Intelligence and Religiosity

[Jichard]

"WAAA!!! HOW DARE YOU DISAGREE WITH ME!"

And thus the moron is reduced to throwing out accusations of lying

...says the person who continues to lie about studies they haven't read.

Of course it wasn't a typo because you have magical mind reading powers and magically know what I actually met because I messed up typing one word (since you're too dumb to spot satire, this is satire). Since you're incapable of admitting to errors of any type, you assume your opponents are incapable of admitting to errors too and thus you call me a liar because you can't refute what I actually asked and said. When in doubt, just call everybody, who dares to question you, a liar and hope that washes away everything they said. Do yourself a favor, stop talking. It will make you look 100x more intelligent, at this point in time.

...says the moron who was too dumb (to use your terms) to check what they wrote, and so accused me of having poor reading comprehension for daring to point what they actually wrote. For someone who likes to throw insults at other people, you sure are too dumb and moronic (again, to use your terms) to remember what you wrote.

So, do yourself a favor, stop talking about studies you've neither read nor understood. It will make you look 100x less dumb and moronic (again, to use your terms).

[Roy]

If I accidentally posted something that I didn't mean to post, how would I remember what I actually posted if I thought I posted something else?

By looking at your post.

[lilpixieofterror]

...says the person who continues to lie about studies they haven't read.

Proof given, none, but don't worry maybe if you repeat your same tired assertions long enough and hard enough, they will become true!

...says the moron who was too dumb (to use your terms) to check what they wrote, and so accused me of having poor reading comprehension for daring to point what they actually wrote. For someone who likes to throw insults at other people, you sure are too dumb and moronic (again, to use your terms) to remember what you wrote.

So, do yourself a favor, stop talking about studies you've neither read nor understood. It will make you look 100x less dumb and moronic (again, to use your terms).

Gosh, you just have to hold that error, that I ALREADY ADMITTED TO over my head because you're too stupid to refute a word I said, eh? Too bad you STILL haven't admitted to not understand satire. Too bad you STILL haven't admitted to being wrong about your claim that the Royal Society only had 10 members, for the entire 17th century. Don't worry though, maybe if you keep trying to hold errors that I've already admitted to, over my head awhile longer, your claims will magically become true! Again, stop talking... you'd look way smarter...

[lilpixieofterror]

By looking at your post.

Already did and admitted to being wrong and moved on. Amazing how fundy atheist want others to admit to being wrong, but when you do, they try to hold it over your head over and over again instead of moving on.

[lilpixieofterror]

That's nice.

Don't lie about studies you have.... BLAH BLAH BLAH WAAAA! HOW DARE YOU DISAGREE WITH ME!!!!

And the moron just keeps repeating long refuted claims in sad hopes that the material I have already refuted will magically become true. Since you too stupid to read what people tell you, let me put my question into big bold letter so your tiny mind will read and answer it:

Did they make a distinction between a degree in English and a degree in physics, when they took in their data?

There you go, it's in big bold letters, so your tiny mind can spot it and answer it instead of repeating your same refuted garbage, and totally ignoring that I already quantified further on my statement, several times throughout this thread. I read your quote, you dumb twit, over and over again and even tried to see where those cited pages mentioned what I said above. They didn't, but since you can't answer the question, you're stuck with repeating yourself and hoping others will be fooled by you repeating yourself, without answering what I asked.

[lilpixieofterror]

This thread makes me sad.

Can't we all just overcome our failures to communicate?

He wants to be a pompus and arrogant jack ass, he will be treated as a pompous and arrogant jack ass. He earned this.

[lilpixieofterror]

I called you a liar because you lied about something you hadn't read. And I don't give you the benefit of the doubt, since you didn't extend that courtesy to me, but instead insulted me for daring to point out that you claimed to have read something you hadn't read.

Translation: "WAAA!!! HOW DARE YOU DISAGREE WITH ME!"

And thus the moron keeps pretending he can read minds and automatically knows that I must of 'lied' about reading something when I made a simple mistake and put in first instead of second. Since you can't ever admit to being wrong about anything, and I already admitted to making the mistake, you automatically assume I 'lied' because you're a arrogant jack ass that is incapable of admitting to error and you assume I can't either. Sorry sweety, I explained myself time after time to you and you refuse to accept that I made a simple error in putting the wrong number (an easy mistake to make). Again, when will you accept that easy to believe and easy to make explanation or do you just want to keep screaming 'WAAA LIAR!" because you're an arrogant jack ass that hates Christians and automatically assumes the worst about Christians who dare to disagree with him?

Another substance-free post from you. Let me know when you have something worthwhile to say on the thread's topic.

