On Nov 1, 2023 at 7:17:57 PM MST, "rbowman" wrote snipped-for-privacy@mid.individual.net>:
Curious. From the same author:
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I would like to see more research on this... but even assuming higher IQs are correlated with lower levels of religiosity, that is a broad picture... for Kinsey to try to tie that to an individual shows he does not understand how such stats work. It would be like me pointing to studies that Ashkenazi tend to be more intelligent (there are many such studies) and insisting that means
*I* must be more intelligent because I am a part of that group. Nope. Heck, I would go so far as to say the studies themselves, from what I have seen, tend to assume genetics where I think culture plays a bigger role.
There's a lot of variation within cultures, and a lot of genetic variation within groups.
Intelligence is ill-defined. The people who study it tend to define it "as what an IQ test measures" which harks back to the original observation that a lot of different tests that ostensibly measured different sorts of cleverness tended to give moderately strongly correlated results.
People did realise that there were lots of different processes being looked at, and tried set up multifactorial measures of lots of different kinds of intelligence, but that didn't get anywhere.
Robert Plomin's book "Blueprint" talks about the "heritability" of intelligence, but because he was trying to exploit the huge collection of genomes put together by "23 and me" that didn't include IQ test results, he had to use "years in education" as a rough proxy.
That would make me more intelligent than Win Hill, who had the sense to drop out of a Ph.D. in chemical physics and settle for an M.Sc. in electronics when I wasted a few more years getting a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry and picked up the electronics by reading text-books and applications notes.
Commander Kinsey is not to be taken seriously. He's a troll who specialises in producing irritating nonsense.
It is a subset and not part of the generalization but I've always been curious about very religious people who are also very intelligent. There seems to be a compartmentalization rather like some of the Buddhist master talking about everyday truth and ultimate truth.
One of my favorite examples is Georges Lemaître, the Catholic priest who came up with the Big Bang theory. He was a contemporary of Einstein and they had a somewhat antagonistic relationship. I don't know if it was influenced by religion but Einstein believed in a steady state universe to the point of introducing a 'cosmological constant' to make his math come out right. Lemaître believed in an expanding universe, which was supported by Hubbell's observations. Einstein later called the constant one of his bigger mistakes. The question is still open.
My question is if Einstein's belief in a steady state universe to the point of skewing his results was more of less religious than Lemaître's belief in Christ?
Einstein introduced his cosmological constant in 1917. The idea of an expanding universe was inconceivable at the time.
Friedmann came up with it in 1922 as a consequence of playing with Einstein's equations, and LeMaitre took him seriously enough to look for - and find - evidence that it was happening in 1927. Hubble did a more thorough job and published convincing evidence that it was happening 1929.
You aren't talking about religion, but rather about the invention and subsequent confirmation of a new idea of the universe. Religions do claim to go in for that kind of innovation, but they don't get to first base.
Correct both things can be true: on average religious people have lower IQs than non-religious, a religious person is more intelligent than CK.
In fact I'd argue the latter is highly likely.
IQ is highly dodgy. You can train people to do better at it and it also assumes a certain type of (western) education so cannot be an ubiquitous measure of intelligence. It is also a relative score where "average" normalised to 100 so is highly dependent on what is determined to be "average".
Don't think it is. The expanding universe is pretty well established.
Hardly. This is simply scientific debate of two opposing views given the same scientific evidence. He admitted he was wrong ultimately. The opposite of religious dogma.
I like to equate this also with Maxwell's Equations. Other people's equations all seemed to work together as a funtional unit except for one small problem. Like four meshed gears with one gear missing some teeth. Maxwell 'patched' this problem with 'displacement current' and everything fell into place.
IMO there is nothing wrong with creating a fudge factor which works and then trying to validate its mathematical or physical existence or determine its numerical value.
On Nov 3, 2023 at 12:59:38 AM MST, "Chris" wrote <ui299a$2mre3$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me:
Do not recall details, and did not look much into it, but some of the Webb observations did not fit expectations and might shift thinking. Doing some brief research now there are questions about how to interpret the data the Webb telescope is offering (questions about how we handle opacity) and it is not seen as a big change... at least for now.
Exactly. Science has knowledge without certainty... religion has certainty without knowledge.
On Nov 3, 2023 at 12:58:35 AM MST, "Chris" wrote <ui297b$2mr4r$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me:
I would agree that fits the evidence.
Absolutely agree... and since the test is defined by 100 being average, that has had to change over the years. The average IQ of the US has gone up significantly in the last 100 or so years and that has led to the tests being adjusted. When people look at less well off places and say the IQ is lower and then insist that is tied to genetics they are showing a severe lack of understanding of the history of the test.
On Nov 2, 2023 at 7:50:59 PM MST, "rbowman" wrote snipped-for-privacy@mid.individual.net>:
Growing up as a Reform Jew, I know there is a large push on education in the community. There is a reason Jews tend to have a higher rate of doctors, lawyers, scientists, etc. But Reform Judaism is more of a moral / social group than a "strong" religion. Being an atheist is quite common, and few Reform Rabbis I met had a view of God even similar to what is in the Torah (roughly what many would call the Old Testament). The focus is on helping to make the world a better place... and it is why American Jews tend to be liberal (at least Reform ones). Tend... of course there are exceptions.
With that type religion there is no real need to compartmentalize. There is also reason to question if you could really call it a religion, at least in my view. LOL!
Largely to match the existing theory that the universe was constant. Then we learned more and the science grew.
This is how science works. People have their own ideas and they get tested. Does not mean people are perfect... of course individuals can get "stuck" on their idea being the right one... but over time science grows and changes to match the evidence.
To me it is interesting that the models are really about predicting and controlling. They need not be "right" in terms of whatever the universe really is. Newton's Laws still work amazingly well... but Relativity shows them to not be 100% accurate. Quantum Physics is amazingly useful but is contrary to Relativity in some areas. Does not mean any of these models are bad -- they all work VERY well. But we clearly have more to learn.
My #1 principle: the Universe is not limited to my ability to understand it.
As you note, he rejected the idea as he learned more. Did Lemaître reject Christ as he learned more? (Rhetorical question).
I don't have a messiah complex. Un some cases 'help' is straight forward. For example I contribute to the local food bank. I don't participate in the distribution but hopefully it's without an agenda. Drunk, stones, PTSD, whatever, a person in need of food assistance should have it available. Dorothy Day of the Catholic Worker movement, was criticized by the bishop for providing shelter to those in need without judgment.
Too often 'help' has strings or preconditions and is an attempt tp 'improve' the person being helped. Liberals certainly have an idea of how the world should be and try to impose it on everyone in the guise of 'help'. It is hubris, pure and simple.
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