Despite Massimo’s casual acceptance of the evolutionary nonsense, I found the following, ironically from PZ Meyers, who made some of the points I was about to make:
”Good grief. This ridiculous study is making the rounds of the atheist community, with its claim that liberals and atheists are smarter than conservatives and religious people. Look at the numbers!The remaining point to be made was made by another professor (which I cannot find now, but will point it out anyway): It is possible that those with slightly higher intelligence need and seek emotional affirmation from association, so they place themselves into categories of self-designated “eliteness” merely for the psychological strokes they get from that association. The emotional neediness of Liberals and Atheists should be the focus here, not the evolutionary significance – which is, to quote PZ, complete crap.“Young adults who identify themselves as "not at all religious" have an average IQ of 103 during adolescence, while those who identify themselves as "very religious" have an average IQ of 97 during adolescence.
“Seriously? Show me the error bars on those measurements. Show me the reliability of IQ as a measure of actual, you know, intelligence. Show me that a 6 point IQ difference matters at all in your interactions with other people, even if it were real. And then to claim that these differences are not only heritable, but evolutionarily significant…jebus, people, you can just glance at it and see that it is complete crap.
“And then look at the source: Satoshi Kanazawa, the Fenimore Cooper of Sociobiology, the professional fantasist of Psychology Today. He's like the poster boy for the stupidity and groundlessness of freakishly fact-free evolutionary psychology. Just ignore anything with Kanazawa's name on it.”
For a professor of evolutionary biology cum philosophy, Massimo seems to take a great many things at face value with little if any analytical (read "Skeptical") effort, so long as those things fit his ongoing narrative.
2 comments:
Wow, talk about entangled minds (bad attempt at humor, I know)!
I just learned about this bogus and self-congratulatory study yesterday. At first, it really got me thinking, since at this point in my life (I'm 25), I seem to be looking for some sort of spiritual truth, or at least a worldview I can get behind. While Atheism can sometimes appeal to me as a knee-jerk emotional reaction towards the uncertanties of life (both material and mental), I just can't seem to enjoy it. Logically, it doesn't seem to hold water either, so why bother?
I want to thank you for writing this blog; over the last few months I have become sort of a regular lurker. I'm writing this comment as a means of getting more involved with the thinkers whose worldviews and efforts I can respect -that is, anti-materialistic thinkers with a spiritual worldview, regardless of religious affiliation-.
Going back to the study and its effect on me, I was initially somewhat daunted by its implications, until I began to think not only about the multiple intelligences involved in human life, such as the emotional intelligence (which many divulgators of Atheism appear to be sorely lacking), but also about looking into the motivations of the researchers. As well as yourself and many others, the illusion of reason and certainty quickly faded, leaving behind a rotten and dishonest agenda. Heck, even if it all were true, what would 6 points (in average) diffence truly signify vis a vis a relationship with the world? Negligible!
Sorry about the lack of clarity and coherence in my post, I'm just not used to communicating much in blogs, or over written mediums. Hopefully, I'll correct that with time.
PS: Heh, the word verification for this post is "Hesse". Herman Hesse, as you probably know, wrote Demian, a story of individuation, of a boy coming into his own as a man and finding a sort of spiritual enlightenment. Seemed fitting, even if I can't yet see my destination.
Emiliano, Thanks for your comments. No need to merely lurk, if you have comments, they are welcome here...
Post a Comment