Irony at it's finest. Do yourself a favor twit, drop your hatred of Christians and Christianity.

[Jichard]

Translation: "WAAA!!! HOW DARE YOU DISAGREE WITH ME!"

And thus the moron keeps pretending he can read minds and automatically knows that I must of 'lied' about reading something when I made a simple mistake and put in first instead of second. Since you can't ever admit to being wrong about anything, and I already admitted to making the mistake, you automatically assume I 'lied' because you're a arrogant jack ass that is incapable of admitting to error and you assume I can't either. Sorry sweety, I explained myself time after time to you and you refuse to accept that I made a simple error in putting the wrong number (an easy mistake to make). Again, when will you accept that easy to believe and easy to make explanation or do you just want to keep screaming 'WAAA LIAR!" because you're an arrogant jack ass that hates Christians and automatically assumes the worst about Christians who dare to disagree with him?



Irony at it's finest. Do yourself a favor twit, drop your hatred of Christians and Christianity.

Another substance-free rant from you. Let me know when you finally have something of relevance to say on the thread's topics, as opposed to just hurling obsceneties.

[Jichard]

He wants to be a pompus and arrogant jack ass, he will be treated as a pompous and arrogant jack ass. He earned this.

Ok, so you're just a troll pretending to be Christian. Got it.

[Jichard]

And the moron just keeps repeating long refuted claims in sad hopes that the material I have already refuted will magically become true. Since you too stupid to read what people tell you, let me put my question into big bold letter so your tiny mind will read and answer it:

Did they make a distinction between a degree in English and a degree in physics, when they took in their data?

There you go, it's in big bold letters, so your tiny mind can spot it and answer it instead of repeating your same refuted garbage, and totally ignoring that I already quantified further on my statement, several times throughout this thread. I read your quote, you dumb twit, over and over again and even tried to see where those cited pages mentioned what I said above. They didn't, but since you can't answer the question, you're stuck with repeating yourself and hoping others will be fooled by you repeating yourself, without answering what I asked.

Same response. I already addressed what you said. You lied and said that we don't anything about the people being studied, their education levels, etc. I showed that was a lie by literally listing the pages where the studies gave said information. Of course you don't address this, since you're dishonest. So you try to backtrack away from your lie, instead of owning up to it. I'm not stupid enough to fall for your silly goal-post moves. So feel free to finaly admit that you lied about a study you hadn't read, as opposed to dishonestly moving the goalposts.

Once again:

You claimed that the studies did not control for education level.

"We do not know anything about the people being studied, from their individual beliefs, to their education levels, etc to be able to see if the comparisons are even fair to begin with."

That's false. For example:

"The Relation Between Intelligence and Religiosity: A Meta-Analysis and Some Proposed Explanations"
http://diyhpl.us/~nmz787/pdf/The_Rel...planations.pdf

pages 8, 12-14

Seriously, do you think I'm going to fall for what you're saying, when you obviously haven't read the studies you claimed you read?

[37818]

This consense exists.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog...ef-in-religion

[Jichard]

Sorry, but I'm too swamped with work this week to hunt it down. Remind me next week if no-one else comes up with references in the mean time.

If you don't cite the data then I have no reason to take your claims seriously.

Apples and oranges. I'm talking mainly about those who brought science from its idealistic Greek conception to its modern conception, which is based on experiment (Bacon), mathematics (Kepler), and theoritecal abstraction (Galileo), and which was carried further by Newton, Boyle, and others in the seventeenth century. The folks that you list are mostly much later. (And note that Kepler and Galileo ARE non-English.)

So you're basically cherrypicking a time-frame to exclude atheist/agnostic scientists. Ok, then.

By the way, you're moving the goalposts. You said "great pioneers of modern science" and then when you're shown great pioneers of modern sciences like biology, physics, and psychology, you move the goalposts to say they don't count. Amazing. And if you don't think Laplace, Poission, Darwin, etc. brought science into a modern conception based on mathemetics, experiment, and theoretical abstraction, then... that's rather weak.

You have completely misread Barbour's quote! Go back and re-read it, and think a bit. In the English language, "seven out of ten" is another way of saying "70%". It does NOT imply that there are only 10 total members. Do you really think that the British Royal Society had only 10 total scientists as members throughout the entire seventeenth century?!? Do you have a clue as to what the Royal Society is?!?

Yes, I know what the Royal Society is. I also know the sample size for it is much smaller than for the National Academy of Sciences.

Barbour is saying that 70% of the members of the world's most prestigious scientific society in the seventeenth century were Puritans, and that most of these were very devout in their faith.

