Atheism and intelligence

Post Reply New Topic

So if I had say grown up in Boulder Colorado or some place in Southern California and been indoctrinated where everyone I grew up with was liberal, went to a liberal school where all the teachers ranted on about the evils of current capitalism or how organized religion was bad - I'd enjoy evolutionary novelty, regardless of my genetics, simply because its only a new majority belief rather than a majority belief that's thousands of years old?

"Enjoy" evolutionary novelity? You describe it as though it were universally something postive (when in fact whether something evolutionarily novel is good or bad or neutral will vary from one such novelty to another). The phrase "evolutionarily novel" is neutral. There is no reason to construe that adopting an evolutionarily novel gestalt is necessarily a good thing in every instance and that not doing so is necessarily a bad thing in every instance, either for the individual or for their society. For all the research sheds on that aspect, it might be counter-productive to adopt evolutionarily novel gestalts, more often than not....the research gives no indication about this.

I meant enjoy as in having something that's given to you - gratis - without your doing anything special, such as being 'given' values of liberalism or atheism, at least momentarily taking the hypothesis that they're superior. Review the article - the whole point of the article, and the whole point of the claim, was to assert that liberals and atheists are of a superior intellect group and the proof given is what you're saying - novelty. What I'm trying to say, my objection, is that liberalism and atheism, in 2010, are far from novel - they're as common place as Lutheranism, Methodism, or whatever else has sizeable groups in the west. Liberalism and atheism are both paths of beliefs that in today's day and age are just as easily given to you without needing to think many thoughts for yourself as theism and conservatism potentially can be.

If you want to argue what I think is obvious, that novelty can go in any which direction and is never superior or more intelligent by necessity, then we're in full agreement on why the outcome of this article is absolute nonsense; if you're still in agreement with the author that the given scientific premise offers validity to the notion that liberalism and atheism are somehow a special brand of novelty and a novelty that is passed on without any evironmental input or dogma (even though its everywhere) - I don't know how I can explain it much further, its hitting the point of self-evident. The notion that evolutionary novelty can produce better results - given. The fact that atheism and liberalism are out there and even institutionalized in many places to varying degrees within very free societies - given. The tie between the two that liberalism and atheism are a positive evolutionary novelty; the article offers no mechanism on how that even make sense - it merely babbles about the two in rather disconnected ways.

The purpose of the article does not determine the truth of the findings it is reporting, and it is the findings and the hypothesis it supports that you are attacking. That is misplaced if your issue is with the non-declared intentions of the author of an article reporting about the research, the hypothesis it relates to and the findings of the research.

And what I am trying to explain is that this is not relevant. You are not discussing evolutionary novelty but are discussing an entirely different thing. The article clearly states the effect is measured in respect of "evolutionary novelty", not "novelty", and it clearly explains what "evolutonary novelty" means. Your objections on the above grounds are not relevant because being as commonplace as Lutheranism in this generation does not mean "is not evolutionarily novel".

Actually I am not making any argument that this is the case. I have no idea how often novelty is productive, neutral or counterproductive. I do not have sufficient information to make any claim about the proportionality of such.

They are both evolutionarily novel. Liberalism as it is being defined within the research refers to something that could not exist prior to large scale societies. Large scale societies are most certainly evolutionarily novel. They have been around for less than ten thousand years, and for most of that time, most of our (common) ancestors were not involved with them.

The problem with your objections is that many of them are strawmen plain and simple. The article and research do not posit that there is no environmental input, in fact quite the opposite. How can the environment possibly not be an influence in whether or not something evolutionarily novel is plausible? The fact that an evolutionarily novel thing can occur is very obviously linked to environment. How ever could it not be?

The article does not assert or imply the inference you are expressing above, it in fact implies the contrary.

The problem is that your objections ignore what the article and research and hypothesis actually propose and replaces this with a bunch of your own inferences that you then object to. You are not objecting to anything but straw men you have inadvertantly crafted yourself.


So is the notion that it can produce worse results.

But not particularly relevant to the research or its findings as being institutionalized does not mean that something is not "evolutionarily novel". The article and research make no claims particularly relevant to the extent to which something is currently institutionalized. The internet is obviously well established and institutionalised, but it is still evolutionarily novel. Nuclear weapons are well established and insitutionalized, but they are still evolutionarily novel. Credit card fraud is well established but it is still evolutionarily novel.


