, of which you can read the results on "Political Betting" here, showing the relationship between voting intention and propensity to grow a beard (for men.) Apparently Lib/Dem supporting men are most likely to grow beards (so what else is new) closely followed by Labour supporters, with tories much less likely and UKIP least likely of all
But the daftest story of the silly season concerns a scientific report published by scientists at the University of Rochester, who I suspect of having very high IQs and no common sense whatsoever, which purports to prove that atheists have higher IQs than religious believers. An example of a press report about it is given here.
Let me be clear, I am not suggesting this is daft because I think religious believers are cleverer than atheists, I am suggesting it is daft because the idea of trying to establish a correlation in either direction between belief in something and intelligence is a mugs' game which is most unlikely to tell you anything useful.
I have met some atheists and some religious believers who were extremely intelligent, and others in both categories who were lamentably stupid.
There are some statistical statements which, when the wise person hears them, you ignore because whether true or not the information will be so meaningless as to be useless. This is an example.
Even if the Rochester University statement is statistically correct, and there are all sorts of reasons to be wary of it, the difference which the scientists purport to have found - 1.95 IQ points - between the average IQ of believers and non-believers is so small compared to the range within both those groups that knowing someone's religious affiliation would be barely more useful than eye colour in telling you how clever they are likely to be.
I was going to write hair colour in the previous paragraph until I remembered that a large number of people make jokes about blondes being stupid.
Which only goes to show how bizarre some of our preconceptions about intelligence can be.
And now we get to my reason for picking today's quote of the day, Francis Bacon's comment that
"A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion."
To put Bacon's comment in modern scientific terms it is entirely possible that if there were a relationship between IQ and religious belief, it could be non-linear - for example as you go up the IQ scale the proportion of believers might go down at first but then up again. The statistical tools used by the University of Rochester scientists might have serious problems with this and it would make the average all the more meaningless.
The most effective dismissal of the study came in a scathing piece in the Independent by Frank Furedi, himself an atheist, which you can read here. He writes that
"Intelligence itself is a contested concept and it is far from evident what is measured in these studies. Attitudes towards cultural values are mediated through a variety of influences that are relational, context specific and whose meaning becomes lost if it becomes quantified and reduced to numbers. Any attempt to establish a causal relationship between personal belief and raw intelligence is likely to be an exercise in forced abstraction."
and concludes
"As an atheist I take an exception to the claim that my views are the product of my intelligence. Like many others I exercised my capacity for moral autonomy and made an existential choice. I believe that I made an intelligent choice not to believe. But I don’t think that atheism can be equated with intelligence any more than religion with stupidity. Why? Because the experience of life shows that the ranks of atheists have their fair share of idiots. If you doubt my words – launch a research study that does a content analysis of their tweets."
Quite.
And you'd think wrong.
It's all over the media this week that the soldier who gave lots of information to Wikileaks, Bradley Manning, has now decided that he's a woman and wants to be known as Chelsea Manning. It's probably moot since he'll be banged up in prison in the states for the next 35 years and meanwhile Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London for goodness knows how long.
Last week Jeremy Paxman's beard was getting all the attention, and Yougove did a poll, of which you can read the results on "Political Betting" here, showing the relationship between voting intention and propensity to grow a beard (for men.) Apparently Lib/Dem supporting men are most likely to grow beards (so what else is new) closely followed by Labour supporters, with tories much less likely and UKIP least likely of all
But the daftest story of the silly season concerns a scientific report published by scientists at the University of Rochester, who I suspect of having very high IQs and no common sense whatsoever, which purports to prove that atheists have higher IQs than religious believers. An example of a press report about it is given here.
Let me be clear, I am not suggesting this is daft because I think religious believers are cleverer than atheists, I am suggesting it is daft because the idea of trying to establish a correlation in either direction between belief in something and intelligence is a mugs' game which is most unlikely to tell you anything useful.
I have met some atheists and some religious believers who were extremely intelligent, and others in both categories who were lamentably stupid.
There are some statistical statements which, when the wise person hears them, you ignore because whether true or not the information will be so meaningless as to be useless. This is an example.
Even if the Rochester University statement is statistically correct, and there are all sorts of reasons to be wary of it, the difference which the scientists purport to have found - 1.95 IQ points - between the average IQ of believers and non-believers is so small compared to the range within both those groups that knowing someone's religious affiliation would be barely more useful than eye colour in telling you how clever they are likely to be.