And in doing this, you specifically choose a time-frame that excludes atheist/agnostic scientists, and you specifically choose a time frame where there were harsh social penalties for claiming not be Christian. That's inc contrast to modern times, where scientists can openly come out as not Christian, without much consequences.

Hey, but since you like "prestigious scientific societi[es]" so much, then how about this:

"Leading scientists still reject God"
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal.../394313a0.html

"Our chosen group of "greater" scientists were members of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). Our survey found near universal rejection of the transcendent by NAS natural scientists. Disbelief in God and immortality among NAS biological scientists was 65.2% and 69.0%, respectively, and among NAS physical scientists it was 79.0% and 76.3%. Most of the rest were agnostics on both issues, with few believers. We found the highest percentage of belief among NAS mathematicians (14.3% in God, 15.0% in immortality). Biological scientists had the lowest rate of belief (5.5% in God, 7.1% in immortality), with physicists and astronomers slightly higher (7.5% in God, 7.5% in immortality)."

That's what happens when scientists are in an environment where they can espouse a lack of religious belief, without fear of being burned at the stake, social ostracization, etc.

[Jichard]

The whole thing sounds rather silly myself. Just like him pretty much trying to make the claim that analytical thinking is better than intuitive thinking.

I never said that, you willfully dishonest liar.

[Jichard]

Yes, perhaps English is his second language, he has no clue what the Royal Society is, and doesn't realize that it had many more than 10 members. If so, I may have replied a bit too harshly to him.

And maybe English is not your first language, since you willfully ignored many pioneers of modern science, such as Laplace, Hume, Darwin, and so on.

[Jichard]

You and your quote are probably correct that scientists are less religious than the general population. (However, I believe that there is conflicting data on this question, depending on how questions about religion are asked.)

Cite the data then.

Here's something to get you started. Elaine Howard Ecklund of Rice University has been doing some detailed studies of the religious faith of scientists. Here's the beginning of a popular-level article on her studies from livescience:

Source: livescience

About two-thirds of scientists believe in God, according to a new survey that uncovered stark differences based on the type of research they do.

The study, along with another one released in June, would appear to debunk the oft-held notion that science is incompatible with religion.

Those in the social sciences are more likely to believe in God and attend religious services than researchers in the natural sciences, the study found.

© Copyright Original Source

Um, did you read this research? Because it actually supports my claim, not your's. Remember, my claim was that:

"scientists tend to be less religious than the general population"

And your response was that there was conflicting data on that. But you didn't present any conflicting data. You instead cited a press piece, which itself cites research that supports what I said.

For example, take this paper from Ecklund, who was mentioned in your press piece:

"Religion among Academic Scientists: Distinctions, Disciplines, and Demographics
http://socpro.oxfordjournals.org/con...2/289.full.pdf

"Most salient, about 52 percent of the scientists see themselves as having no religious affiliation when compared to about 14 percent of the entire GSS population. These results seem to confirm other research, which shows that a much smaller proportion of academics identify with traditional religious identity categories when compared to the general U.S. population (Stark 1963; Stark and Finke 2000) (297).

[...]

The findings presented here show that indeed academics in the natural and social sciences at elite research universities are less religious than many of those in the general public, at least according to traditional indicators of religiosity (302)."

And table 3 on page 296 of the study shows that:

37.6% of natural scientists said they don't believe in God
31.2% of social scientists said they don't believe in God

Less that 25% of the natural scientists said they believe in God
Less than 32% of the social scientists said they believe in God

And when you compare those numbers to table 4 on page 298, you see that there is a larger proportion of Christians (not even theists in general, just Christians [who presumably believe that the Christian God exists]) amongst the general population than there are God-believing theists amongst natural scientists and the social scientists. So yeah, that makes it fairly obvious that the scientists were less religious than the general population, as the study itself noted.

[You might be wondering why the numbers I mentioned above don't add up to 100%. The reason is that many scientists took other positions, such as an agnostic position like I don't know if there is a God and there is no way to find out, or a non-theistic spiritualist position like I believe in a higher power, but it is not God. These scientists were not included in the percentages I mentioned above. I instead just included those scientists who eiter explicitely said they believed in God or explicitly said they did not believe in God.]

Ecklund, in other work, compares the religiosity of scientists to the religiosity of the general population. And she again finds scientists to be less religious than the general population. See, for instance, pages 1813-1815 of the following:

"Secularization and Religious Change among Elite Scientists"
http://www.baylorisr.org/wp-content/...rk_secular.pdf

This is why it's important to read scientific research before citing it, as opposed to only relying on what the popular press says about the research. To quote you: "Here's something to get you started."