Atheism and intelligence

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Considering your typo I am unsure if you were humble or humbugged by this person. Since someone so unconcerned with the turmoil of politics and the importance of political action to aid those in distress is rather out of things I would assume the latter.

Btw, here's a blog post that is very relevant.

http://volokh.com/2010/02/27/are-more-i ... e-liberal/

The only way to be forward thinking is to disagree with your upbringing? How do you mean?

I don't believe that, rather I was at the time arguing with the internal logic of the article. Supposedly that was inaccurate of me as I was sensing that the argument was novelty to surroundings but supposedly both religion and their esoteric definition of conservatism are linked back to evolutionary psychology and that their definition of atheism and their very esoteric definition of liberalism try to imply that this simply means going against the grain of evolutionary instinct - which can be good, bad, or neutral. I was holding their 'conservatism' and 'liberalism' up against what conservatism and liberalism mean in common vernacular as 99.99 percent of people would do who aren't social scientists in this particular area. Apparently liberalism and conservatism in this sense aren't anything close to political conservatism or liberalism but rather terms with a connection coined to their definitions and which mean absolutely nothing more than what they define them as.

I realize now that I didn't understand the article, Pandd was right, but then again I realize that the articles use of terminology as it did was completely absurd. Its like if I said that all men with red hair were child molesters, said that I had a study that proved it, just that in my study 'men with red hair' is code for a certain gene and 'child molesters' are not child molesters does not mean 'child molester' as defined in the Merriam Webster or Oxford dictionary but simple means 'parent evolutionarily likely to be over placating rather than disciplinary in raising children. When you see an article or survey put out with such bizarre sets of logic that imply one thing very sharply on the surface (in every day vernacular) but mean something intirely different - the people documenting this study are either entirely too autistic to communicate, I mean autistic beyond anyone I've ever met here, or alternately it is what it looks like - completely and utterly underhanded and with underhandedness cloaked and disguises as utter incompetence with language.

That's not unexpected given the domain of enquiry. Evolutionary psychology does focus more on ideas/world views/cognition than biological disorders or developments.


What I was talking about was the definition of "evolutionarily novel", a definition that is the same in evolutionary pyschology as it is in evolutionary biology and which as ready applies to the maladative as to the adaptive, and that has the same meaning whether applied to biological entities such as HIV AIDS or psychological traits/ideas/gestalt.


Is irrelevant because they were not being held up as such in the research findings or in the article. They are held up as being evolutionarily novel which is a different thing to unqualified novelity. Arguments premised on this basis amount to swiping at a strawman.

The article makes no comment on whether these things are adaptive, maladaptive or neutral.

Aha, but novelty in a negative sense is disruptive and this can extend to the catestrophic. The phrase evolutionarily novel does not imply "positive novelty" anymore than it implied negative and disruptive novelty. The assumption of "postive novelty" is your own and every time you base an objection of this, you are simply swiping at a strawman that you have built.


What you describe is actually not contrary to my suggested "plausible interpretation". It is not contrary to the findings or hypothesis described in the article or to the content of the article. Traditionally in evolutionary psychology, the formation of complex entities such as belief, values and gestalt formation are assumed to be influenced by a multiplicity of factors unless and until it is established otherwise. Nothing in the article suggests that these findings establish or imply that the things described as influenced by intelligence and evolutionary novelty vs familarity, are an exception to the general rule of "multiplicity of influencing factors".


It is a pop-media article. You should expect inexact, incomplete, dumbed down, ommissive and sensationalized presentation when reading such. What the actual study (which is what you commented on with the criticism these comments pertain to) communicated in respect of this categorization cannot be readily determined from a pop-media article about the study. I do not have access to the actual research/study paper (it is available online but requires a subscription or pay for view fee to access it) and do not consider it to be a matter of importance (from my perspective) as so far as I can see conservatism as a value set does not entail anything evolutionarily novel and liberal values do.


Indeed, but this is besides the point of the veracity (or any lack thereof) of the research findings or associated hypothesis which is what interests me.

No. Evolutionary psychology did not one day suddenly decide that religion must be caused by paranoia and therefore it must have something to do with evolutionary psychology. The reason atheism is considered to be evolutionarily novel is because it is believed that throughout the evolutionary history of humans, human groups/societies have always been characterized by theistic and religious beliefs/values/practices. Whether or not paranoia is the reason for this is besides the point.

It is not impossible that such an amateur's mistake has been made in the course of the research but it is quite usual for such information to not be included in pop-media articles. That is the kind of information that one needs to go to the methodology section of the research paper (rather than a pop-media article) to ascertain.


That is not a re-wording of my comments so far as I can tell.


That's not within the scope of the article. The point of the article is to communicate information about particular resarch and an associated hypothosis, not to act as a paradigm changer.


I do not see that there is any point wasting too much attention on the quality of a pop-media article. Most are fairly mediocre. When I read such articles tfhe potential information rather than the quality of the article is my focus.