That is not stated in the article. I understand that this is what you are inferring but I think that this is the result of your own defensiveness. I think that before you had even started reading the article properly, you assumed it insulted some veiw point or gestalt or belief (or the intelligence of people who held it) or held something contrary to such up as superior and you have been filtering through this assumption. You do not appear to have bothered to understand what you are attacking in this instance. You persistently demonstrate that you do not understand the concept of evolutionary novelty (a concept that existed independently of and prior to this research and which does not entail any normative value judgement at all) and do not differentiate between the premise "x is novel" and "x is evolutionarily novel". You insert value judgements that are not actually entailed in this concept then blame the researchers/authors for your inference and assumptions.

You can choose to infer that "evolutionarily novel" entails some kind of superiority but that is your assumption and is quite independent of the research and its findings.

The article makes no comment on either being positive so why would it explain a mechanism by which it would be positive. It explains the concept of evolutionary novelty and it offers an explanation as to why intelligence would correlate to the adoption of the evolutionary novel.

The connection between the two is merely that both fall within the group "things that are evolutionarily novel" so unless someone understands what is meant by "evolutionarily novel" then it would be difficult to see the connection, as the connection would coincide with a gap in understanding.

Not quite. It can also be beliefs to the effect that dieties are irrelevant, due to weakness or disinterest, or that one can't or shouldn't deal with deities.

Let me check my understandings here so far - just to double-check whether I'm as far out in left field on this as is being implied.

- Evolutionary novelty is the odd occurrence of one either being or making choices, coming up with ideas, or choosing values that are outside the historical norm and especially so if there is no precedent for them.
- The article has implied on one hand that those who are more intelligent tend toward evolutionary novelty, and its not to say that the intelligent are the only possibility of evolutionary novelty but they're in that pool.
- Those who are more intelligent more often choose atheism and liberalism statistically.

The study's definition of conservatism is caring about clan only, the definition of liberalism is caring about all. The definition of theism is clan-protective paranoia. These are the suggestions that liberalism and atheism have connection to evolutionary novelty.

Actually, I've heard that capitalists tend on average to be smarter. Its been awhile since I've seen the article so please don't blame me for hunting it down, but what that article I read claimed was that extremist beliefs, capitalist beliefs, and socially liberal beliefs were all correlated with higher IQs.

That being said, capitalism is a new idea and the ability to deal with it would likely correlate with a higher IQ. Clannishness is historical, but individualism is modern.

In any case though, IQ isn't a measure of correctness, and having a high IQ could actually lead one to rather silly ideas as an article that codarac posted awhile ago suggested.
http://medicalhypotheses.blogspot.com/2 ... ommon.html

There really isn't. I think it likely covers people who are agnostic but have, of their probabilities in mind, a lot of different religious possibilities, or they see truth in bits and pieces thinking that all the religions are generally roads to the same place without the doctrine or dogma being much more than simply a narrative of that particular society. People of this group tend to come to their own philosophical conclusions and yes, lean abstractly theistic. Think of it like the MMA or JKD of religion - they're hoping to take the best of everything and check it against the tangible realities around them to find what they believe in the end math is most likely.

At least that's my own observation, not saying it means a whole lot.

The OP article stated that liberalism was evolutionarily novel because it cared about society whereas conservatism is defined as only caring about clan. This makes me want to read up on evolutionary psychology that much more because hate seeing being a blank canvas that people can project anything on.

The trouble with lets say financial liberalism being evolutionary novelty in that article is faulty because it makes a very across-the-isle glance at conservatism as being only out for family. Both show signs that they care about society - just that one believes that donations should be by government mandate while the other believes they should be to private organizations, the first believes that everyone should tithe thus they'd pry it out via the IRS, the later believes that bureaucracy will take the first feed trough and that those who they desired to give to will get the scraps. Therefore - both care about the wellfare of society, when said otherwise its almost always a rather deliberate denial of reality.

Then again though, I'm taking a political definition of 'conservative' or 'liberal'; if the research study's head defines conservatism as being about clan and liberalism as being about helping all of society and those two definitions are moved beyond question because he meant his own thing by it - then those terms cease to mean anything.

In the end though it seems like the descriptions of everything sound very perspective to one particular person or that group of people and, when they're making the definitions slight of hand is quite easy.


Overuse of general intelligence reminds me a lot of what John Ralston Saul was talking about in Voltaire's Bastards, he tended to think of it as the 'courtier' class of society that loved to think that anything that looked good on paper should fit reality like a glove and that reality was obscured to these people because they couldn't reconcile the difference. I will agree that at least financial liberalism thrives on a great many 'shoulds' that look great on paper - social liberalism, capitalism, and atheism I can't say the same for in that they seem pretty well balanced in terms of common sense and general intelligence; then again 'to what degree' and absoluteness of beliefs (extremism) could be where general intelligence goes out of bounds.

