Posted on 07/20/2014 7:35:13 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Have you ever heard the claim "all smart people are atheists", or maybe its inverse: "people who believe in God are dumb"? It's quite a pervasive urban legend, and one which I've known is false for a long time, but I didn't realize just how false until the other day. I recently decided to do a quick cataloging of the ten highest IQ's on earth, and discovered that it's nearly the exact opposite of the truth!
Before reading the list, however, I want to remind you of the caveat that IQ test results are not in any sense the measure of a person's worth. They tend to favor folks who are good at hard "knowledge" things like mathematics and chess, and I think we all know very valuable people who are good at none of these. Moreover, I think the attribute of "wisdom" (valuing attributes like ethics and foresight) is a far better measure of whether or not a person will be happy. I'm not aware of any standardized test for measuring wisdom, however.
Another important point is that there are competing ideas on which tests most accurately measure intelligence. Not everyone takes the same IQ test, and there are enough claims, counterclaims, and disputes in this subject to drive a researcher bananas! All I could do was read everything I could find on it, and rank the candidates based both upon their scores and on who seemed to be the most unanimously agreed upon as worthy (ignoring many "fan clubs" along the way).
An additional challenge I had to grapple with is that minors' scores are adjusted upwards to compensate for their age. The younger they are, the higher the relative adjustment.
(Excerpt) Read more at examiner.com ...
Engineers, particularly program managers, live in a more balanced world which includes practice as well as theory. Most of the engineers I have known are religious because almost every engineer understands that elegant designs never produce themselves. They understand all of the factors required for a system to come together and to work as designed and never believe in mere probabilities.
Therefore, I'm not impressed with my physicists out there. As I once told a Physics Major grad student who didn't like one of my answers to a college examination question, "when I graduate, I'll be an engineer and have a job - you'll still be grading papers..Sorry".
That list is WAY off!!
Where’s Jay Carney, Harry Reid, Alan Grayson, Barbara Boxer, Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, Sheila Jackson Lee, Maxine Waters, etc.?
Then you find science and begin to question the belief in god and possibly refute god.
Then if you live long enough, you begin to question the limits of science and find faith in god.
Don’t have any numbers and I’ve often heard similar discussions from others, but when I’ve pulled the thread I’ve found that it is all urban legend. My degree is in Physics and every Physics major I’ve met in the last 25 years except two were religious in one way or another.
What I’ve found in discussions is that from both a practical and theory standpoint the more we find out and the less we realize we know, it becomes either terrifying or awe inspiring both of which lead to an appreciation of God.
Very cool quote. Thanks for that one.
“I think finding a link between religious belief and IQ is false dichotomy.” Say that again?? Your thought contradicts itself.
Or the new smartest woman i the world: Elizabeth Warren?
Many atheists are obviously actual believers who resent and hate God. A true atheist would not try to force his particular view on others because others’ views should not matter at all to him unless others are trying to actually coerce him into expressing theist views. Of course not all atheists fall into this category, perhaps most do not but the nature of it is that most who do not will not become known and thus not be counted. The atheists we are familiar with are the screamers who insist that all of us must be protected from any sort of God.
Watch Leonard Susskind try to dance around the overwhelming evidence for an Intelligent Designer.
Occam's Razor does not appear to be in his intellectual repertoire.
Closer To Truth asks Leonard Susskind: Is the Universe Fine-Tuned for Life and Mind?
Susskind explicitly admits this at about 4:40 in the interview.
I have a high IQ, so so I have been told. The last "IQ" type test I took was the GRE back in college. Scored high enough to get me into Mensa, and even the TOPS.
I tend to be "athiestic" or at most "agnostic", at least officially, when I discuss politics or science. I think bottom line, religiosity is a choice.
I did have a boss, an MIT Grad, brilliant, who was an athiest, and a Conservative. He was a believer in a "religious" gene in humans. That humans felt the need to believe in something greater than themselves. Because of that, Conservatives tended to believe in God, but Liberals, who choose to be Godless, HAD to believe in something, so they substitute The State. Makes sense to me.
Creator (1985)
Dr Harry Wolper: “I tell you Sid, that one of these days we’ll look in to our microscope and find ourselves staring right into God’s eyes, and the first one who blinks is going to lose his testicles.”
I’m a big fan of science and even fancied myself a scientist once upon a time. It’s fun and fascinating and worth every minute of time invested, mostly. Science, however, doesn’t explain or actually attempt to understand much of anything. Science is mostly about observing things and giving them names.
“Being intelligent doesn’t mean you are rational. Look at Bobby Fischer”.
Ted Kaczynski, aka, the “Unabomber” comes to mind. A PHD mathmatician, who flipped out, started living like a hermit, and blowing up buildings. But did he flip out? Who knows what evil looks in the heart of men? Only The shadow knows.
Ping myself for link.
For the people who dont understand what IQ is, imagine comparing the inteligence of two people as the same as comparing the fighting capacity of two martial arts warriors in battle. A higher IQ would represent a higher muscle strenght, not technique or karate skills. Who would win the fight? any of them. IQ is only measuring your Complex Abstraction ¨lifting¨ capabilities, how much complexity can you hold in your brain at any given time, not your actual overall inteligence.
It does not represent by any means if a person deserves awards or respect or love or if it is spiritual or even sane or coherent or wise or educated.
I believe religion is a place where a person goes when he/she cant find the answers that he/she needs anywhere else. Every person is different, so every person needs different answers, and some need a lot while some others just need a few.
So i would think the tendency is that smarter people in general is able to find the answers he/she needs without having to recur to religion.
But the definition itself of a god is very ambiguos. Two differnet persons who believe in god will probably say to each other ¨we are two believers¨, but the actual concept or idea they have about god in their minds will probably be completly different.
I have my own explanation or idea of what i am, what my soul is and so on, but i dont consider myself a believer.
The thing is, the only thing i need to be recogniced as a believer is to call all my ¨explanations¨ as ¨God¨, wich is just semantics AND to follow all the social conventions that been religious imply.
What is the difference between ¨The explanation of everything¨(in the most broad sense posible) and ¨God¨ besides letters?
My personal conclusion its than a person been religious or not depends on his/her personality, lenguage and social enviorement. Its a cultural thing.
A person who doesnt need answers nor the social support of his social enviorement religious mates, will break free to do whatever he actually needs to do with his mind , hearth and body.
The problem with materialism is that it's self-refuting.
The difficulty with theism is the problem of evil. While the problem is not insurmountable, it can't be fully explained.
The above link is the best, most concise explanation of the problem that I've read.
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