The correlation between higher intelligence and such views does not prove who is right so AG is entirely correct about that. If X is evolutionarily novel that does not mean that X cannot be good or that X cannot be bad. The fact that the phrase "evolutionarily novel" does not convey normative value judgements, does not mean that things it describes cannot be valuated.

Not at all. It's common for pop-media to report academic and scientific research in ways that are incomplete, misleading, or even inaccurate. All sorts of reasons are implicated; in any one instance it can be as simple as the author either not understanding what they are writing about or not being adept at explaining it if they do understand. It's actually very common for pop-media to report such things in a way that distort the research or findings, which is why I tend to ignore the quality of such articles and try to focus on the information that can be extracted from them instead.

Everyone loves an excuse to think he's smarter than everyone else.

I am kind of tired of any side acting like they are better than everyone around them for the same reasons. "We believe this, and you don't. Therefore you are stupid, and we are the egg heads."

"That "hell hath no fury like a women scorned" line, refers to a gal like me." That's an unfortunate way to characterize yourself. I'm confident you have some worthwhile qualities

I have no confusion on understanding the term 'evolutionarily novel', correct me if I'm wrong - the study brought up atheism and liberalism in their given definitions, within the article, and the writer was giving an account. If the writer made the definitions up and pulled them out of thin air then the only thing the study said is that evolutionary novelty is linked to higher IQ, I'll give a disclaimer - that higher IQ and ideas held by those with higher IQ are not all that is evolutionarily novel in human thought but fit in that domain.


In what you just quoted I never implied that. When they spoke of evolutionary novelty they spoke of a connection with high IQ and people breaking away from what they believed to be genetic tendencies that supposedly are outdated. Its in effect saying that people with higher IQ's are less bound by instinct - completely indifferent of if that's for better or worse.


But it ceases to have any correlation with IQ, unless the study said nothing about IQ and the author made almost all of the article up out of whole cloth - which would make me completely in my right in attacking the article (the study was not posted by itself but rather this article was posted).


And once that is institutionalized it stops meaning anything in its correlation between IQ and its novelty.


Who's personifying it?


So they're pretty sure that agnostics, those who flat out didn't care, or those who would be atheists if alive today - or who made that leap back then, weren't around in ample numbers? Its an interesting theory I guess but it really depends on how much they're talking about evolutionary novelty in terms of evolution of cultural majority culture norms or in a genetic instinct sense. One can influence the other and vice a verse but cultural norms don't really have a stranglehold on instinct in the long run just like many agnostics and those indifferent could have faked it or been in the leadership where they simply saw religion in terms of a Machiavellian usefulness.


I suppose if this was a special interest I would have. Only have so much energy to go around though. I saw a crap article, criticized it, I'll give you the possibility that I may have attacked the study without disentangling the two, I'm pretty clear at this point that I'm only attacking the article unless it is an accurate representation of the study.


I was citing that conservatism and liberalism, for the article (and or study) has a highly esoteric definition of liberalism and conservatism that are alien to their normal use in the English language.



At this point I'll say a few things:
1) The common use of IQ and intelligence complicates interpretability of this study unless its known by the reader that IQ is being looked at as a subset of intelligence rather than the sum total.
2) the use of 'liberal' and 'conservative' has been jargonized to mean something completely outside its everyday meaning.
3) Its willingly given that atheism and altruism (what I think is really a better word than 'liberalism for the given definition) are evolutionarily novel. That makes the suggestion that both are a deviation from a norm, to say otherwise is to admit the possibility that atheism, theism, clannishness, and altruism have always existed which would mean that none of the above are evolutionarily novel. To say that theism may have survived better in the textbooks means little in an objective sense if we're to talk about the human genome in total. We'd also have to know what kind of majority is held up as evolutionarily unnovel - is the minimum for deciding the whole 60% or greater? 75% or greater? 90% or greater?

"the study said [is] that evolutionary novelty is linked to higher IQ"[ is the crux of the findings.

It is impossible to know precisely what the definitions in the research paper are. It might be something that can be summarized as the reporter describes, but which is described more comprehensively in the paper. It may not be summarizable in the space permitted the reporter with space constraints. The author may even be summarizing from another news source. The problem with pop-media articles is that there is a lot of ambiguity as to whose work is what. Even quoted comments from researchers or the paper can be misleading if miscontextualized. It could be that the definition used for the research itself was problematic but there is no way to be certain when reading a pop-media article.

I find the categorization of atheism as evolutionarily novel reasonable and I believe in the relevant academic domains, it is conventional.

As to liberalism vs conservatism, well one thing that is not evolutionarily novel is altruism. However if you think about who altruism can be exercised in respect of in a prehistoric hunter gatherer society, it stands to reason that it will be someone the atruistic actor has a relationship with.