I was going to write hair colour in the previous paragraph until I remembered that a large number of people make jokes about blondes being stupid.
Which only goes to show how bizarre some of our preconceptions about intelligence can be.
And now we get to my reason for picking today's quote of the day, Francis Bacon's comment that
"A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion."
To put Bacon's comment in modern scientific terms it is entirely possible that if there were a relationship between IQ and religious belief, it could be non-linear - for example as you go up the IQ scale the proportion of believers might go down at first but then up again. The statistical tools used by the University of Rochester scientists might have serious problems with this and it would make the average all the more meaningless.
The most effective dismissal of the study came in a scathing piece in the Independent by Frank Furedi, himself an atheist, which you can read here. He writes that
"Intelligence itself is a contested concept and it is far from evident what is measured in these studies. Attitudes towards cultural values are mediated through a variety of influences that are relational, context specific and whose meaning becomes lost if it becomes quantified and reduced to numbers. Any attempt to establish a causal relationship between personal belief and raw intelligence is likely to be an exercise in forced abstraction."
and concludes
"As an atheist I take an exception to the claim that my views are the product of my intelligence. Like many others I exercised my capacity for moral autonomy and made an existential choice. I believe that I made an intelligent choice not to believe. But I don’t think that atheism can be equated with intelligence any more than religion with stupidity. Why? Because the experience of life shows that the ranks of atheists have their fair share of idiots. If you doubt my words – launch a research study that does a content analysis of their tweets."
Quite.
Comments
I am sorry but i can not support this action, the deal is done, the cards are on the table as it were. If i was unable to predict this 4 months ago then maybe, just maybe i could hace bought it. sadly that is not tha case, regardless of the number of children killed it wont get better if i do side your way.
Now you see the finishing line to the long run is so close you can almott taste it. it gives me no pleasure saying things like this (which need to be said) and I have all sympathy to the people in Syria who are missing loved ones today, I guess i would like to ask you to all you can to accept the inevitable now and spare any more bloodshed
I will save you the trouble of looking one up. Psalm 14:1.
People often ask why i have a bible at home, its quite obvious though, many people who were born into christian familys are athiest because they actually read it.
if you read the bible, especially the old testament (which Jesus. says still counts in the new testament) then you will see a god who is nothing but a vengeful idiot. even if there was evidence for god, which there is not, but even if there was, the last thing I would want to do is worship someone of his nature.
But let me get this 100% straight anyway. Now religon has managed to convince people there is a magic man who lives in the sky, can create the entire universe in only 6 days, knows what you are thinking and doing at all times, gets upset if you dont praise and love him, though he made you that way as his plan, as a punishment for not loving him then he sends you to hell to burn, and scream, and cry, and choke for ever and ever and ever.
Does that sound like the kind of guy you would want to know?
quite a famous quote this:
The belief that a cosmic Jewish Zombie who was his own father can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree......, and you state athiests are silly.
I did NOT state that ALL atheists are silly, I said SOME atheists are silly and I also said that some religious people are silly.
And that some atheists and some religious people are very clever indeed.
If you read the post again, I am not taking the same sort of ridiculous position as the University Rochester scientists and reversing it, I am trying to debunk the whole idea.
My position is that the concept of a simple correlation between intelligence and belief is fundamentally unsound in whichever direction you try to twist it.
I quoted an atheist, Frank Furedi, who on that point takes the same position.
As for the caricature of Christianity which you build up as a straw man so that you can knock it down again, we are going to have to differ. That picture doesn't bear much resemblance to anything I've ever believed or heard taught.
The only thing it sounds like to me is the sort of unflattering picture that both religious believers and atheists both sometimes get of someone else's religion. And unless the someone else is an fundamentalist or islamofascist, such pictures are usually not very accurate.
To criticize a person for their race is manifestly irrational and ridiculous, but to criticize a person for their religion is a right. That is freedom.
The freedom to criticize ideas, any ideas, even if they are sincerely held beliefs is one of the fundamental freedoms of society. A law which attempts to say you can criticize and ridicule ideas as long as they are not religious ideas is a very peculiar law indeed" - Rowan Atkinson
The same bill which Jamie Reed criticised on the hustings when he was standing for election as an MP, and then made his maiden speech in the House of Commons supporting when his party brought it back.
Funny how nearly everyone remembers the silly joke from that speech about being a Jedi but very few people remember that the speech was an early indication of his willingness to 100% reverse his position when the Labour party requires it.