Higher IQ's

[brewer]

Wow, I never knew that. I'll start patting myself on the back, um, er, once I'm able to find it.

[AFTT47]

Funny thing - the more often you take IQ tests, the better your score will be.  Why?  Because all that IQ tests can reliably determine is - how well you take IQ tests.

There's a lot of truth to this. IQ tests do effectively measure a certain type of problem solving ability - IF the test is properly designed and administered. Even then, it's just one facet of intelligence. What about creativity, what about thinking "outside the box", what about flashes of insight, what about the ability to apply logic to real world problems?

IQ was an interesting idea but while I wouldn't go as far as Boru, I agree it has limited utility. It sure as hell isn't the final word on who is "smarter".

[Exian]

When people start talking about atheism and IQ's, I keep my head down. Don't want to throw the numbers off.

[Jenny A]

Does it worry any theists that atheists have higher IQ's? I know this does not mean that religious people are dumber than atheists, but it does point to a correlation between intelligence and religiosity that needs to be discussed.

If I was believed in god and was faced with this fact, I would seriously question whether or not the smarter people know better when it comes to a god's existence. I didn't want to raise any assumptions, I just wanted to here what the resident theists had to say.

It appears that that the jury is still out on this one:

Most of the recent scientific studies have found a negative correlation between I.Q. and religiosity.[1][2] On the individual level, the education level is positively correlated with a belief in a god in African countries, and negatively correlated in Western countries. The frequency of church visits is however positively correlated with education level in English-speaking countries as well as in Protestant Europe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religiosit...telligence

In any case there isn't a very high correlation between high IQ's and atheism.

I think there's a much better correlation between highly associative minds and religion and an even better correlations between people born in highly religious families or countries and religion.

[Jackalope]

I'm around the 140 range with my IQ.  I'm average.

Uh, 140 is nearly three standard deviations above the mean.

[Faith No More]

I see the day coming when the IQ is laughed at as a silly, historical artifact of how humans used to quantify intelligence.

[Faith No More]

I'm around the 140 range with my IQ.  I'm average.

Uh, 140 is nearly three standard deviations above the mean.

I think it was tongue-in-cheek.

[Kingpin]

Lots of studies have been done on this, just google it.

When people start talking about atheism and IQ's, I keep my head down. Don't want to throw the numbers off.

As Mark Twain once said, "It is better to keep your mouth shut and let people think you're stupid then to open it and remove all doubt"

[Exian]

Lol Yep! I live by that. I find people often confuse brevity with having little to say.

[Jackalope]

Uh, 140 is nearly three standard deviations above the mean.

I think it was tongue-in-cheek.

I hope so.

As far as the usefulness of IQ tests go - it's my opinion that they're really only useful for quantifying proficiency in certain types of thinking. I took a test that was given as part of a postgrad research project, and the results were quite comprehensive (i.e. although an IQ number was provided, there were more nuanced scores given for different types of problem-solving).

In my view, it's not a predictor of academic or professional success, but rather just a score of how well an individual solves certain classes of problems.