Friday 13 June 2008

I am intelligent

Some people think that atheists are stupid however this is not what the latest research is showing. Read this article in a top newspaper. Infact, Richard Dawkins, a respected scientist, aknowledges that this research is cutting edge.

I suspect that if someone like Einstein was coming up with the comments I am you'd all be nodding and commenting on how intelligent my comments were. Its only because you have this preconcieved idea that im stupid that you reject everything i say.

It also makes me wonder if they is some kind of IQ test to get into heaven (not that it exists) the way you speak.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

"It also makes me wonder if they is some kind of IQ test to get into heaven (not that it exists) the way you speak."

They way we speak?

What about the way you write?

We do not have any preconceived notion that you are stupid we have you own words that lead us to believe you are not as smart as you think you are.

Einstein would not come up with the infantile comments you do.

Maybe you need to wake up and smell the coffee and realize you are not as smart as you think you are.

Maybe the problem is not with the commenters preconceived notion that you are stupid, but it is your preconceived notion that you are intelligent.

A little humility would go a long way with you. The title of your blog smacks of snobbery. The problem is your blog is not intelligent so you end up looking foolish.

Anonymous said...

Hi Mike,

I'll go through the article and post a comment or two...


Professor Richard Lynn... said many more members of the "intellectual elite" considered themselves atheists than the national average.

So, what the Professor would like to show, is that there is a direct correlation of intelligence and atheism.

A decline in religious observance over the last century was directly linked to a rise in average intelligence, he claimed.

"He claimed" is a key phrase.
Also important is the claim that the average intelligence rose. ... Did it, indeed, rise?.. or, could it be that, since IQ tests have only been standardize for about a hundred years, they have just become more accurate?

And another huge factor is whether or not atheism is correlated more to intelligence or education.
I've had discussions with people (educated and intelligent) that were taught that truth and morality are subjective (these are 'Relativists'), and that "it is impossible to know the meaning of any written text" (this last one is called 'Deconstructionism')
These were taught in colleges, and i'm sure they still are, to some extent.

There was something else taught in the Universities, in the 1920's and '30's (i believe).. It is called 'Evidentialism', and the "intellectual elite" claimed that it was "immoral, always, to believe anything without sufficient proof"... this is another thought, in the history of ideas, that has all, but evaporated... except for the misinformed internet conditioned atheist (generally young).

In other words, Mike, what i'm implying, is that, just because something is popular with the "intellectual elite", does not make it true... and the "decline in religious observance" is not necessarily because there are more "smart people", but it could be because some Professors are wrong (as evidenced by the ideas pointed out above).

But the conclusions - in a paper for the academic journal Intelligence - have been branded "simplistic" by critics.

Here is another instance of your own sources kicking you while you're down.... have you read the paper? Did you read the peer reviews that criticized?

Come on Mike!! How many more times are you going to get caught only trusting the articles that support your position, without looking at the other side?

You don't even critically examine your own sources.

Professor Lynn, who has provoked controversy in the past with research linking intelligence to race and sex, said university academics were less likely to believe in God than almost anyone else.

Interesting... the whole world is trying to fight racism, but evolutionary teaching promotes it... FANTASTIC.

A survey of Royal Society fellows found that only 3.3 per cent believed in God - at a time when 68.5 per cent of the general UK population described themselves as believers.

A separate poll in the 90s found only seven per cent of members of the American National Academy of Sciences believed in God.


I can think if a few possible factors that could cause disbelief besides intelligence.... can you?

More importantly, did Professor Lynn successfully eliminate these other possibilities?

Professor Lynn said most primary school children believed in God, but as they entered adolescence - and their intelligence increased - many started to have doubts.

So what??

This says nothing important. As kids grow, they "spread their wings" and "test the waters" (to mix a few metaphors)... kids question the beliefs of their parents, teachers and leaders.

He told Times Higher Education magazine: "Why should fewer academics believe in God than the general population? I believe it is simply a matter of the IQ. Academics have higher IQs than the general population. Several Gallup poll studies of the general population have shown that those with higher IQs tend not to believe in God."

Geee, Mike, and what does that say about those that have a high IQ, and believe in God?

I know what my IQ is, and I believe in God.
I know people that are very smart, that believe in God.

I also know some people that are NOT very smart, that do not believe in God.

How does your Professor account for these?




OK... now, questions for you, Mike...

If you are smart, what did you have to do with it? Did you cultivate it?
Is it like weightlifting, that the more you think, the smarter you get?
Or is it more like beauty?... that you are born with a certain amount, and there isn't, really, much you can do to increase your smarts... the best you can do, is exercise what you have, so the ol' noodle doesn't get flabby.



