Higher IQ's

[Pyrrho]

That's one of the most ignorant and yet honest things I have ever heard on AF. The methodology of science is specifically tailored to the study of the natural world.

Are you saying that God isn't real?  Anything that exists in the real world is open to scientific exploration.  Either God is imaginary, at which point he's philosophical, or he's objectively real, at which point science can search for him.

You lose either way.

You do not seem to understand what philosophy is.  If god is imaginary, god is imaginary from both a scientific and philosophical perspective.

[Silver]

If god is imaginary, god is imaginary from both a scientific and philosophical perspective.

Precisely.

[Jenny A]

You don't have 63, but you do have an average of 63.  I wish we could see more in your link than just the abstract so we might know if it meant anything.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love to believe that intelligence was the deciding factor and I'm atheist because I'm a genius, or at least above average.  But I don't believe it.  Skepticism and intelligent are not the same thing.  And intelligence can be used to rationalize all sorts of beliefs.

The whole question does not matter.  That deals with averages, not individual intelligence.  You cannot know someone's beliefs about whether there is a god or not based solely on IQ score.  You can make a guess, based on averages, but it is still just a guess and you will be wrong with some frequency.

BINGO we have a winner.  Sorry I didn't say myself.

The thing is that whether we are talking differences in intelligence or strength between sexes, races, or adherents to various beliefs, we're looking a overlapping curves.  There will always be some men who are more empathetic than some women, some women who can lift more than some men, some black people who make more money than some white people, some atheists who are much less educated and have lessor IQ's than some fundamentalist Christians.

AND appeal to popularity, even popularity among the more intelligent remains a fallacy.

It still comes down to logic and evidence.

[Thumpalumpacus]

I didn't know that truth had an expiration date.

Knowledge certainly has. Or would you like medical treatment according to the methods of Galen?

My scale goes to 11.

Yeah, slapped down so hard he pretended it didn't happen.

[Shuffle]

I will say it once, and only once. I wrongly stated that IQ gages intelligence. I should have said that it makes you more skeptically minded, therefore making it more likely that you will be an atheist. Every post on here has skipped over this apology. I was wrong. I admitted that. Now get over my past statements and respond to my new ones.

[Cephus]

Wisdom is subjective, I don't know how you'd decide who was more or less wise anyhow.

And intelligence isn't? IQ tests generally test for things like abstract and numerical pattern recognition. Who decided that those particular skills are what constitute intelligence or even relevant to overall effective everyday thinking?

While I agree that there is some problem with IQ, it has at least been quantized, unlike wisdom.  Please point to a specific Wisdom Quotient test.  IQ is potential intelligence, it doesn't say anything about how it is used.

[Cephus]

Are you saying that God isn't real?  Anything that exists in the real world is open to scientific exploration.  Either God is imaginary, at which point he's philosophical, or he's objectively real, at which point science can search for him.

You lose either way.

You do not seem to understand what philosophy is.  If god is imaginary, god is imaginary from both a scientific and philosophical perspective.

That doesn't stop people from making arguments for God from a philosophical basis when they simply cannot do so from a scientific basis.  I would agree that those arguments are likewise irrational however.

[bennyboy]

By the way, in the OP, "Higher IQ's" is misspelled. Just saying.

[Alex K]

'tis the apostrophe of death!

[Pyrrho]

You do not seem to understand what philosophy is.  If god is imaginary, god is imaginary from both a scientific and philosophical perspective.

That doesn't stop people from making arguments for God from a philosophical basis when they simply cannot do so from a scientific basis.  I would agree that those arguments are likewise irrational however.

Many use "quantum mechanics" and other scientific words to try to argue for God as well.  Just as no decent scientist finds such arguments compelling, so, too, do no decent philosophers find the philosophical arguments for God compelling.  One of the differences, though, is that almost everyone imagines himself or herself as capable of being a philosopher without proper training, whereas some people have sufficient scruples that they do not imagine themselves scientists without proper training.