| GameOver22 said: About fundamentalist: I would actually think fundamentalists have lower IQs and lower levels of education, as the research suggests. What I mean, is that I think the other models would produce different results if fundamentalism was included as a control variable because I would expect there is a reason to think that fundamentalist religious believers and non-fundamentalist religious believers are quite distinct from each other.....meaning the results for the correlation between intelligence and religious belief might be different if you exclude fundamentalists from the sample. About IQ level: In the study, IQ level measures intelligence....not education. I didn't look at the operationalization of education, but education is usually accounted for by a simple question (what is the highest grade level you completed?). My problem with IQ is that it doesn't really measure knowledge about religion. I'm more familiar with work in political science, but knowledge is not measured with IQ. It is measured with how much knowledge someone possesses about politics (typically questions with an objectively right answer). I would think the same should be applied to religious studies. IQ just captures how well someone can take a specific test.....it doesn't capture whether someone has seriously contemplated and investigated religious belief. I just think intelligence should be tied to intelligence about the topic at hand. It would kind of be like using how well people score on a math test as a proxy for intelligence in a political science study. I just don't see the connection. Edit: For instance, I would use the "need for cognition" scale, which measures how much people enjoy problems that make them think, rather than an IQ test. |
So you don't really think IQ is an inaccurate measurement of intelligence, you would just rather see a study of the relationship between education and theism? There probably are such studies if you're interested. I do not believe I have seen one, though.
The study provides evidence that individuals with an enchanced capacity to learn, reject theism. One doesn't need learn all the religions to cast aside their fundamental core of the supernatural, which is common to all theism. IQ correlates with problem-solving, which applies to your "need for cognition" scale.
