I commented briefly last month about the rather florid claims by Kanazawa — including a claim of a positive correlation between atheism and IQ. I noted that his findings were probably an artifact of the Leftist influence on the educational system. I am therefore rather pleased to see that a writer on the Puffington Host has drawn similar conclusions. That an atheist conservative such as myself and a religious Leftist such as Josh Schrei should come to similar conclusions does rather reinforce those conclusions, I think. His argument is an extensive and careful one but I think that his strongest point is this:
Kanazawa’s test group were all Americans. In America, atheism and liberalism are both value systems embraced by the educated middle class and are part of the cultural fabric of liberal arts universities, Ivy League colleges, and the American intelligentsia. Therefore, saying that among a small group of Americans, liberals and atheists had higher IQ test scores is a bit like saying that people with more college education in this country tend to know more.
Putting it another way, smarter people are more likely to go to college and there they come under pressure to adopt Leftist ideas, which include a contempt for religion generally and Christianity in particular. As I said previously, the correlation is almost certainly a product of the sociology of the situation, not a product of genetics. There are a couple of other generally good comments here and here.
Sadly, a later article by Schrei on the same subject was much more naive and illogical. I suppose we can’t expect too much from a Leftist. He should have read this.
Posted by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don’t forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here
Loading ...
2 users commented in " Atheism and IQ again "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a Trackback“Putting it another way, smarter people are more likely to go to college and there they come under pressure to adopt Leftist ideas, which include a contempt for religion generally and Christianity in particular.” – this is total nonsense. There’s no “contempt” for religion. Like any superstitious explanation for anything, the more you learn about science’s constant upheaval of, to steal your word, naive religious interpretations – the world is flat, the world is 10,000 years old – the less likely you are to buy into it the rest of it. The only reason you even think Christianity is singled out is because religious Americans are predominantly Christian. I’m sure some elitist Muslim in Iran is writing this exact blog about how college educated Iranians have a “contempt” for Islam.
The study was even more deeply flawed than you suggest, particularly with the intelligence – liberal philosophy correlation. For intelligence estimates he used two studies, the first a long-term tracking study of young people called the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (ADD Health), and the second was a yearly study of all ages called General Social Surveys (GSS). Neither was intended to provide in-depth intelligence data. In fact, each was based on a short vocabulary quiz, which Kanazawa assures us is correlated to general intelligence. While vocabulary is certainly a component of intelligence, it is not general intelligence, and such metrics would favor those who have spent more time in academic institutions, being exposed to new words. Interestingly, those who have spent more time in academic institutions, exposed to their liberal environments, would also more likely self-identify themselves as liberal. In other words, the study would, intentionally or unintentionally, tend to create an artificial correlation between intelligence and liberal philosophy. Interestingly, in data from the GSS study, Kanazawa also finds a positive correlation between intelligence and level of education. Since correlation is not causation you could say that intelligent people are more likely to go to school, or you could, with equal confidence, say that people who have gone to school are more likely to score well on a the intelligence metric used in the study.
Leave A Reply