I guess what I found myself arguing with Pandd is perhaps not what the wording of the article says to a 't' (very esoteric definitions seem to relieve the study of outright intellectual dishonesty) but more or less the use of these terms being thrown around as if they mean what people tend to think of in their common use. Lol, the whole conversation has actually been a clash between common sense and general intelligence it seems.

Ok, good idea.


No.
It is not a concept that refers exclusively or even particularly to humans or ideas or choices. Wings would be evolutionarily novel to us and to rabbits, and to dolphins and to many other creatures. HIV AIDS is evolutionarily novel to humanity. Being raised in battery farms is evolutionarily novel to chickens.

Historical precedent in most instances will be irrelevant. Anything within that time period might be construed as evolutionarily novel context depending. So far as "evolutionary novelty" is concerned such a small time scale will not usually be relevant unless there are exceptional circumstances.


Not exactly.
It is not for instance saying that if X is the most intelligent person they will adopt evolutionarily novel idea w. It is not saying that if you took a group made up the top 20% of the population on intelligence (or actually measured IQ) that most would adopt any particular, or all evolutionarily novel ideas. From memory, the contrary (that most would adopt evolutionarily familiar ideas in some or all instances) is not inconsistent with what was asserted in the article.


The average intelligence of people who were atheist was higher than that for the group comprised of people who were not, and the same in respect of the other views reported on.

This does not tell us the proportion of people within the group "more intelligent" that choose one way or the other.

The hypothesis the researchers believe their findings support, is that people of lower intelligence tend to go one particular way (the evolutionarily familiar way); this alone will result in their group having lower average intelligence. If only 1 in 100 "more intelligent" people were to choose atheism and 99% believe in a deity or higher power, the inclusion of the lower intelligence group in the theistic sample would still result in the group average for atheists being higher.

The context of this research appears to be "evolutionary psychology". In respect of the characteristics of conversatism and liberalism that are relevant to this domain, the classification of conservatism as consistent with the evolutionarily familiar, and liberalism with the evolutionarily novel is not inappropriate. Caring about clan only is actually a gross simplification. Life for most of evolutionary history is consistent psychologically with conservatism; this is not the case with liberalism.

No it is not. The definition of theism is holding magico/religico beliefs.
The attribution of religion as having a basis in paranoia is assumed by someone along the lines but this is actually entirely a by the way add on interpretation that neither effects the research findings nor adds anything to the hypothesis proposed, so it's truth or not is actually a red herring.

In respect of the findings, whatever the intent or rationale or veracity of attributing religion to paranoia, the findings and hypothesis are not actually influenced or altered by this. As I stated earlier, if the problem is with the use to which findings are being put or the attitudes of one or more of those reporting them, then that should be your target. The truth value of the findings is another matter entirely.

Suggestion? Both are unambiguously described as evolutionarily novel, however, evolutionarily novel does not mean what you are attributing to it.

Ok, right, but in the context of the article it was people and worldviews. What you're talking about are physical manifestations of genetics in the whole range of species, I'm not say thing that neurological proclivities are any different - just that I'm more or less isolating what the article means to examine; if I have to reinvent the wheel and give an encyclopedic account of what I know on a subject - hell - I couldn't read my post, let alone could I expect anyone else to.


My problem with specific ideas being held up as novel, especially once they've hit the level of being broadcast onto the population and upbringing, is that they cease to bare the effect of being strictly the choice of those who are novel in the sense of IQ or current adaption. I bring up adaption to the world in this time frame because, unless I'm reading this wrong, the argument tends to be that liberalism (in the economic sense) and atheism are well suited for now - and while I don't think anyone's arguing that a massive plague or natural disaster bringing us back to the stone age for a few decades wouldn't change the paradigm in major ways it seems like novelty in a positive sense is being able to overcome the areas where hereditary 'instinct' ceases to be practical and being able to adapt to the now more readily than whose who are more held by prior instinct.



I think you laid out a hypothesis earlier that those who are intelligent will go in either direction based on what their final verdict is on the evidence - if we want to call it 50/50 for the sake of the hypothesis you were making earlier, you mentioned that those of lower IQ just stick to their gut more and because of that the side that's more conservative ends up with more unintelligent people because of that tendency of those with lower IQ. That was one of the premises that I disagreed with (not the first but the later) because I can confess to living in a very liberal city, where its something like what some people describe as living in the bible belt - just in negative, its knee jerk unthinking liberalism quite more often than conservatism.

Since I've observed it in every direction (dumb theist/atheists/conservatives/liberals) I'd argue that the hereditary set that those of low IQ practice far more often is social pragmatism - ie. they don't care if its true, they just care if its what everyone around them believes. If its a conservative area - they're conservative. If its a liberal area - they're liberal. If its a preppy college - anything that's not top 40 is heresy, if its a liberal arts college anything that's not indie is heresy. The dumb take truths, believes, etc. and you realize with them everything is clothing, mainly because they realize they don't have it in them to figure it out, thus they go with what they think is safe - embrace the most popular opinion wherever they are.


