And everyone here says, No Shit Sherlock.

[Valerius]

I wonder if it isn't that stupid people turn to religion, but being brainwashed into religion, especially at a young age, causes sometimes permanent damage to the mind.

I think it's a mix of both. There are a lot of intelligent and accomplished people who believe the dumbest shit, like Earth being a few thousand years old. Bill Maher vented about them once. The only reason this would happen is because you were indoctrinated with religious crap at a really early age and it becomes so much a part of you that you can't give it up. And then of course there's lots of dumbass conversion stories too.  It's really a mix of both

[dpareja]

... There are a lot of intelligent and accomplished people who believe the dumbest shit, like ... Bill Maher ...

Apologies for the snipping, but as for "intelligent and accomplished people ... believ[ing] the dumbest shit", isn't Maher an anti-vaxxer?

[Witchyjoshy]

Everyone has an idiot button.  Everyone.  I think even Penn and Tiller covered that (which is funny because one of them has an idiot button, too.  I just forget which, off the top of my head.)

I do like the part where someone mentioned (I think it was Lithp?) that this deals with groups, not individuals.  Because I can understand there being a larger percentage of atheists that are smart than a percentage of, say, Christians.

As far as individuals go, I've met some atheists who took the label simply because they want to proclaim that they're smarter than everyone else.

Or as we should probably start calling them, "chageneists"

[PosthumanHeresy]

... There are a lot of intelligent and accomplished people who believe the dumbest shit, like ... Bill Maher ...

Apologies for the snipping, but as for "intelligent and accomplished people ... believ[ing] the dumbest shit", isn't Maher an anti-vaxxer?

Even if he is, he's still smarter than, say, Bill O'Reilly or Rick Santorum. So, yeah.

[Witchyjoshy]

Even I'm smarter than them and I'm an idiot.

[Jack Mann]

Guys.

Listen to Myers.  He is wise.  If you want to feel you're smarter than religious people, then go ahead.  Base it on the fact that you don't believe in sky fairies or whatever the fuck.  However, don't base it on studies like this.

You can probably make a case that atheists are more likely to be educated.  There are likely a number of reasons for this.  Many religious groups frown on secular learning.  Educated people are more likely to encounter alternate viewpoints that make them challenge their beliefs.

This may have some bearing on IQ tests, too.  People with access to higher education do better on IQ tests than people without said access.  However, it's important to understand that these people are not actually smarter than the others.  They just have a background that lets them do better on IQ tests.  This is what makes IQ tests such a terrible gauge of intelligence as an intrinsic quality.

We aren't smarter than religious people.  Not in the sense that most people mean by smart.  We're just better trained to question and find answers.

[Valerius]

The whole point behind the first IQ test wasn't even to measure intelligence, it was to predict how well children would perform in schools. After it came out, the eugenics movements and governments corrupted its purpose and used it as a means to prevent immigration and diagnose people as "retarded" and have them sterilized. For some reason, the idea that IQ tests measure intelligence has never really gone away.

[Osama bin Bambi]

Even I'm smarter than them and I'm an idiot.

Yeah, being smarter than Bill O'Reilly and Rick Santorum isn't really much of an accomplishment. It's like beating a dyslexic kid at a spelling bee, or Seattle's sports teams at anything.

[Witchyjoshy]

Even I'm smarter than them and I'm an idiot.

Yeah, being smarter than Bill O'Reilly and Rick Santorum isn't really much of an accomplishment. It's like beating a dyslexic kid at a spelling bee, or Seattle's sports teams at anything.

I don't think the dyslexic kid is a fair comparison.  The dyslexic kid's handicaps are there at no fault to him, and so he has to try harder than other people to win (but it would be possible, with enough effort, for him to overcome his handicaps and win the spelling bee through sheer determination)

Billo and such.... their problem isn't just their ignorance.  It's the fact that they wallow in it.  They're literally too stupid to admit that they're stupid.  And that stupidity IS their choice.

[Lithp]

As far as individuals go, I've met some atheists who took the label simply because they want to proclaim that they're smarter than everyone else.

These people are exactly who I had in mind. Whenever I call out other atheists for doing dumb shit, they inevitably seem to go, "Why are you attacking ME? I know science & logic! I can't be wrong, or biased about anything! That's the whole POINT of being an atheist!"

Christ, is this study really such a big deal? I kind of interpreted it as just another in the long line of "Atheists are unhappy & unliked!"/"Yeah, well, we're SMARTER!" media parade.

I'm also not entirely sure why we seem to want to toss out the concept of IQ wholesale just because it can, & has been, misapplied.

[Sigmaleph]

The whole point behind the first IQ test wasn't even to measure intelligence, it was to predict how well children would perform in schools. After it came out, the eugenics movements and governments corrupted its purpose and used it as a means to prevent immigration and diagnose people as "retarded" and have them sterilized. For some reason, the idea that IQ tests measure intelligence has never really gone away.

One can, quite reasonably, question how much IQ has to do with intelligence, however one chooses to define it. It strikes me as odd, though, to say that something called the intelligence quotient is not meant to be a measure of intelligence. They probably should've chosen a different name, if they wanted to avoid that confusion.

[Undecided]

I feel like the title of the article is misleading. It should be something like "religious people less intelligent people than atheists, but only because people with more shit to deal with are less likely to be intelligent (or perhaps vice versa)," which is a more interesting finding.

[Lithp]

Finally read the article, now understand what that means. Honestly, the whole thing should be rewritten from the ground up, it gives a limited, sensationalist view of the study. I actually compare it to the article about the "angel priest" that they also ran.