Handing over something to a tax like structure that redistributes the resource such that whatever is used altruistically occurs without any personal relatedness to the individual who handed over the resource is an evolutionarily novel situation. This only occurs in societies that produce a surplus, which themselves are relatively novel within evolutionarly history.

There is a significant psychological difference between handing over something in respect of a personal relatedness to the giving (for instance giving through a church one trusts and belongs to, and respects and approves of the purposes the church will use the resources for, or equally a charity, or a school, or for family members or maybe friends), and handing them over to a faceless system that redistributes (perhaps including things one does not necessarily approve of), in a way that removes any personal involvement in any altruistic use of the resources. The former is evolutionarily familar, the later is evolutionarily novel. So it's plausible the finding itself (which is not about liberalism or conservatism, but whether there is a correlation between adoption of the evolutionarily novel and intelligence) is reasonable. Without reading the paper (particularly the methodology section), it's not possible to be certain.

But again it's impossible to tell whose work is whose, so it's best to ignore such things unless they are materially relevant. It's an interpretation additional to the research findings themselves and additional to the hypothesis the findings support. The findings reported certainly do not demonstrate that any of the evolutionarily familiar alternatives mentioned are outdated.

Not at all. Correlation is not determinative causation. It is entirely plausible that such things are influenced by a multiplicity of factors and when this is the case we would expect there to be correlation between the various influencing factors and the observed outcomes, and generally we should be able to construct research that is able to identify correlations between outcomes and one or more of the multiplicity of influencing factors. We do it all the time with other things. As an example, heart disease has a multiplity of causes and yet we can still identify individual such factors, without claiming that the other factors are irrelevant or do not exist.

This is why a lot of the work of statistical studies is designing to control for variables. The steps taken to effectively limit or differentiate the influence of variables outside the scope of the study are usually set out in the methodology section of research papers. If the research did not adequately control for such obvious variables, then peers will notice this and the research's credibility will be judged accordingly.


Which is irrelevant to the study and findings, because the findings refer specifically to "evolutionarilhy novelty" which has a different meaning to "novelty".


Who's personifying what?

Apparently so. It's (the pervasiveness of religico/magico beliefs and practices) actually a "classic" problem in the humanities, and has been for probably around a century or so. Different branches tend to prefer different categories of answer, (for instance evolutionary psychologists tend to prefer psychological explanations such as paranoia or stress relief, whereas sociologists tend to prefer sociological explanations such as social bonding and maintenance of social structures).

Yes, but none of this has much to do with the red herring of paranoia. If it is not useful to categorize atheism as evoltutionarily novel, then this is true whether or not paranoia is the cause of religion, and by the same token, if it is a useful categorization, this is the case whether or not paranoia is the cause of religion, which is why I claim that the paranoia comment in the article is actually irrelevant to the findings and the associated hypothesis. It's one of a number of alternative theories for why religious and magical/paranormal beliefs and practices exist so pervasively and disproving it would not tell us whether or not atheism is evolutionarily novel, so it's beside the point of the findings.

Well I would not argue the the article is high quality, and most pop-media articles often do not lend themselves to easily determining which content is an accurate and full representation of the research/researcher's veiws and which is the rephrasing or interpretation or recontextualization of the article author.


Since the usage is actually within the context of comments describing the actual behaviours that are the cateogorizations describe, it hardly seems to matter. They are defined so far as is pertinent to know what traits the categorization of evolutionarily novel was based on and so far as I can see, that's not an unreasonable basis.


So far as I can tell, the use of IQ and intelligence in this article is the same common use most people associate with these terms (measured IQ as rated by IQ testing ).

The meaning is explained within the article so it's hard for me to get excited about this I guess.


I disagree with such a usage for altruism. Conservatives can be altruistic and there is nothing evolutionarily novel about altruism. However in evolutionary history, altruism occurs between individuals who have an existing relationship with each other, and not between non-related strangers by way of an inpersonal system. Liberalism and conservatism may not be an ideal way to present the distinction between alturism and reciprocity occuring between those who have a relationship vs complete strangers who do not share any direct connection or relationship, but using "altruism" in place of "liberalism" does not improve on this.


I do not believe the distinction is so black and white as that. Humans have not never ever stayed up at night, but nocturnal lifestyles are still evolutionarily novel.

In studying evolutionary trends, black and white distinctions are rarely if ever useful; the emphasis rather is on trends. Evolutionary novelty describes evolutionary trends.

In so far as can be concluded from what has been observed, atheism is an evolutionarily novel trend. Could this be a mistaken observation? Certainly, any observation could be, but working with what we have while aware that some of it could be wrong, and that the whole lot is open to ongoing review still seems the most productive way to acquire information about and comprehension of the world and ourselves.

Personally, my biggest concern is with the vagueness around the statistics. It's entirely unclear what they mean (in terms of actual distribution), and without that information, the rest is all rather pointless anyway.

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