Sounds like a really crap job of communication then.



Which means nothing in context of the article. The article said that this was both internal paranoia and paranoia about the well-being and defense of clan, implying that the shorthand for these two things is magico/religico beliefs - a terminology that means nothing until explained, as it was in the article in part by my quote.


It makes an assertion that theism or spirituality, anything non-atheist, has roots in evolutionary psychology, and without it having roots in evolutionary psychology atheism could not be evolutionarily novel.


That is my target. If a study is done where a reasonably random sample of people is taken that's big enough to be a fair representation of society, and it finds that liberals and atheists (perhaps capitalists as well if we can include them as liberals for wanting to drag a country up by its bootstraps - very alien way to look at it from a political perspective) - I'd be ok with the findings. Perhaps that's the part I missed?


So in other words the link that AG posted a bit ago from medicalhypotheses.com is the better read because it reinterprets, for laymen, what was really meant by the article without the confusing pseudo-political jargon?

By all intents and purposes most people have to be reminded that IQ claims are neutral, IMO they'd be far better off scrapping the term and saying that people who are more novel have more 'general intelligence' rather than 'common sense', said in a way that leads to understanding. Its not to say that most people are dumb, just that - like AG's article said, general intelligence can come at the price of common sense and with loss of common sense comes communication barriers - people cease to try and write things in ways to make them as clear as possible, which common sense would usually dictate that wording, terminology, and means of explanation are the difference between the truth being illuminated on paper and in speech or utterly lost by personal folly. Most people aren't going to read the OP article and think its neutral in that sense; then again I have to admit that we've been blurring the heck of this conversation - you're arguing the value of the study if taken by its esoteric definitions, I was really attacking the article rather than the study though I may not have fully realized that at the time.

I think the average liberal is pro-capitalism—just markets with a softer touch. Also, the majority of U.S. liberals are probably religious or at least spiritual.

Oddly enough I consider myself social liberal in a lot of ways - just that I think when internal wisdom is thrown out its sad, I mean that more in terms of dealing with existence than attitudes on theism/atheism as there are both highly evolved atheists and theists who can have a great coversation (ie. Jurgen Habermas and Michael Novak), sadly there's far more on both sides who are of the...well...lets say non-novel sort.

I doubt that they were analyzing the notion of "liberalism" very well in the first place.

Additionally, who says that all things are normal curves? If there is an unusual distribution, then an average might not solve things. What if there is a skewed distribution? Y'know, where there could be a lot of smart conservatives but there is a group of stupid conservatives that disrupts the data. Additionally, your objections to liberal ideas being good are great, but correlations have nothing to do with who is right on an issue. This means that you could be right on everything, but have the average liberal being slightly smarter. Additionally who says that they are analyzing all of the variables? I mean, libertarianism might screw with things a bit as well, and yet libertarians would agree with your criticisms. I mean, there is enough going on that sleight of hand is incredibly easy on this topic.


Have you ever read The Black Swan by Nassim Taleb? It is a good book, but about how academia's love of normal distributions is fundamentally wrong on the economy and screwing up the economic models people use to assess risk. The idea might make some sense to you.

The only thing I can think of, being outside of this London professors field of study, is that the terms 'liberal' and 'conservative' have esoteric meanings in his field and that in this context its professional jargon. Otherwise, he needs a prescription for Aricept.


Skafather, back when he was here, actually posted a link to a book called 'The Mismeasurement of Man - I should probably add that to my reading list as well, sounds like it might address this.


Woah - Pandd would scold you for that one, you should know that! Its not good or bad - its 'evolutionarily novel'.


True, but if I'm going to criticize a study it has to be on terms that are comprehensible to the facts therein. Anything that I could put down at the beginning of any study under the sun just gets to be a yawner, means nothing to people.



No, but that reminds me, I'll have to find your reading list - I've read several books since I last checked in on that. This sounds interesting, though I think it'll be even more so if it tells what they're missing or what the bigger picture of their blind spot is - overuse of normal curves IMO is just a symptom not a root element.

Sand > "And would you say conservatism is altruistic?"

Certainly not. There is a negative correlation between political activity and altruism for anybody I have met.

The people I have met who seemed to qualify as altruistic are evenly balanced lib eral - conservative, as far as I know, and none activist.

AND arguably the most altruistic person I have met was politically uninvolved, conservatively inclined and not - this from his own mouth - particularly intelligent. I felt very humblde before him - whih is not my style, especially then.