Oh, and no, i wouldn't just nod my head if Einstein were making claims.
I really don't think you are stupid, Mike... I honestly think that you are not being honest with yourself. I think that you accept atheism because of others claims, and not because you have looked and thought hard on your own.

If you are stupid, then nothing i say is going to change that... it would be like i tried to change the color of you eyes by arguing... it just don't work that way.

I'm tired, Mike... good night.

God Bless,
johnny

PS... the other anon was not me.

Mike is Wright said...

Oh, so my comments are stupid are they? pah.

and no, intellectuals still believe that you need evidence before you believe something is true otherwise why dont you belive that a monster lives under your bed?

Anonymous said...

MIKE said:
Oh, so my comments are stupid are they? pah.


Yes, many of them are.

and no, intellectuals still believe that you need evidence before you believe something is true otherwise why dont you belive that a monster lives under your bed?

Mike, let's try a little experiment...

Think of a red ball.

Now, prove to me that you've pictured a red ball.

For the sake of this experiment, i will not believe you pictured a red ball in your mind, unless you can prove to me, that you did think of a ball, and that ball really was red.


There are things that ALL rational people believe without proof.
-that the world outside your mind, exists
-that the world outside your mind, is reasonably close to the way your mind percieves it.
.... Rene Descarte said something to the effect of, "i think, therefore i am", but if you really wanted to get picky, he was making assumptions there too. Maybe he should have said, "something thinks, therefore something exists"--- you and i and all that is, might be the figment of imagination of someone else, and that someone else might be all that is.

You see, Mike, there are things that we presume to be true, a priori


God Bless,
johnny

Anonymous said...

Mikey, my IQ test have been in the high 130's to low 140's on pretty much every test I took. So what does that mean? Tell me this Mikey, how many theoretical books to you read in a month? I average about 2...

Mike is Wright said...

i think ill trust a scientific survey over some iq test lilepixieoferror claims to have done. how do i know you arent making it up?

Anonymous said...

So you are back to using argument by popularity again, Mike?


johnny

Anonymous said...

i think ill trust a scientific survey over some iq test lilepixieoferror claims to have done. how do i know you arent making it up?

Mikey, my IQ test was given by my high school and online and off line ones all say the same things. 143 is the average out of all of my scores, what is yours? Mine puts me in the top 1% of the population. So guess what... not everybody who is in the high intelligence range is an atheist. Try again.

Mike is Wright said...

iq tests are normally multiple chocie and so you proberly guessed and were lucky. You also dont understand how averages work

Anonymous said...

Mike, if you think she "just got lucky" then you are the one that does not understand averages.

She claimed to have taken more than two tests, and that all of her scores were in the "high 130's to low 140's"

If she got lucky, even twice, then she got lucky at almost the exact amount.... and that's just on two tests... if she had more, and got lucky at the same rate again...

Also, it's doubtful that the tests were graded the same... different tests have different ways of scoring. So, if she scored a 140 on one kind of test, and scored 139 on a different type of test, it's pretty safe to assume that it was not luck.

If i remember correctly, on the older tests, 90-110 was average; 110-120 was gifted, higher than 120 was genius level. I think MENSA has a minimum entrance level of 130. (i really should be checking my statements, but i'll leave that to you... this way, you might have the opportunity to show that i'm wrong... we Christians gotta let you win one, now and again.)


God Bless,
johnny

Anonymous said...

iq tests are normally multiple chocie and so you proberly guessed and were lucky.

I must be pretty lucky to take several test that pretty much give the same number. You just can't admit that there are smart Christians, huh?

You also dont understand how averages work

Since my test range from abou 138 to as high as 149, it is safe to assume that 143 is a perfectly reasonable number. I don't think you understand how averages work.

Anonymous said...

"Also important is the claim that the average intelligence rose. ... Did it, indeed, rise?.. or, could it be that, since IQ tests have only been standardize for about a hundred years, they have just become more accurate?"

Actually the average IQ has indeed been rising for the past 100, and particularly the last 50 years. However it was hard to detect at first because IQ tests are revised every so often to keep the average IQ at 100, so IQ tests were actually being made slowly but surely more difficult.

However to assume that this is at all related to a decrese in religious belif is to confuse to coorlation with causation. Personally I think rising IQs has more to do with the increseing complexity of our entertainment(Steve Johnson calls this phenomon the 'sleeper curve, and describes it in great detail in his book "Everything Bad is Good for You" http://www.amazon.com/Everything-Bad-Good-Steven-Johnson/dp/B000SOTQB2/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1216034203&sr=8-1) and that the decrese in religious belif is largely(if not wholely) cooincidental.

Anonymous said...

I just had a thought, even if Richard Lynn is correct and there is a causational link between athiesm and intelligence(a big if), which way does the link work? Does becoming an athiest make one smarter or are smart people more likely to become athiests?

Well Mike Trite care to answer that one.